David Stuttard - Phoenix: A Father, A Son, and The Rise of Athens

PHOENIX

A FATHER, A SON, AND THE RISE OF ATHENS

DAVID STUTTARD

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

LONDON, ENGLAND

2021

Copyright 2021 by David Stuttard

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Cover illustration background: hqrloveq/iStock/Getty Images

Cover illustration inset: bbstanicic/iStock/Getty Images

Cover design: Jill Breitbarth

978-0-674-98827-9 (cloth)

978-0-674-25972-0 (EPUB)

978-0-674-25974-4 (PDF)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Stuttard, David, author.

Title: Phoenix : a father, a son, and the rise of Athens / David Stuttard.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020042727

Subjects: LCSH: Miltiades, approximately 550489 B.C. | Cimon, approximately 450 B.C. | Marathon, Battle of, Greece, 490 B.C. | Salamis, Battle of, Greece, 480 B.C. | GreeceHistoryPersian Wars, 500449 B.C. | GreeceHistoryAthenian supremacy, 479431 B.C. | Athens (Greece)History.

Classification: LCC DF226.M5 S78 2021 | DDC 938/.5030922dc23

LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2020042727

To my wife, Emily-Jane, and my mother, Kate;

and in memory of my father, Philip, in whose company

I first encountered Cimon and Miltiades.

The Eastern Mediterranean and Western Persian Empire

Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor

Greece: Eastern Central Mainland and North-east Peloponnese

Athens and Piraeus

phoenix:1. a legendary bird that rose from the ashes of its own immolation

2. a person of outstanding qualities

ATHENS, 480 B.C.

With every day that passes, tensions ratchet higher. For months the news has been apocalyptic: a vast army, rumoured to be a million men strong, assembling across the sea, drawn from every nation of the Persian Empire; troops on the march, so many they drink rivers dry; a fleet of warships, synchronised to shadow them at sea, gliding like sharks up past the coast of Asia, hugging Thracian shores, turning their prows southwards for the kill.

A delegation of Athenians has recently returned with news from Apollos oracle at Delphi that is both chilling and perplexing: Ares, god of war will shatter many high-towered citadels and torch the sanctuaries of gods, who even now stand sweating, trembling in fear as over rooftops black blood surges. Athens will fall, yet hope remains: her people have been granted one inviolable stronghold, their wooden wall; trust this and Athens will be saved.

But which wall does Apollo mean? Opinion is divided. Someolder men, the more conservativemaintain it is the stockade built around the heights of the Acropolis, Athenas sacred rock, the stony heart of Athens.