The Great King Read Free

professional soldier, sometime pirate, and Athenian aristocrat.
    Cleisthenes – was a noble Athenian of the Alcmaeonid family. He is credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508/7 BC .
    Collam – A Gallic lord in the Central Massif at the headwaters of the Seine.
    Dano of Croton – Daughter of the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras.
    Darius – King of Kings, the lord of the Persian Empire, brother to Artaphernes.
    Doola – Numidian ex-slave.
    Draco – Wheelwright and wagon builder of Plataea, a leading man of the town.
    Empedocles – A priest of Hephaestus, the Smith God.
    Epaphroditos – A warrior, an aristocrat of Lesbos.
    Eualcides – A Hero. Eualcidas is typical of a class of aristocratic men – professional warriors, adventurers, occasionally pirates or merchants by turns. From Euboeoa.
    Heraclitus – c .535–475 BC . One of the ancient world’s most famous philosophers. Born to an aristocratic family, he chose philosophy over political power. Perhaps most famous for his statement about time: ‘You cannot step twice into the same river’. His belief that ‘strife is justice’ and other similar sayings which you’ll find scattered through these pages made him a favourite with Nietzsche. His works, mostly now lost, probably established the later philosophy of Stoicism.
    Herakleides – An Aeolian, a Greek of Asia Minor. With his brothers Nestor and Orestes, he becomes a retainer – a warrior – in service to Arimnestos. It is easy, when looking at the birth of Greek democracy, to see the whole form of modern government firmly established – but at the time of this book, democracy was less than skin deep and most armies were formed of semi-feudal war bands following an aristocrat.
    Heraklides – Aristides’ helmsman, a lower-class Athenian who has made a name for himself in war.
    Hermogenes – Son of Bion, Arimnestos’s slave.
    Hesiod – A great poet (or a great tradition of poetry) from Boeotia in Greece, Hesiod’s ‘Works and Days’ and ‘Theogony’ were widely read in the sixth century and remain fresh today – they are the chief source we have on Greek farming, and this book owes an enormous debt to them.
    Hippias – Last tyrant of Athens, overthrown around 510 BC (that is, just around the beginning of this series), Hippias escaped into exile and became a pensioner of Darius of Persia.
    Hipponax – 540– c. 498 BC . A Greek poet and satirist, considered the inventor of parody. He is supposed to have said ‘There are two days when a woman is a pleasure: the day one marries her and the day one buries her’.
    Histiaeus – Tyrant of Miletus and ally of Darius of Persia, possible originator of the plan for the Ionian Revolt.
    Homer – Another great poet, roughly Hesiod’s contemporary (give or take fifty years!) and again, possibly more a poetic tradition than an individual man. Homer is reputed as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , two great epic poems which, between them, largely defined what heroism and aristocratic good behaviour should be in Greek society – and, you might say, to this very day.
    Idomeneus – Cretan warrior, priest of Leitus.
    Kylix – A boy, slave of Hipponax.
    Leukas – Alban sailor, later deck master on Lydia . Kelt of the Dumnones of Briton.
    Miltiades – Tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese. His son, Cimon or Kimon, rose to be a great man in Athenian politics. Probably the author of the Athenian victory of Marathon, Miltiades was a complex man, a pirate, a warlord, and a supporter of Athenian democracy.
    Penelope – Daughter of Chalkeotechnes, sister of Arimnestos.
    Polymarchos – ex-slave swordmaster of Syracusa.
    Phrynicus – Ancient Athenian playwright and warrior.
    Sappho – A Greek poetess from the island of Lesbos, born sometime around 630 BC and died between 570 and 550 BC . Her father was probably Lord of Eressos. Widely considered the greatest lyric poet of Ancient