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Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

Page 49

by Christian Cameron


  Finally – neither the Phoenicians nor the Persians were ‘bad’. The Greeks were not ‘good’. But Arimnestos is a product of his own world, and he would sound – curious – if he didn’t suffer from some of the prejudices and envies we see in his contemporaries.

  At the risk of repeating what I said in the afterword to Marathon – the complex webs of human politics that ruled the tin trade and Carthage’s attempts to monopolize it – the fledgling efforts of Persia (perhaps?) to win allies in the far west to allow them to defeat the Greeks on multiple fronts – these are modern notions, and yet, to the helmsmen and ship owners of Athens and Tyre and Carthage and Syracuse, these ideas of strategy must have been as obvious as they are to armchair strategists today. The competition for tin was every day. Trade and piracy were very, very closely allied. If my novels have a particular point it is that the past wasn’t simple. In Tyre and Athens, at least, the leading pirates were also the leading political decision makers.

  In the last two books, I’ve said that ‘it is all in the Iliad.’ Well – in this book, it is all in the Odyssey, and I’ve gone back to that source again and again. I have enormous respect for the modern works of many historians, classical and modern. But they weren’t there. Homer and his associates – they were there.

  I have seen war at sea – never the way of the oar and ram, but war. And when I read the Iliad and the Odyssey, they cross the millennia and feel true. Not, perhaps, true about Troy. Or Harpies. But true about war. Homer did not love war. Achilles is not the best man in the Iliad. War is ugly.

  Arimnestos of Plataea was a real man. I hope that I’ve done him justice.

  An Orion eBook

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books

  This eBook first published in 2012 by Orion Books

  Copyright © Christian Cameron 2012

  The moral right of Christian Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication, except those already in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 4091 1413 0

  Orion Books

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Also by Christian Cameron

  Title page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Glossary

  General Note on Names and Personages

  Map

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I: Sicily

  1

  2

  3

  Part II: Alba

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Part III: Massalia

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Part IV: Illyria

  21

  22

  Epilogue

  Historical Afterword

  Copyright

 

 

 


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