Achilles His Armour

All the outrageous daring that made Alcibiades the prodigy and scourge of ancient Athens springs vividly to life in the pages of this biographical novel. Destined to play both hero and villain in one of history's most fascinating dramas, the great general of the Peloponnesian War emerges here from the shadows of time with a blazing intensity, rivaling the most extravagant figures of romance.

Tracing the glories and downfall of the enigmatic Athenian who lived from 450-404 B.C., Peter Green combines his talents as scholar and storyteller to recreate a legend, the enduring epic of a tragic and triumphant life, of honor overthrown by ambition, and loyalty forgotten in flight. Through the telescope of time he brings into brilliant focus the tumultuous career of Alcibiades from his boyhood as ward of the great Pericles through his campaigns on the fields of battle and in the lists of love.

Against a tapestry of statecraft and intrigue, the author provides a fresh perspective on the rivalry of Athens and Sparta in a world torn by warfare and the conflict of ideas. Those who respond to the fascination of history will be stirred by this portrait of a complex and magnetic man whose audacity was notorious in an Age of Heroes, but seems almost heroic in an Age of COnformists.