The falcon of Sparta
(Book)

In an ancient Persian empire torn by civil war, the young soldier Xenophon leads his decimated Spartan army in a confrontation against the legendary warriors of Artaxerxes II.

401 BC. The Persian king Artaxerxes rules an empire stretching from the Aegean to northern India. As many as fifty million people are his subjects. His rule is absolute. Yet battles can be won-- or lost-- with a single blow. Princes fall. And when the dust of civil war settles, the Spartans are left stranded in the heart of an enemy's empire, without support, without food, and without water. It falls to young soldier Xenophon to lead the survivors against the Persian warriors. -- adapted from jacket.