The Spartans
The World of the WarriorHeroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse

"Thus, one not insignificant reason why we today should care who the ancient Spartans were, is that they played a key role - some might say the key role - in defending Greece and so preserving from foreign and alien conquest a form of culture or civilisation that constitutes one of the chief roots o......more

This is an excellent book about The Spartans. Once you have finished, you will understand fully what the adjective spartan should mean. They were physically and mentally hard and never took a backwards step, at least until the Battle of Leuctra in 371BC. There are some amusing anecdotes such as the......more

The classic, definitive work on the subject, and well-deserving of the title. Cartledge is open-eyed and tracking steadily with what the evidence tells us of the Spartans, deftly sidestepping the enormous social pressure toward hagiography that has so colored all discussion of Spartan society since......more

Paul Cartledge describes this work as his first attempt to write a “properly general” history of Sparta. It would not be wholly inaccurate to describe his style as, on the one hand, too erudite to be considered truly popular, yet on the other hand, too informal to be truly academic. He lands, then,......more

I just finished 281 pages that detail the birth and death of Sparta. My mind is reeling. The book was dense with historical information, centered on war, but surprisingly offering quite a lot of cultural insight through the inclusion of anecdotes and sayings attributed to various Spartans. Now, I ha......more