Persian Fire
by Tom Holland · first published 2005
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In 480 B.C.E., Xerxes, the King of Persia, led an invasion of mainland Greece. Its success should have been a formality. For seventy years, victory--rapid, spectacular victory--had seemed the birthright of the Persian Empire. They had swept across the Near East, shattering ancient kingdoms, storming famous cities, putting together an empire which stretched from India to the shores of the Aegean. Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on the planet. Yet somehow, astonishingly, against the largest expeditionary force ever assembled, the Greeks managed to hold out. Had the Greeks been defeated in
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I would also recommend any ancient history written by Tom Holland - "Persian Fire" about the Persian invasion of Greece is a good introduction to the era. Also, Adam Nicholson's "The Might Dead: Why Homer Matters" is a brilliant read, linking such disparate topics as Albanian and Scottish…
on “Books on Ancient Greece Recommended by Christopher Pelling” ↗…who are not ethnic Finns. Again, this is not something that policy can solve and is one of the reasons that silicon valley and North America in general do very well at. Recently I read a book called Persian Fire by Tom Holland. One detail which struck me as very interesting was how the first democratic ruler of Athens, Cleisthenes, solved the tribalism problem. Here tribalism is the perfect word as the average…
on “Mayor suggests Helsinki declare itself an English-language city” ↗