Download or read book Summer, Harvest, War written by Stephen Bradford Marte and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical fiction series "The Wandering King" is based on events described in "The History" by the father of history, Herodotus. People know the story of King Leonidas and the famous last stand of the 300 Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae, but many of Herodotus' best stories have never gotten any press. For instance, Leonidas was one of four brothers who fought for the Spartan throne. Some historians theorize that Leonidas may have decided to sacrifice himself in the pass because if he'd returned home to Sparta, he might have been put on trial for murder - the murder of his eldest brother Cleomenes, whose sudden and mysterious death made Leonidas king. Recent books and movies on the subject tend to leave out the facts that Leonidas was a twin and that his wife Gorgo was Cleomenes' daughter, making her Leonidas' niece.Though Leonidas is a character in “The Wandering King,” this is not his story. The novel is told from the perspective of Leonidas' nephew, Euryanax, who is mentioned by Herodotus as a Greek commander at the climactic Battle of Plataea during the Persian War. The novel begins: “I am called Euryanax and I am a Spartan. In the Dorian tongue, 'eury' means wandering and 'anax' means king. The Wandering King. From my name comes my story …”The first book in the series, "Summer, Harvest, War," is based on events that take place thirty years before Thermopylae, when Euryanax's father Dorieus and his uncle Cleomenes quarreled over the succession at Sparta and Dorieus left Greece to build a new colony in Libya, where he is the first among the Spartans to go to war with the Persian Empire and its allies Phoenicia and Carthage. It is no small wonder that Euryanax is called the 'wandering king.' His father was a king in his own right and fought his way across Libya, Italy and Sicily. Join Euryanax as he wanders from Sparta to North Africa where he comes into contact with the nomadic tribes of the Nasamone and takes part in the siege of the Phoenician stronghold at Oea. Venture with him to the city of merchants, Corinth, fight pirates in the Ionian Sea, and sail with the Spartans to the Temple of Apollo where Euryanax learns his fate from the Delphic Oracle. Exotic locales and peoples, action, adventure, land battles, sea battles, Olympic-style games, "The Wandering King" has all this and more.