FAREWELL, GREAT KING

by Jill Paton Walsh ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1972

Admirable is the one word that comes to mind concerning this vivification of the 5th century B.C. Athenian statesman and naval tactician, Themistokles. Ms. Walsh manages to give the time and events both solidity and continuity, although Athenian politics seen through the eyes of a prime mover, with no attempt at contemporary relevance, has no longer much emotive impact. Themistokles, as she sees him, is a consummate political animal, devoted from youth on to the welfare -- and very existence -- of Athens. Within the context of attacks by the huge Persian forces, internecine warfare among the Greek states, a brief Panhellenic movement, and shifting alliances within the Athenian Counsel -- it was Themistokles who anticipated rifts and productive alliances, who urged war preparations in times of peace, and suggested at the last a pact with the Persians which brought about his final exile. His chief enemy in Athens had been the statesman and general Aristides; Themistokles, who never lost his love for him, opposes this somewhat sententious Brutus as an unvindictive pragmatist. The narrative takes the form of a suicide letter to the ""Great King,"" the Persian Artaxerxes, and finally Themistokles recounts a recurring nightmare of the terrible death of a Spartan friend: ""I wake sometimes. . . seeing a starved man crawling endlessly at the angle of the wall and floor. This is the fate that waits for men who lead the Greeks to victory."" In an author's note, Ms. Walsh declares this to be a ""work not of scholarship but of imagination,"" but the scholarship is there (she gives due credit, however, to A. R. Burns' Persia and the Greeks) unobtrusively supporting convincing portraiture and a clear-eyed arrangement of ancient events. This is Ms. Walsh's first adult novel.

Pub Date: July 11, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION