For persons and places which have been widely known in the English-speaking world through their Latinized versions, I have respected the tradition. Thus Alcibiades does not become Alkibiades, or Jason Iason. Similarly Piraeus is not Peiraieus and Potidaea is not Potidaia.
However, for less well known names, and in particular Greek terms, I have retained the Greek spelling transliterated into English; thus homoioi does not become Latinized to homoii, or toxotai to toxotae.
GLOSSARY
ACHARNAE A deme or district of Athens, about seven miles north of the city.
AEGOSPOTAMI Site on the Hellespont (Goat Creeks) where in 405 B.C. the Spartan navy under Lysander defeated the fleet of Athens, sealing victory in the Peloponnesian War.
AGEMA The elite corps of king’s defenders in the Spartan army.
AGOGE “The Upbringing”; the Spartan educational regimen.
AGON Contention; competition.
AGORA Political and social center of Athens and other Greek cities, housing the marketplace, civic buildings, temples, etc.
AKATION The smaller “boat sail” of a trireme, as differentiated from the mainsail.
ALPHITA Barley bread.
ANASTROPHE Countermarch.
ANDREIA Courage; manly virtue.
APAGOGE Summary arrest.
APATURIA Festival of the Brotherhoods at Athens.
APELLA The Spartan Assembly.
APOSTOLEIS Senior administrators of the Athenian Fleet.
ARCADIA Region of the Peloponnese noted for producing great fighters, particularly mercenaries.
ARCHITECTONES Architects.
ARCHON One of nine senior magistrates at Athens, elected each year for a one-year term.
AREOPAGUS The senior Council at Athens, composed of ex-archons. Also the hill west of the Acropolis, the “Hill of Ares,” upon which they met.
ARETE Excellence; virtue.
ARGIVES Men of Argos.
ARISTOI The nobility, “the best.”
ARTEMIS ORTHIA Temple of Artemis Upright at Sparta.
ASPIS A shield of the heavy infantry; pl. aspides.
ASSEMBLY The sovereign body of Athens, open to all adult male citizens. Also, ekklesia.
ATTICA The region of which Athens is the principal city.
“THE BARBARIAN” To a Greek, any non-Greek; usually in reference to the Persians, whose speech sounded like “bar-bar” to Greek ears.
BASILEUS The “King Archon” at Athens; his duties were primarily to officiate at religious events.
BOXER’s STONE Olympic pugilists fought tethered to a heavy stone so they could not duck away from opponents.
BRASIDIOI Helot troops who had won their freedom fighting under the Spartan general Brasidas.
“BREAKTHROUGH” Naval maneuver, the diekplous, in which a warship shoots the gap between enemy craft advancing in line abreast, then wheels to attack from the flank.
CANTHARUS (KANTHAROS) The Goblet; the main harbor of Piraeus.
CATHEAD On a trireme, a stout beam structure projecting laterally just aft of the prow, supporting the outrigger.
CHOMA The ceremonial jetty at Piraeus from which a fleet embarked to war.
CIMON Athenian general, son of Miltiades; his victories in the mid-fifth century drove the Persians from the Aegean and established Athens’ hegemony at sea.
“CONCENTRIC” A naval tactic, kyklos or “circle,” whereby one fleet literally rowed rings around another, probing for a weak spot to strike.
COUNCIL OF 500 At Athens the deliberative body which prepared business for the Assembly.
CUIRASS Armor breastplate.
“CUTBACK” Naval maneuver, periplous, whereby a warship shoots past an opponent to get astern of her, then turns about to strike from aft or abeam.
DAIMON Inhering spirit; in Latin, genius. Socrates’ daimon always warned him when he should not do something, but never when he should.
DARIC A Persian gold coin called after King Darius.
DEAD MAN’S PIT The barathron at Athens, into which criminals were thrown. Scholars are divided over whether the condemned were precipitated alive, to be killed by the fall, or simply dumped as corpses, having been executed at another site by other means.
DECELEA A site in Attica which the Spartans fortified during the latter, or Decelean, phase of the war.
DEME A ward or district of Athens.
DEMOS The electorate of a democracy, “the commons.”
DEMOSTHENES Athenian general (not the orator of the fourth century), victor over the Spartans at Pylos/Sphacteria; leader of relief expedition to Sicily.
DIKE Civil lawsuit.
DIKE PHONOU An indictment for homicide.
“DOLPHIN” A heavy weight elevated upon a spar or boom, to be dropped onto an enemy warship’s deck to hole her.
DRACHMA Coin, a “handful,” about a day’s pay for an armored infantryman.
EIRENOS (EIRENE) A youth-captain of the Spartan agoge, twenty years old, in charge of a boua (“herd”) of boys.
EISANGELIA A formal procedure under Athenian law for making a variety of grave charges, often treason, before the Council or Assembly.
EKKLESIA The Assembly of the people.
ENDEIXIS A type of indictment or denunciation at law.
ENDEIXIS KAKOURGIAS At Athens an indictment for “wrongdoing,” a category covering everything from petty theft to murder. Kakourgoi = criminals.
EPHEBE At Athens, a youth in military training, eighteen to twenty years old.
EPHOR A senior magistrate of Sparta. A board of five was elected each year for a one-year term; they were the real power, superseding even the kings.
EPIBATAI Marines; armored infantrymen who fought from the decks of ships.
EPIMELETAI TON NEORION At Athens the Overseers of the Port and Naval Establishment.
EPINIKION Victory ode.
EPIPOLAE “The Heights” overlooking Syracuse.
EPISTATES At Athens the chairman of the executive committee of the Council, chosen by lot to serve for one day only.
EPITEICHISMOS Military tactic of establishing a fort in enemy territory, from which to ravage the countryside and to which the foe’s deserters and slaves could flee.
EUROTAS The river of Sparta.
GRAPHE A public lawsuit or indictment.
GYLIPPUS Spartan general; victor over the Athenians at Syracuse.
“HEDGEHOG” A sunken stake, part of a naval palisade, meant to tear the bottom out of an attacking ship.
HELLAS Greece.
HELLENE A Greek.
HELOT A Spartan serf.
HERMAI Blocky stone statues of Hermes—messenger of the gods and benefactor of voyages—which stood before private homes and public buildings. Hermai usually sported erect phalluses. Regarded as good-luck pieces.
HETAIRAI Courtesans.
HOLY TWAIN At Athens the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, the Kore. At Sparta the Dioscuri or “twins,” Castor and Polyduces.
HOMOIOI The officer class of full-citizen Spartans; Peers or Equals.
HOPLITE Armored infantryman, from hoplon meaning “shield”; one who owned a full panoplia.
HYBRIS Hubris, pride. Also “outrage,” punishable at Athens by death; an act of willful and malicious abuse intended to humiliate someone irreparably.
IMPIETY At Athens a crime punishable by death; the charge under which Socrates was condemned.
IRONHEAD Arrow.
KATALOGOS Roll of citizens at Athens, from which men were drafted for military service.
KEELSON Keel timbers of a ship.
KHOUS A liquid measure; about 31/2 liters.
KLEROS At Sparta, a Peer’s agricultural landholding. The ancient lawgiver Lycurgus divided the state into nine thousand equal allotments, each to support one warrior and his family.
KOPPA The archaic letter Q.
KYRIOS Legal guardian. At Athens a male citizen who protected the interests of the women, children, and slaves of his household, since they did not have politica
l rights.
LACEDAEMON The region of Greece of which Sparta is the principal city; Laconia.
LAMBDA Greek letter L. Lacedaemonian infantrymen bore a lambda on their shields.
LENAEA An annual festival at Athens.
LEONIDAS King of Sparta and commander of the Three Hundred who sacrificed their lives defending the pass at Thermopylae against the Persians, 480 B.C.
LOCHOS A Spartan regiment; pl. lochoi.
LONG Walls Fortifications linking Athens to the harbor at Piraeus.
LYCURGUS Ancient lawgiver of Sparta.
MEDES Usually a synonym for Persians; actually another warrior race, of the kingdom of Media, conquered by Cyrus the Great of Persia and incorporated into the empire.
MILTIADES Athenian general, victor at Marathon against the Persians, 490 B.C.
MINA 100 drachmas.
MONTHS The Athenian year started in midsummer: Hecatombaion, Metageitnion, Boedromion, Pyanopsion, Maimacterion, Poseidion, Gamelion, Anthesterion, Elaphebolion, Munychion, Thargelion, Sciriphorion.
MOTHAX A “stepbrother” class at Sparta, often bastard children of Peers, permitted to train in the agoge under sponsorship of full citizens; pl. mothakes.
MYSTERIES of ELEUSIS Festival of Athens, lasting nine days, in honor of Demeter and Kore. Each year during the month of Boedromion (September) neophytes and initiates made the pilgrimage to Eleusis. During the war, Spartan occupation of Attica compelled the procession to travel ignominiously by sea, until restored by Alcibiades.
NAUTAI Sailors; oarsmen.
NAVARCH A Spartan admiral.
NEMESIS Goddess who personified divine retribution, usually for the human sin of pride, hybris.
NEODAMODEIS “New citizens”; Spartan helots manumitted as a reward for military service.
NEORION The works and administrative establishment of a port or naval base.
NIKE Goddess of victory.
OBOL One-sixth of a drachma, a “spit.”
OIKOS A household.
OLIGOI Aristocrats, “the few.”
OPSON A “relish” at dinner; that which one dipped his bread into.
OTHISMOS In ancient warfare, the scrum or shoving match that occurred when two close-ranked formations clashed.
PAEAN Hymn sung by Dorian infantry—Spartan, Syracusan, Argive, but not Athenian (who were Ionian)—as they marched into battle.
PALAMEDES Greek warrior of Trojan War, accused unjustly by Odysseus; emblematic of the man wrongfully charged.
PANATHENAEA The great festival at Athens in honor of Athena.
PANOPLIA Full armor for a heavy infantryman: helmet, breastplate, shield, greaves (shin guards). You had to be fairly well off to afford a panoplia.
PARAKATABOLE Fee deposited at Athens in arbitration of inheritance cases, equal to one-tenth the value of the disputed property.
PEER A full citizen of Sparta.
PELOPONNESE The mainland of southern Greece, literally “isle of Pelops,” an ancient hero.
PERICLES Athenian statesman and general of the mid-fifth century, “the Olympian” presided over the Golden Age of Athenian democracy, empire, and artistic achievement. Kinsman and guardian of Alcibiades.
PERIOIKOI The “neighbors” or “dwellers-around” of the allied towns outlying Sparta. Autonomous but of noncitizen status and required to follow the Spartans “whithersoever they should lead.”
PHARMAKON Painkiller, pl. pharmaka.
PHARNABAZUS Persian satrap or governor of Phrygia and the Hellespont. Capital at Dascylium.
PHOINIKIS The scarlet cloak of Lacedaemon.
PHRATRIAI Brotherhoods of kinsmen at Athens.
PHTHIA Achilles’ home region in Thessaly.
PILOS A cap of felt, often worn as padding beneath the bronze helmet.
PNYX A hill southwest of the Acropolis on which the Athenian Assembly met, in the open air, to conduct its deliberations.
POLEMARCH “War leader.”
POLIS City-state; pl. poleis.
PORNE Whore; pl. pornai.
PROSTATES Bow officer of a trireme; “he who stands forward.”
PRYTANEIS The fifty “presidents” at Athens who represented their tribe in the Council of five hundred. Each group served for a tenth of the year, a prytany, as the executive committee of the Council and Assembly.
PSEUDOS A lie.
PYTHIOI Spartan priests of Apollo; warriors themselves, who also performed the priestly offices of battle.
ROUND CHAMBER The Tholos, where the executive committee of the Council, the prytaneis, met at Athens.
SAMOS Island of the Aegean and staunch ally of Athens; her overseas naval bastion throughout the war in the East.
SCIRITAE Spartan rangers of the district of Sciritis.
SICELS Non-Greek inhabitants of Sicily.
SKYTALAI Message sticks. As a means of encrypting dispatches, the Spartans issued a dowel-like skytale of a specific circumference to their commanders sent abroad, maintaining a duplicate at Sparta. To send a message a strip of leather was wound obliquely about the home stick; the message was written on it, then unwound and dispatched, decipherable only when wound again about an identical-size skytale.
SOLON Athenian sage and statesman of the sixth century; he wrote the laws that laid the groundwork for the democracy.
SPARTIATAI Spartans of the officer class, Peers or Equals; anglicized as “Spartiates.”
STADION RACE A straightaway dash covering one stade, about two hundred yards.
STRATEGOS An Athenian general or war commander; or one of the Board of Ten Generals elected yearly, roughly the executive branch of the democracy.
SYKOPHANTAI Informers and extortionists who preyed upon the litigants in Athenian law courts.
TALENT A weight of silver worth roughly 6,000 drachmas. It took about a talent a month to keep a warship in action.
TARTARUS A sunless abyss below Hades, where Zeus imprisoned the Titans. An anvil, dropped from Olympus, would fall nine days before reaching Earth—and another nine days, beneath the earth, till it reached Tartarus.
TAXIARCH Each of the ten tribes at Athens was required to supply an infantry regiment, a taxis, to the state. Its commander was a taxiarchos.
TECHNITAI Craftsmen.
TEMENOS Sacred precinct surrounding a temple or sanctuary.
TETRAS A group of four.
THALAMITAI Trireme oarsmen of the lowest row; holdsmen.
THEMISTOCLES Athenian statesman and general, victor over Persia in the sea battle of Salamis, 480 B.C. Fortified Piraeus, initiated construction of the Long Walls, set Athens on the course of sea power and empire.
THERMOPYLAE Pass in central Greece at which three hundred Spartans and their allies held off for six days the advance of the Persian myriads under King Xerxes, 480 B.C.
THE Thirty Puppet government at Athens following surrender to Sparta in 404 B.C., headed by Critias. Known for its tyrannical acts of repression.
THRANITAI Trireme oarsmen of the topmost bank, who rowed through an outrigger.
THRASYTES Boldness.
TISSAPHERNES Persian satrap of Lydia and Caria. His capital was at Sardis.
TOXOTES A marine archer; pl. toxotai.
TRIERARCH A trireme captain. Wealthy Athenians were conscripted to command, and bear the financial burden for, a warship for a term of one year. This could prove a white elephant, as anyone who has owned a seagoing vessel can testify.
TRIERARCHY At Athens the civic obligation to serve as a trierarch.
TRIERES A trireme; pl. triereis.
TRIREME The primary ship of war, propelled by three banks of oars, crew of about two hundred.
“TWO-AND-ONE” On a trireme, resting one bank of oarsmen while the other two row.
XENOS Stranger; also “guest-friend,” a privileged bond between families of different states.
XIPHOS The short Spartan-style sword.
XYELE A sicklelike weapon carried by Spartan youths.
ZYGITAI Trireme oarsmen of th
e middle row, between the thalamitai and thranitai.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Any work set in the era of the Peloponnesian War begins and ends with Thucydides. Not to mention Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, Aristophanes, Diodorus, Andocides, Antiphon, Lysias, Aelian, and Cornelius Nepos. A pretty stellar lineup to say thanks to.
Of modern scholarship I must single out the works of Irving Barkan, Jacob Burckhardt, Walter Ellis, Steven Forde’s The Ambition to Rule, Peter Green for Armada from Athens, Donald Kagan, D.M. MacDowell, J.H. Morrison and J.F. Coates for The Athenian Trireme, Barry Strauss, and Jean Hatzfeld for Alcibiade, with special thanks to Dr. Christine Henspetter for translating the latter for me (longhand no less) from the French.
Among friends and colleagues, Dr. Ralph Gallucci and Dr. Walter Ellis have applied a most excellent chisel and mawl to the manuscript. Thanks, above and beyond the call of duty, to Dr. Ippokratis Kantzios, who has been my indispensable counsel from the first and also a great and true friend. And to the Baronessa C. S. von Snow, my companion and cartographer to antique lands.
My profound gratitude to my editors at Doubleday and Bantam, Nita Taublib, Kate Burke Miciak, and Shawn Coyne, and especially Shawn, who did what old-time editors used to do in plunging in, shirtsleeves up, to whip what was a sprawling monster of a manuscript into what we both hope is a work suitable for literary consumption.
Finally Tides of War is fiction, not history. I have taken liberties with events and chronology and interpreted historical characters, hopefully in a higher cause. For the book’s faults and shortcomings the responsibility is entirely mine.
WITH GRATITUDE
For their generous permission to use translated material: Rex Warner and Penguin Classics for Alcibiades’ speech from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Attribution also to Rex Warner and Penguin Classics for the Spartan dispatch from Xenophon’s A History of My Time. And to the memory of John Dryden for Critias’ verses quoted by Plutarch in Lives of the Noble Greeks (Alcibiades). All other quoted lines are either fictional or made over by the author.
WARS CHANGE. WARRIORS DON’T.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD,
the “master storyteller” (Publishers Weekly) and bestselling author, returns with a stunning, plausible near-future thriller about the rise of a privately financed and global military industrial complex.