Viaje a la Grecia clásica

In the spring of 480 a. C., the Persian king Xerxes led the largest land army ever assembled until then. He had just crossed the Hellespont and, once in Europe, was preparing to tour the regions of Thrace and Macedonia with the support of his impressive fleet. Xerxes sought to avenge the insults that the Athenians inflicted on his father, King Darius, and he also wished to incorporate the Greek territories into his immense Asian empire. News would soon come to Sparta that Xerxes' fleet had crossed the Athos Isthmus in northern Greece by excavating a 2-kilometer-long canal. Such a display of strength made the Spartan king Leonidas decide to give up his life and that of his personal guard to retain the invading army at the Thermopylae pass, the natural gateway to central Greece. In this book, just as he did in Herodotus's footsteps after his tour of Asia Minor, Antonio Penadés follows the itinerary of the army of Xerxes and narrates in a lively way his passage through Alexandrópolis, Dorisco, Abdera, Kavala, island of Thassos , Philippi, Drama, Amphipolis, Stagira, Xerxes Canal, Ouranópolis, Olinto, Potidea, Cassandra, Thessalonica, Pella, Goumenissa, Idomeni, Edessa, Naoussa, Vergina, Díon and Mount Olympus. A solo trip that reaches very intense moments, especially on the border of Idomeni and in the Iviron monastery, on the theocratic peninsula of Athos, where Orthodox monks live the same as in the middle of Byzantine times. The tour culminates in Thermopylae, where one of the most epic passages in Western history took place. There ends this immersion in Greek Antiquity, an unbeatable way to try to access the human condition, and the marked contrast is drawn between the vanity of the Persian king Xerxes and the pride of the Spartan Leonidas