The Ten Thousand

In a spectacular Greek epic set in the spring of 400 B.C., ten thousand battered, starving Greek soldiers stagger out of the frozen mountains of Armenia into a small Hellenic trading post on the eastern Black Sea. A first novel, an epic adventure set in ancient Greece. After decades of war, mighty Athens has been ravaged, its navy destroyed, its city walls toppled, its army disbanded. The fierce military state of Sparta has triumphed, but passions and hate linger on. Thousands of battle-hardened veterans from both sides in the conflict remain scattered across the Greek islands, restless and dangerous, until the young Persian prince Cyrus issues a call-to-arms from his base in Asia Minor. The rogue nobleman is raising an enormous mercenary army to wrest control of all of Persia, the most powerful empire on earth, from his half-brother the king.^