Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West

Language:Chinese.. Paperback. Pub Date: 2006-8-1 Pages: 418 Publisher: Little Brown In 480 BC. Xerxes. the King of Persia. led an invasion ofmainland Greece Its success should have been a formality Forseventy years. victory - rapid. spectacular. victory -. had seemedthe birthright of the Persian Empire In the space of a singlegeneration. they had swept across the Near East. shattering ancientkingdoms. storming famous cities. putting together an empire whichstretched from India to the shores of the Aegean As a result ofthose. conquests. Xerxes ruled as the most powerful man on theplanet. Yet somehow. astonishingly. against the largestexpeditionary force ever assembled. the Greeks of the mainlandmanaged to hold out. The Persians were turned back. Greece remainedfree. Had the Greeks been defeated at Salamis. not only would theWest have lost its first struggle for independence a...