Read more
Zusatztext “Gripping and swashbuckling . . . an exciting, romantic, star-crossed story.” — The New York Times “An incredibly gripping, moving, and literate work of art. Rarely does an author manage to re-create a moment in history with such mastery, authority, and psychological insight.” —Nelson DeMille “A novel that is intricate and arresting and, once begun, almost impossible to put down.” —New York Daily News “A timeless epic of man and war . . . Pressfield has created a new classic deserving of a place beside the very best of the old.” —Stephen Coonts “Steven Pressfield brings the battle of Thermopylae to brilliant life, and he does for that war what Charles Frazier did for the Civil War in Cold Mountain .” —Pat Conroy Informationen zum Autor Steven Pressfield is the author of the hugely successful historical novels Gates of Fire , Tides of War , and Last of the Amazons . His debut novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance , was made into a movie starring Matt Damon and Will Smith in 2000. He lives in California. Klappentext NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "An incredibly gripping, moving, and literate work of art, rarely does an author manage to re-create a moment in history with such mastery, authority, and psychological insight."-Nelson DeMille At Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood three hundred strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army. Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces. Born into a cult of spiritual courage, physical endurance, and unmatched battle skill, the Spartans would be remembered for the greatest military stand in history-one that would not end until the rocks were awash with blood, leaving only one gravely injured Spartan squire to tell the tale. . . . "A novel that is intricate and arresting and, once begun, almost impossible to put down."-Daily News "A timeless epic of man and war . . . Pressfield has created a new classic deserving a place beside the very best of the old."-Stephen Coonts Leseprobe I had always wondered what it felt like to die. There was an exercise we of the battle train practiced when we served as punching bags for the Spartan heavy infantry. It was called the Oak because we took our positions along a line of oaks at the edge of the plain of Otona, where the Spartiates and the Gentleman-Rankers ran their field exercises in fall and winter. We would line up ten deep with body-length wicker shields braced upon the earth and they would hit us, the shock troops, coming across the flat in line of battle, eight deep, at a walk, then a pace, then a trot and finally a dead run. The shock of their interleaved shields was meant to knock the breath out of you, and it did. It was like being hit by a mountain. Your knees, no matter how braced you held them, buckled like saplings before an earthslide; in an instant all courage fled our hearts; we were rooted up like dried stalks before the ploughman's blade. That was how it felt to die. The weapon which slew me at Thermopylae was an Egyptian hoplite spear, driven in beneath the plexus of the ribcage. But the sensation was not what one would have anticipated, not being pierced but rather slammed, like we sparring fodder felt beneath the oaks. I had imagined that the dead would be detached. That they would look upon life with the eyes of objective wisdom. But the experience proved the opposite. Emotion ruled. It seemed nothing remained but emotion. My heart ached and broke as never it could on earth. Loss encompassed me with a searing, all-mastering pain. I saw my wife and children, my dear cousin Diomache, she whom I loved. I saw Skamandridas, my father, and Eunike, my ...
