Empire

Name: Empire
Rating: 4.5 (3356 reviews)

by Conn Iggulden Book 2 in the The Golden Age series.

First published 2023

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4.5(3,356)

Pericles has become Athens’s dominant statesman, but the city’s wealth and naval empire bring resentment from allies and growing confrontation with Sparta. He must defend his political programme against rivals at home while commanders and assemblies push the Greek world towards war. The novel portrays the achievements of classical Athens alongside the coercion, factional struggle and strategic overreach that make its power increasingly difficult to sustain.

Pericles’s strategy depends on Athens’s ability to finance and protect a maritime empire while avoiding the kind of land war in which Sparta is strongest. Political opposition at home makes that balance difficult, because critics can portray restraint as weakness and imperial revenue as corruption. The novel follows the approach of the Peloponnesian War as a failure of alliance management as much as a clash between two rival states.