Too much good about this, but I can’t ignore the bad. The good is the author was a former infantry man (82d AB) and his perspective on Hoplite combat in general and Marathon in particular were spot on. The secret is the basic infantryman doesn’t change that much from one era to the next, weapons and tech do, but the grunt doesn’t. A lot of Military History is written by lifelong civilians. They do their research but they don’t understand the context. The either accept it uncritically or reject it, rather than evaluate it from the perspective of what is actually plausible, possible and likely. The parts dealing with the actual hoplite kit, training, and battle I found myself going back and re-listening too, 3x, and parts 4 or 5x.
The bad and ugly is trying to slap a bunch of lipstick on the Spartans and make them out as the key to Greek resistance of Persia and they weren’t. They were small minded, duplicitous, jealous of Athens. By the authors own research, and everybody else’s, the Athenians were up to their eyeballs supporting the Ionians in their Rebellion against the Great King. in fact while describing the Athenian hoplite, he maintains the superiority of the Spartans, even though he states the Athenians had been actively campaigning for the previous 20 years all over the Eastern Med, in all kinds of terrain, weather, naval, amphibious and land, while the Spartans seldom campaigned more than a few days march from Sparta, always concerned about the helots revolting–and taking casualties that were irreplacable. The fact that the Athenians at Marathon was an experienced veteran army, victorious in 3 major campaigns and a host of skirmishes and “police” actions, even facing down a Spartan army in one encounter that did not result in a battle. The first half of the book was mostly about Sparta and why they acted the way they did, and why it was up to the Athenians to shoulder the burden of resistance. Maybe I was misinterpreting the author’s argument and the Spartans contribution was staying out of the lead up, because they would have inevitably screwed the pooch. I dunno. I will definitely re-listen to the second half of the book, as the description of the training of the Athenians, the events precipitating Marathon, the campaign and the interpretation of the battle made more sense than anything I have read on the subject, but it really is a contrast with the first half.
The narration was engaging, the narrator was comfortable with names, places and equipment, no mispronunciation’s or confusion. He was very good, a keeper.