Gods of Men, Amphipolis - Gods of Men, #4 - E-book - ePub

Sparta, 425 BCE and the long bloody war with the Athenian Empire goes on. In Messene, the Peloponnesians on the island of Sphacteria 292, 120 of them Spartans have surrendered to the Athenian generals Cleon and Demosthenes and are taken back to Athens in chains. For Sparta, this is a catastrophe beyond any comparison and the Greek world is shocked to the marrow that Spartans had chosen surrender over death.
The charismatic Brasidas, a man who defines what it means to be a Spartan warrior, has his own axe to grind with Athens after being wounded at Pylos, where he lost his shield, a very big deal for a Spartan. Seeing the allies are wavering, he puts an audacious plan to the Spartan Kings and their council of elders (Gerousia). He persuades them to give him permission to march 1700 elite hoplites north to open a second front in the war between the Peloponnesians and Sparta's newest ally Macedon, against the insidious Athenian Empire.
Athens has to pay for the humiliation on Sphacteria, and that payment is the vital Athenian walled city Amphipolis, the jewel of the Athenian Empire. Sparta's spy Pheidon, discovers two Athenian armies led by Demosthenes and Autokrates, plan to mount a coordinated pincer attack against Thebes and Boeotia and warns the Theban allies. Pagondas of Thebes, supreme commander of the Boeotian forces, rewrites the book of tactical warfare forever, and what follows is the first pitched hoplite battle of the war so far, and it will have devastating consequences for the vanquished.