Tyrant

Valerio Massimo Manfredi's Tyrant starts in Sicily 412 BC: the infinite duel between a man and a superpower begins. The man is Dionysius, who has just made himself Tyrant of Syracuse. The superpower Carthage, mercantile megalopolis and mistress of the seas.

Over the next eight years, Dionysius' brutal military conquests will strike down countless enemies and many friends to make Syracuse the most powerful Greek city west of mainland Greece. He builds the largest army of antiquity and invents horrific war machines to use against the Carthaginians, who he will fight in five wars.

But who was Dionysius? Historians have condemned him as one of the most ruthless, egocentric despots. But he was also patron of the arts, a dramatist, poet and tender lover.

“Remarkable . . . one of life's unalloyed pleasures: praise for Valerio Massimo Manfredi”

New York Times

Dr. Valerio Massimo Manfredi is an Italian historian, archaeologist, and journalist. The professor of archaeology in the "Luigi Bocconi" University in Milan and a familiar face on European television, he has published a number of scientific articles and essays as well as thirteen novels, including the "Alexander" trilogy and "The Last Legion. Alexander" was published in thirty-six languages in fifty-five countries and was sold for a major film production in the U.S., and "The Last Legion" is soon to be a major motion picture starring Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley. Dr. Manfredi is married with t

Sicily, 412 BC: the infinite duel between a man and a superpower begins. The man is Dionysius, who has just made himself Tyrant of Syracuse. The superpower is Carthage, mercantile megalopolis and mistress of the seas.Dionysius, twenty years old and a fearless combatant of the army of Syracuse, is forced to witness the horrifying massacre of Selinus - a splendid Greek city on the edge of the Carthaginian provinces - which he attributes to the fatal indecision of the democratic government. From that moment, a rage is born within this young man that will change the course of history.Dionysius dreams of transforming Sicily into a Greek island. To achieve total control over the economic and military resources of his city he is willing to condemn himself in the eyes of history for centuries to come: to be eternally branded as the Tyrant.Thus begins the adventure of a man who built the largest army in antiquity and invented dreadful war machines; the adventure of a man who was also a dramatist, a statesman, a poet and a lover, tied for all his life to the memory of his unfortunate first love.

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