Democracy

Democracy opens in Athens in 490 BC, on the moonless eve of the great Battle of Marathon. The hero of the story, Leander, is trying to rouse his comrades for the morrow’s battle against a far mightier enemy. Leander begins to recount his own life story and personal struggles, bearing direct witness to the evils of the old tyrannical regimes and to the birth of a new political system. The story that emerges, of the death of the gods and the tortuous birth of democracy, is crammed with extraordinary characters, including the mysterious Cleisthenes, widely considered the ‘father’ of democracy, Athena, the patron goddess of Athens and Nefert, the old Egyptian slave woman.