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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780553381399
ISBN number: 0553381393
Label: Bantam
Manufacturer: Bantam
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 448
Printing Date: August 28, 2001
Publishing house: Bantam
Release Date: August 28, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 38575
Studio: Bantam
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After chronicling the Spartan stand at Thermopylae in his audacious Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield once again proves that it's all Greek to him. In Tides of War, he tells the tale of Athenian soldier extraordinaire Alcibiades. Despite the vaunted claims for Periclean democracy, he is undoubtedly very first among equals--a great warrior and an impressive physical specimen to boot: 'The beauty of his person easily won over those previously disposed, and disarmed even those who abhorred his character and conduct.' He is also a formidable orator, whose stump speeches are paradoxically heightened by what some might consider an impediment: Even his lisp worked in Alcibiades' favor. It was a flaw; it made him human. It took the curse off his otherwise godlike self-presentation and made one, despite all misgivings, like the fellow.
This tale of arms and the man requires two narrators. One, Jason, is an aging noble who serves as a sort of recording angel of the Athenian golden age. The other, Polymides, was long Alcibiades' right-hand man, yet is now imprisoned for his murder.
As they were in his previous novel, Pressfield's battle scenes are extraordinarily vivid and visceral. This time, however, many of these elemental clashes take place on water. 'As far as sight could carry, the sea stood curtained with smoke and paved with warcraft. Immediately left, a battleship had rammed one of the vessels in the wall; all three of her banks were backing water furiously, to extract and ram again, while across the breach screamed storms of stones, darts, and brands of such density that the air appeared solid with steel and flame.'
In addition to his gift for rendering patriotic gore, the author excels at quieter but no less deadly forms of combat. As Alcibiades' star rises and falls and rises again, we are escorted directly into the snakepit of Athenian realpolitik. Bathing us in the details of a distant era, Pressfield is largely convincing. But it must be said that his diction exhibits a sometimes comical variegation, sliding from Homeric rhetoric to tough-guy speak to the sort of casual Anglicisms we might expect from Evelyn Waugh's far-from-bright young things. No matter. Tides of War conquers by sheer storytelling prowess, reminding us that war was--and is--a highly addictive version of hell. --Darya Silver
Product Description:
Brilliant at war, a master of politics, and a charismatic lover, Alcibiades was Athens’ favorite son and the city’s greatest general.
A prodigal follower of Socrates, he embodied both the best and the worst of the Golden Age of Greece. A commander on both land and sea, he led his armies to victory after victory.
But like the heroes in a great Greek tragedy, he was a victim of his own pride, arrogance, excess, and ambition. Accused of crimes against the state, he was banished from his beloved Athens, only to take up arms in the service of his former enemies.
For nearly three decades, Greece burned with war and Alcibiades helped bring victories to both sides — and ended up trusted by neither.
Narrated from death row by Alcibiades’ bodyguard and assassin, a man whose own love and loathing for his former commander mirrors the mixed emotions felt by all Athens, Tides of War tells an epic saga of an extraordinary century, a war that changed history, and a complex leader who seduced a nation.
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Rated by buyers 
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"Tides of War" by Steven Pressfield, ©2000
This historical novel is very good. Mr Pressfield did his homework to write this book. I am not schooled in the intricacies of ancient history, but you got the feeling that this was an accurate book. The speeches he recorded and the notions he has the characters express, to my understanding, seem like ones that would have been found back then.
It is to be noted that this story is set at the beginning of human understanding. The major philosophers had just begun to think the notions of what is beauty, or love, or government. In this book Alcibiades, expostulates on military tactics and leadership, on politicians, etc. Socrates does the same in other subjects. It is rather faithful to what the notions of life and living must have been, such as entertainment around the military campfire, or the debates in the Athenian or Spartan assemblies.
There is the juxtaposing of Sparta and Athens, Lysander and Alcibiades, that are two sides of the same coin. It puts the growth of human understanding out front: one thinks one way, the other thinks another. Because Sparta won the Peloponnesian War, it is necessary that the choices of culture and society of Sparta becomes the choices that win battles, but it must not be seen as the real reason for the winning of the war. This is a novel. What really happened in reality is lost in the past, even the reality of the Boer War is lost in the past and that is not much more than a hundred years old.
In the end there is a very good rendering of a Socratic argument on following the law. This is not taken as applicable in all instances, though it is spoken of as a good and true philosophy. It is only in retrospect that you realize that this has happened. As you read, you want the law to be thwarted, because it makes good sense in the story, but it does not hold true to the philosophy expounded by Socrates.
Rated by buyers -
My take on this work of fiction is that it revealed another facet of the 'traitor' Alcibiades, the guy who fought for and against Athens, had more adventures than Indiana Jones could have ever imagined, and yet was portrayed, not as a cartoon, but as a very real and very complicated historical figure. Certainly this is not a work of scholarship but the research demanded of the novel was epic, in itself. The military locations, politics, and changing 'tides' of the course of history maintained an excellent linear perspective. The characters were fleshed out and, to the extent necessary in this work of fiction, historically accurate. The descriptions of the seaports, tools of the military, and hardships suffered on all side were well studied and presented in a very readable manner
Bottom line... You need to know Sophicles from Socrates and have a basic knowledge of the Peloponnesian war before you can wring you full monies-worth of enjoyment from this book. It requires patience to slog through the Greek names. That being said, once you finish this semi-fictional account of a very real historical person your appetite for more information will be whetted in a way you won't belive. After this book, then, move on to Donald Kagan's work THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
Rated by buyers 
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Like most of Pressfield's work this book is exceptionally written and has a great plot with complex and interesting characters. The story loses interest at some points though, mainly during long political discussions which take up pages with monologues; and during strategic discussions which bring an interesting historical perspective but are not interesting or exciting to the story.
"Gates of Fire" is one of the best books I've ever read, and I have enjoyed everything from Pressfield, but to enjoy this book you have to enjoy the historic aspect as well because the plot alone is dry for long stretches.
Overall, I would definatly reccomend it for a fan of the period, or anyone who wants to learn about the Peloponnesian War with some fiction thrown in for entertainment.
Rated by buyers -
"Tides of War" by Steven Pressfield was as enjoyable to listen to as it is long. The book covers the storied life of Alcibiades Cleiniou Scambonides, favored son of Athens, during the city's 27 years of war with Sparta.
Alcibiades' life provides a rich pretext for the Peloponnesian War that doomed Greece from its early preeminence in world affairs. Had the Greek states united behind the conquest of Sicily by the Athenians and Alcibiades in 410 BC, one is left to wonder if the whole of Italy and the nescient state of Rome would have come under the Greek rule.
Instead, as Athens turned on Alcibiades and forced him to abdicate as commanding general, the Spartans aided Sicily in its defense, which eventually routed and destroyed the 60,000-man, invading Athenian army.
That was only one of a numbers turns and twists in the historical account of Alcibiades, who made a career out of double-crossing and duplicity. Pressfield does a masterful job telling his story while coloring in the context, including making Socrates a Alcibiades compatriot and using his state-sentenced death a critical part of the story's climax.
As a would-be writer, I greatly appreciate the scaffolded approach to storytelling that Pressfield uses to allow very first person accounts of battles, while allowing objective views of the characters and situation when and where appropriate.
If you have the time, this book is well worth the read (or the listening).
Rated by buyers -
Though advertised as being about Alkibiades, the novel is more about the character Polemides, and his life as an Athenian mercenary turned traitor.
Telling his tale in post-war Athens, locked up for trivial charges masking that of his role in killing Alkibiades, to his defender Jason, who is in turn telling the tale decades later to his grandson (sounds confusing, but it isn't very), Polemides' tale mirrors Pressfield's ultra-gritty style which both repulsed and attracted me to "Gates of Fire". Unlike that novel, Polemides is not a glorious Spartiate following a great and humble King to eternal glory and the salvation of Greece. He is a man who has tasted war with Sparta, and is disillusioned by peace in Athens. Then the plague hits, and he is horrified by its ravages, and its leading to the death of his fiance', sister, and father.
He is friends with Alkibiades, but Alkibiades is a minor character for the very first half of the book.
From the Arcadian Telamon, Polemides becomes a mercenary, and Pressfield's writing genius assaults us with the utter inhuman hell of mercenary life so brutally I had to stop reading and only returned to it six months later.
The discovery and often disillusionment of the truth of the war is unprecedented. Polemides just as easily fights for Spartan allies as he does for Athenian allies. There is no difference for him. The Sparta of myth, glorious and incorruptible, is just that, a myth, as the infamous Lysander and others embark on a series of political manipulation, an assassination, and the sort of intrigue you'd expect from a Persian or Roman imperial court.
Sicily is the turning point, as a condemned Alkibiades flees to Sparta, and convinces them to dispatch a general to Syracuse, who rallies the Sicilians and smashes two Athenian armies. Polemides loses his friends and his brother, and is enslaved in a brutal mine that defies humanity. Only by virtue of his friendship with Alkibiades is he set free and sent to Athens to heal.
From there, he accompanies Alkibiades in his naval campaigns in the Hellespont, his defection back to Athens, massing allies in Thrace, all up until the defeat of Athens by Lysander and Persia, and Alkibiades' assassination, to the fall of Athens.
Written in typical Pressfield fashion, easily combining gritty reality with romance, Tides of War is a gritty, difficult, and grueling masterpiece that painfully and masterfully shows the true nature of ancient Greece.
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