Tides Of War by Steven Pressfield

His name is Alcibiades. Kinsman of Pericles, protégé of Socrates, immortalised by Plutarch, Plato and Thucydides, he was an audacious soldier and charismatic leader without equal. And he would come to dominate the Peloponnesian War, the devastating twenty-seven-year conflict between Athens and Sparta that brought Greece to its knees at the end of the fifth century BC. Undefeated on the battlefield, Alcibiades’ popularity – and his political aspirations – fed the resentment of his rivals in Athens who secured his death warrant on a trumped-up charge of treason. Escaping to Sparta, he proved instrumental in guiding its legendary army from one military triumph to the next. Ultimately though, it was Athens that would claim his fiercest loyalty, their destinies inextricably intertwined.

In an epic story filled with triumph and tragedy and ringing to the sound of battle, the acclaimed author of Gates of Fire once more breathes brilliant life into the bones of ancient history to paint a dazzling portrait of a remarkable man whose fortunes mirrored the ebb and flow of the tides of war.