 Undefeated during his career as a general and admiral, Alcibiades’ life played itself out like an epic tragedy with the tensions between his genius and the hubris that was his ultimate downfall.The political shifts that occurred during the war, manifesting through partisan public opinion, act almost to make Athens herself a character in the novel.While most of the dialogue is Pressfield's own creation, for long speeches and character development he used many ancient sources, particularly adapting quotes appearing in Thucydides in the "History of the Peloponnesian War" and to a lesser extent several of the Socratic Dialogues of Plato.