Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens Hardcover – April 16, 2018
Purchase options and add-ons
Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled general, and a ruthless politician. He was also a serial traitor, infamous for his dizzying changes of loyalty in the Peloponnesian War. Nemesis tells the story of this extraordinary life and the turbulent world that Alcibiades set out to conquer.
David Stuttard recreates ancient Athens at the height of its glory as he follows Alcibiades from childhood to political power. Outraged by Alcibiades’ celebrity lifestyle, his enemies sought every chance to undermine him. Eventually, facing a capital charge of impiety, Alcibiades escaped to the enemy, Sparta. There he traded military intelligence for safety until, suspected of seducing a Spartan queen, he was forced to flee again―this time to Greece’s long-term foes, the Persians. Miraculously, though, he engineered a recall to Athens as Supreme Commander, but―suffering a reversal―he took flight to Thrace, where he lived as a warlord. At last in Anatolia, tracked by his enemies, he died naked and alone in a hail of arrows.
As he follows Alcibiades’ journeys crisscrossing the Mediterranean from mainland Greece to Syracuse, Sardis, and Byzantium, Stuttard weaves together the threads of Alcibiades’ adventures against a backdrop of cultural splendor and international chaos. Navigating often contradictory evidence, Nemesis provides a coherent and spellbinding account of a life that has gripped historians, storytellers, and artists for more than two thousand years.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarvard University Press
- Publication dateApril 16, 2018
- Dimensions6.12 x 1.3 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100674660447
- ISBN-13978-0674660441
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Stuttard is skilled at drawing together background information that adds context to his characters’ actions, seamlessly smuggling exposition of Greek and Persian society and customs into his narrative. Nemesis demonstrates how readable and entertaining popular narrative ancient history can be.”―Carol Atack, Times Literary Supplement
“Stuttard’s new life of Alcibiades is a lively, fast-paced and eminently readable attempt to bring the insolent young monster back to life.”―Peter Thonemann, Literary Review
“[A] robust new biography of Alcibiades.”―Thomas W. Hodgkinson, Spectator
“It’s quite the tale, told with rare gusto and precision by David Stuttard―an astute inquisitor of the conflicting sources with an eye for the telling anecdote.”―Jonathan Wright, Catholic Herald
“Stuttard’s work is laudable especially in its depth and its use of available sources.”―Samuel Ortencio Flores, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
“As an entertaining biography of a scoundrel, Nemesis is superb…Stuttard eloquently tells the reader of the rise and fall of a man and his city, who both angered the gods through their acts and attitudes.”―Choice
“No one before has come anything like as near as David Stuttard to penetrating the inner recesses of the mainsprings of Alcibiades’ often outrageous, sometimes statesmanlike, always commanding public performances. Dr. Stuttard’s mastery of the ancient sources and his narrative exposition are dazzling throughout, bringing to singing life the mercurial, magnetic, passionate, and persuasive personality of this still hugely controversial Athenian aristocrat of the fifth century BC.”―Paul Cartledge, author of Democracy: A Life
“David Stuttard is a recognized expert at making the ancient Greek world come alive for modern audiences. In Nemesis, he conveys the horror and the glory of the years of Athens’ greatness and decline. Central to these processes was the flamboyant Alcibiades, and Stuttard, wearing his learning lightly, gives us a hugely entertaining biography that is simultaneously an exciting adventure story and a pithy history of the period.”―Robin Waterfield, author of Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece
“Stuttard has offered us a colorful, lively, engaging analysis of one of ancient Greece’s most fascinating and slippery characters: Alcibiades. With deft skill, Stuttard navigates the ancient sources to offer the portrait not simply of a hero, or a villain, but of a man with equal talents and failings who managed to captivate the attention of the ancient world.”―Michael Scott, author of Ancient Worlds: An Epic History of East and West
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Harvard University Press; First Edition (April 16, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0674660447
- ISBN-13 : 978-0674660441
- Item Weight : 1.6 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.12 x 1.3 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,039,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #122 in Historical Greece Biographies
- #990 in Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism (Books)
- #5,168 in Political Leader Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
The author does a superb job weaving the various known historical details into a sturdy cloth that both dazzles and dismays (from selflessness to betrayal) - a style Alcibiades would no doubt flaunt with a smile. Although there were several typos in the text, I give it 5 stars and the author many thanks for tackling a topic no others have.
Top reviews from other countries
He declared his interest in Alcibiades first in his account of the Olympics of 416 BC, Power Games: Ritual and Rivalry at the Ancient Greek Olympics , and he returned to him for one of the potted biographies in A History of Ancient Greece in Fifty Lives , a couple of years later. Now he expounds at greater length, revealing the stunning career of this extraordinary man in all of its dramatic excitement. And edge-of-the-seat excitement is routine for this author. As he confesses in his introduction, this is meant for the general audience. He wastes no time in revealing his tale as a ripping yarn, an approach entirely justified by the subject. The effect is riveting.
While I'm no expert, it seems to me that no opportunity is missed to signpost the academic sources that could give the reader more to chew on, but that will be of little importance to most who become absorbed in this story. One of Stuttard's greatest skills is in succinctly condensing as much context as is necessary to deliver the significance of each plot turn. Where context can't be found in the existing literature, he makes a compelling case for plausible explanations that are consistent with the rest of what's known, winning our trust as deftly as did Alcibiades, first in Athens, then in Sparta, and in Asia as it became necessary.
Alcibiades isn't much talked of these days. That ought to change. I wouldn't have been aware of him had I not discovered this author's interest in him. I'm glad I did. His life is recounted here with a palpable urgency, and a relish for the details that make the scenario come vividly to life.
David Stuttard has always written his histories as if fit for the cinema. Whilst Alcibiades' story is rather too complex for a two-hour treatment, there are probably a couple of epic films in this book. But I'm not sure they make films like those any more.
Superlative.
The book is very clear and readable with a coherent storyline that flows like fiction. It certainly didn’t cause me to dose off during my daily tube rides - as some books tend to do! From other classical biographies that often have to dwell on conjecture, subjective interpretation and choice you can see how hard it is configure a plausible story given the sparse, and often conflicting sources. But the author of this book, mr Stuttard pulls it off with this brilliant narrative history that is packed with detail and Athens’ golden age as a spectacular backdrop.
Alcibiades was a striking celebrity and one of the most incredible figures in the history of Athens - spectacularly rich, an accomplished general, and a pitiless politician. But he was also the classical variant of Benedict Arnold, an infamous turncoat, that singlehandedly changed fortunes in the Peloponnesian War. Alcibiades’s adventures take place in backdrop of cultural opulence and turbulent geopolitical chaos. This fairly complete account of Alcibiades’ extraordinary life chronologically follows him through key events and along his travels (and escapes) across the Mediterranean; from Athens to Sparta, Syracuse, Persia, Sardis, Thrace and eventually to Anatolia. The book starts off with the historical and cultural context in which Alcibiades grew up. This is followed by an account of his rise to Athenian prominence as the ward of Pericles. In particular for his early years there weren’t much resources available so this part relies more on anecdotes related to the young Alcibiades and our general perception about an upbringing in classic Athens. The later periods of Alcibiades’ life are better documented and here there is more debate about the viability of both classic and more modern sources and interpretations.
Despite the details and deliberations it is not an academic work and should be enjoyable to the general reader without much background in the classics.
Fantastic Book.
*** I very much enjoy reviewing products on Amazon, however there is little more satisfying than to learn that people read and like my reviews -> a click on the ‘helpful’ button below is greatly appreciated! ***
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 16, 2019
The book is very clear and readable with a coherent storyline that flows like fiction. It certainly didn’t cause me to dose off during my daily tube rides - as some books tend to do! From other classical biographies that often have to dwell on conjecture, subjective interpretation and choice you can see how hard it is configure a plausible story given the sparse, and often conflicting sources. But the author of this book, mr Stuttard pulls it off with this brilliant narrative history that is packed with detail and Athens’ golden age as a spectacular backdrop.
Alcibiades was a striking celebrity and one of the most incredible figures in the history of Athens - spectacularly rich, an accomplished general, and a pitiless politician. But he was also the classical variant of Benedict Arnold, an infamous turncoat, that singlehandedly changed fortunes in the Peloponnesian War. Alcibiades’s adventures take place in backdrop of cultural opulence and turbulent geopolitical chaos. This fairly complete account of Alcibiades’ extraordinary life chronologically follows him through key events and along his travels (and escapes) across the Mediterranean; from Athens to Sparta, Syracuse, Persia, Sardis, Thrace and eventually to Anatolia. The book starts off with the historical and cultural context in which Alcibiades grew up. This is followed by an account of his rise to Athenian prominence as the ward of Pericles. In particular for his early years there weren’t much resources available so this part relies more on anecdotes related to the young Alcibiades and our general perception about an upbringing in classic Athens. The later periods of Alcibiades’ life are better documented and here there is more debate about the viability of both classic and more modern sources and interpretations.
Despite the details and deliberations it is not an academic work and should be enjoyable to the general reader without much background in the classics.
Fantastic Book.
*** I very much enjoy reviewing products on Amazon, however there is little more satisfying than to learn that people read and like my reviews -> a click on the ‘helpful’ button below is greatly appreciated! ***