{"title":"Books by David Stuttard","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780500295519","title":"A History of Ancient Greece in 50 Lives","description":"The political leaders, writers, artists and philosophers of ancient Greece turned a small group of city states into a pan-Mediterranean civilization, whose legacy can be found everywhere today. But who were these people, what do we know of their lives and how did they interact with one another? In this original new approach to telling the Greek story, David Stuttard weaves together the lives of fifty movers and shakers of the Greek world into a continuous, chronologically organized narrative, from the early tyrant rulers Peisistratus and Polycrates, through the stirrings of democracy under Cleisthenes to the rise of Macedon under Philip II and Alexander the Great and the eventual decline of the Greek world as Rome rose.   With 29 illustrations, 25 in colour","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201700004018,"sku":"9780500295519","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780500295519_534efb58-2a7f-42c2-9d88-901fc3770863.jpg?v=1786014149"},{"product_id":"9780500518328","title":"Greek Mythology","description":"The Greek myths have a universal appeal, reaching far beyond the time and physical place in which they were created. But many are firmly rooted in specific settings: Thebes dominates the tragedy of Oedipus; Mycenae broods over the fates of Agamemnon and Electra; Knossos boasts the scene of Theseus’ slaying of the Minotaur; Tiryns was where Heracles set out from on each of his twelve labours. Here, the reader is taken on a tour of 22 destinations in Greece and Turkey, from Mount Olympus to Homer’s Hades, recounting the tales from Greek mythology and the history associated with  each, evoking their atmosphere and highlighting features that visitors can still see today. Drawing on a wide range of Classical sources, with quotations newly translated by the author and freshly illustrated with specially commissioned drawings, this book is both a useful visitor’s guide to famous sites connected with Greek mythology and an enthralling  imaginative journey for the armchair traveller.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201751711922,"sku":"9780500518328","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780500518328_76c21d15-2f4d-4b2a-939a-a2e94ae9f24a.jpg?v=1786013715"},{"product_id":"9780500252291","title":"Roman Mythology","description":"All roads lead to Rome, as the famous saying goes. Rome was a melting pot of peoples from across the Mediterranean and beyond, each bringing their own myths and legends of heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses. Roman myths formed the backdrop to the rituals and customs of everyday life, from the way aristocrats dressed up for a banquet to the bloodthirsty audiences thrilled to watch criminals forced to enact the roles of mythological characters.Roman MythologyRoman Mythology","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56290944156021,"sku":"9780500252291","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780500252291_6c3a7423-1d11-463e-a609-9fa1e261b291.jpg?v=1786013900"},{"product_id":"9780674988279","title":"Phoenix – A Father, a Son, and the Rise of Athens","description":"A Times Literary Supplement Best Book of the YearA vivid, novelistic history of the rise of Athens from relative obscurity to the edge of its golden age, told through the lives of Miltiades and Cimon, the father and son whose defiance of Persia vaulted Athens to a leading place in the Greek world.   When we think of ancient Greece we think first of Athens: its power, prestige, and revolutionary impact on art, philosophy, and politics. But on the verge of the fifth century BCE, only fifty years before its zenith, Athens was just another Greek city-state in the shadow of Sparta. It would take a catastrophe, the Persian invasions, to push Athens to the fore. In Phoenix, David Stuttard traces Athens’s rise through the lives of two men who spearheaded resistance to Persia: Miltiades, hero of the Battle of Marathon, and his son Cimon, Athens’s dominant leader before Pericles.   Miltiades’s career was checkered. An Athenian provincial overlord forced into Persian vassalage, he joined a rebellion against the Persians then fled Great King Darius’s retaliation. Miltiades would later die in prison. But before that, he led Athens to victory over the invading Persians at Marathon. Cimon entered history when the Persians returned; he responded by encouraging a tactical evacuation of Athens as a prelude to decisive victory at sea. Over the next decades, while Greek city-states squabbled, Athens revitalized under Cimon’s inspired leadership. The city vaulted to the head of a powerful empire and the threshold of a golden age. Cimon proved not only an able strategist and administrator but also a peacemaker, whose policies stabilized Athens’s relationship with Sparta.   The period preceding Athens’s golden age is rarely described in detail. Stuttard tells the tale with narrative power and historical acumen, recreating vividly the turbulent world of the Eastern Mediterranean in one of its most decisive periods.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56293053989237,"sku":"9780674988279","price":31.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674988279_08fed582-e726-43f4-ab83-0ae14b98779b.jpg?v=1786032891"},{"product_id":"9780674660441","title":"Nemesis – Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens","description":"Alcibiades was one of the most dazzling figures of the Golden Age of Athens. A ward of Pericles and a friend of Socrates, he was spectacularly rich, bewitchingly handsome and charismatic, a skilled general, and a ruthless politician. He was also a serial traitor, infamous for his dizzying changes of loyalty in the Peloponnesian War. Nemesis tells the story of this extraordinary life and the turbulent world that Alcibiades set out to conquer.   David Stuttard recreates ancient Athens at the height of its glory as he follows Alcibiades from childhood to political power. Outraged by Alcibiades’ celebrity lifestyle, his enemies sought every chance to undermine him. Eventually, facing a capital charge of impiety, Alcibiades escaped to the enemy, Sparta. There he traded military intelligence for safety until, suspected of seducing a Spartan queen, he was forced to flee again—this time to Greece’s long-term foes, the Persians. Miraculously, though, he engineered a recall to Athens as Supreme Commander, but—suffering a reversal—he took flight to Thrace, where he lived as a warlord. At last in Anatolia, tracked by his enemies, he died naked and alone in a hail of arrows.   As he follows Alcibiades’ journeys crisscrossing the Mediterranean from mainland Greece to Syracuse, Sardis, and Byzantium, Stuttard weaves together the threads of Alcibiades’ adventures against a backdrop of cultural splendor and international chaos. Navigating often contradictory evidence, Nemesis provides a coherent and spellbinding account of a life that has gripped historians, storytellers, and artists for more than two thousand years.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311844045173,"sku":"9780674660441","price":24.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674660441_91f01664-5b8e-4a1c-bc6c-05d8bd21d971.jpg?v=1786014821"},{"product_id":"9780674258471","title":"Hubris – Pericles, the Parthenon, and the Invention of Athens","description":"A new perspective on ancient Athens at the height of its powers, reinterpreting the city’s supposed “Golden Age” as a period of ruinous culture wars.   The age of Pericles, in the fifth century BC, is often described as the Golden Age of Athens. The city witnessed a flowering of philosophy, art, and architecture—including an ambitious building program, with the Parthenon its centerpiece. But as David Stuttard shows in this vivid account, the seemingly triumphant city was in fact riven by conflict and contradiction. Though nominally a democracy, Athens led a tyrannical empire. And for Pericles and his circle, the Parthenon was less a holy place than a propaganda vehicle. Its sculptures carried the message that Athenians, beloved by the gods, were nearly divine in their own right—which to many Greeks smacked of hubris.   As long as things went well, Athenian democracy appeared to prosper. But just a year after the Parthenon was finished, Athens was at war with Sparta; a plague killed a third of the population, including Pericles; and earthquakes razed much of the city. In the wake of what seemed like divine retribution, popular outrage against those accused of undermining state religion was so strong that it took the execution of Socrates to lance the boil.   Hubris offers dramatic portraits of key figures like Pheidias, who sculpted the monumental statue of Athena yet fell prey to charges of impiety; Themistocles, who built the Athenian navy but died an exile in enemy lands; and Alcibiades, the psychopathic playboy whose mercurial ego hastened his city’s defeat. To understand the Parthenon and the Athens that built it, Stuttard reasons, we must recognize the tensions among the city’s rivalrous families, generations, and social classes, whose visions of their place in the world ultimately proved incompatible.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56368095428981,"sku":"9780674258471","price":24.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780674258471.jpg?v=1791212952"},{"product_id":"ancient-greece-in-50-monuments","title":"Ancient Greece in 50 Monuments","description":"An arresting visual tour of the great sites of ancient Greece, told through its city states and the monuments they built to endure through the ages.     ‘We have raised ... monuments that those alive today look on with wonder, as those in generations still to come will wonder, too.’ More than 2,000 years later, the words uttered by the Athenian politician Pericles have been proven correct many times over. Ancient Greece continues to captivate, and its monuments still inspire awe. But what is it that makes something ‘Greek’?  Exploring ancient Greece through its monuments – from the Parthenon in Athens to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia – classicist David Stuttard reveals the values that united the disparate Greek world and made their mark on history. New digital reconstructions bring ancient Greece to life via buildings and monuments that still survive and can be visited today.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499428356469,"sku":"9780500029213","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780500029213.jpg?v=1792422762"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-david-stuttard.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}