Sparta at the start of the 5th century BC is in crisis. The
Argives are attacking Sparta’s vulnerable island of Kythera,
but King Cleomenes is more interested in meddling in
Athenian affairs. His co-monarch, King Demaratus, opposes Cleomenes'
ambitions, and soon the Agiad and Eurypontid kings are at each
other’s throats. Exploiting this internal conflict,
Corinth launches a challenge to Spartan domination of the Peloponnesian
League, while across the Aegean Sea the Greek cities of Ionia are in
rebellion against Persia and pleading for Spartan aid.
King Cleomenes’ youngest half-brother Leonidas has only just
attained citizenship at age 21. He has no reason to expect
that this revolt will shape his destiny or bring him to a fateful
confrontation that will make his name echo through the
millennia as one of the West’s greatest heroes. At
21 Leonidas is just an ordinary ranker in the Spartan army, less
interested in high politics than in putting his private life in
order. He needs to find reliable tenants to restore
his ruined estate, and – most important – to find
the right woman to be his bride. Meanwhile, his
niece Gorgo is growing up. Not particularly pretty, she is nevertheless
precocious and courageous – qualities that get her into
trouble more than once. This is the story of both Leonidas
and Gorgo in the years before Leonidas becomes king of Sparta, and
before the first Persian invasion of Greece sets Leonidas on the road
to Thermopylae.