Sicily, 412 BC: the infinite duel between a man and a superpower begins. The man is Dionysius 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. His rage and disdain foment three ironclad convictions in the young man: democracies are inefficient, the Carthaginians are mortal enemies of Hellenism and must be uprooted from Sicily, and no one but he is capable of achieving such an endeavour.
Dionysius dreams of transforming Sicily into a Greek island. And to achieve total control over the economic and military resources of his city her 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 of 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, the beautiful Arete. He fought five wars and dozens of battles against the Carthaginians. He mercilessly struck down countless enemies and a good number of friends, finally managing to create a state that extended all the way to the northern end of the Adriatic.
But who was Dionysius? The ruthless, egocentric monster described by his detractors, or an intellectual capable of feats far ahead of his time? Historians have condemned him, but they have not denied his greatness. In Tyrant, Valerio Massimo Manfredi, the bestselling author of the ‘Alexander’ trilogy and Spartan, has recreated a memorable protagonist full of Homeric energy and Machiavellian rationality.