Lords of the Sea brings together the impressive modern scholarly knowledge of ancient Athens Its narrative relies on ancient literature (the histories, plays, speeches, poetry, inscriptions), the latest archaeological discoveries (bronze rams, ship houses and docks, naval monuments), first-hand study of every important theatre of war, and insight into a society that was one of the few in history to grant extreme sexual license to free adult males Famous names, such as Themistocles, Pericles, Socrates, the treacherous Alcibiades, Thucydides, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato and Aristotle, appear in vividly-drawn portraits as the Athenians themselves would have seen and judged them at the time The dramatic rise, decline and fall of ancient Athens is much more than a gripping historical tale Lords of the Sea shows that it is one of the first struggles of everything that makes the human race potentially great