Throughout history, commemorated characters are remembered for changing and defending their worlds, or conquering others; but, in truth, none accomplished these momentous feats alone. Behind each memorable leader there are warriors, soldiers upon whose blood the ultimate ruler’s power is forged. Memnon of Rhodes was just such a man.

An elderly, sickly woman calls Ariston of Lindos, a writer, to her bedside to share with him the intricate details of the life of Memnon of Rhodes, to entrust the tale to Ariston’s safe keeping before she dies and the story dies with her.

In 357 BCE (Before Common Era, an expression becoming popular with non-secular historians to articulate years equal to those previously stated as BC, Before Christ), Memnon, a Greek born Persian aristocrat, is the son of Timocrates, an influential sophist and politician, a crusader for democracy. His brother Mentor is a valiant warrior, a soldier of great repute. Timocrates longs for Memnon to join him in the political arena while he himself longs for the glory of the battlefield beside his brother. As the struggle between Democrat and oligarch bursts out of the Assembly and onto the streets in a violent uprising, Memnon is forced into the role of solider as he tries to save his father. From that moment on, his life as a warrior is sealed.

The story follows the life of Memnon, all his victories and defeats, his loves and heart breaks. It chronicles his evolution from an inexperienced soldier to a military master strategist and the commander of the forces for the whole of western Asia, until he faces perhaps the most famous of all historical characters of the ancient world, Alexander the Great.

Author Scott Oden, whose first novel Men of Bronze received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was nominated for the Quills Award for best new author, has taken a historical figure, one previously only mentioned in passing, and fleshed him out after an abundance of research. He has taken the skeleton of Memnon of Rhodes found in the many books listed in this work’s extensive bibliography, and imposed a conjectured history of the man within this finely written, fiction recounting. The factual content in Memnon is, at times, overwhelming; without previous knowledge of the period and its intricacies, it is difficult to follow and keep track of the wealth of names, places, weapons, wardrobe and allegiances frequently referred to. The narrative’s stream of consciousness is interrupted by the recurrent stumbles over the unknown and unexplained.

This period in history is a time when men entered into war with the same casualness as a day’s outing, when violence was the favored pastime of the entire region. The author’s great strength, besides his research, lies in his keen ability to bring this long dead world alive upon the page, most especially in the details of battle maneuvers and the descriptive recounting of each battle:

“Iron ripped through bronze and flesh, each true strike marked by a rooster-tail of bright blood. The ground underfoot, churned and saturated with bodily fluids, became reeking mud that clung to a man’s scandals.”

Lovers of this period, of the military tactics, violence, lives and times of this world, will be hard pressed to find a more entertaining and enriching read.

Donna Russo Morin
© May 2006