The Spartans: An Epic History [Hardcover]

Send the SAS to pick flowers and the Marines to knit mittens, because the Spartans could have 'em for breakfast. In The Spartans: An Epic History, the book of the Channel 4 series, Paul Cartledge paints a vivid picture of one of the most extreme civilisations ever known--one whose ethos married the highest levels of societal and philosophical advancement with the most repressive and warlike of regimes. These ancient Greeks lived, breathed and slept "hard". They also happened to influence much of subsequent Western civilisation.

The perfect warriors, they lived to fight, and when they weren't fighting, they were training to fight. Their male children were brutally raised, and weak or deformed infants were mercilessly cast from cliff tops. Yet they were unusually egalitarian in their treatment of women, and embraced an intensely partisan social ethic. They enslaved much of the rest of Greece, yet provided the spark for Athenian Democracy. It is this apparently contradictory duality that continues to fascinate and that has since engendered concepts as diverse as Hitler's system of negative eugenics and Thomas More's notion of Utopia.

The Spartans, though accessible, is an accomplished academic work--you'd hardly expect anything else, Cartledge having already written 20 books on the subject. But without the window dressing of the TV show's stunning Grecian locations and its thinking-man's eye-candy presenter Bettany Hughes, this can seem a little dry--anyone expecting the latest glossy picture-filled Time Team-style coffee-table book is likely to be disappointed. If you're partial to a bit of accessible erudition, however, then it would be foolish to look this gift horse in the mouth. --Paul Eisinger

The recent UK television series The Spartans has revived the interest in this exceptional race of warrior heroes, whose very name has passed into our lexicon as a synonym for toughness and self-sacrifice. Paul Cartledge's accompanying book is less populist than the television series, and none the worse for that: although firmly based on translations from ancient texts, it is made more accessible for the lay reader by the potted biographies of individual Spartan men and women which are interspersed throughout its pages. We experience the drama of the battle of Thermopylae and the devastating impact of the earthquake that struck Sparta town, followed by a revolt of the Helot slaves that was to continue for four years. In addition to famous leaders such as Lysander and Pausanias, we learn something of how life was lived by the famously independent and wayward Spartan women, including the fact that Spartan girls were often educated to the same standard as their brothers, and took part in athletics competitions, unlike their Athenian counterparts. In fact, throughout the book, Cartledge argues that, although we revere the Athenians, with their culture, arts and democratic ideals, as the founders of Western civilization, the Spartans are equally our ancestors. The book, illustrated with a selection of photographs of artefacts, covers the period from 480 to 360 BC, ending with the decline and fall which seems to be the inevitable fate of every great empire, and satisfyingly answers the question of why we are still so gripped by the myth of Sparta. (Kirkus UK)

A lucid, literate history of a model society-though whether a model of good or evil remains a subject of debate. Tucked among the nearly impenetrable mountains of southern Greece, Sparta was less an empire or kingdom than an alliance of small, unostentatious villages. Its leaders, most famously Lycurgus ("wolf-worker"), whom Cartledge (Classics/Cambridge Univ.) memorably reckons to have been a cross between George Washington and Pol Pot, shunned the thought that these settlements should hide behind tall walls and acropolises, in the manner of other Greeks; instead, its warriors and its topography would keep it safe. And so it was for nearly 300 years, until first a threatened invasion on the part of the Persian empire gave insular Sparta a key role in Western history; it was then, at the close of the fifth century b.c., that Sparta's famed 300 fighters held off the invaders at Thermopylae. (The story, Cartledge notes wryly, will soon be coming to a theater near you, "with stars of the stature or at any rate the cost of George Clooney and Bruce Willis said to be running to play [the Spartan hero Leonidas].") Cartledge considers the Spartan defense of Thermopylae to have been an event more important to European, and even English, history than the Battle of Hastings. The Peloponnesian War, he allows, was perhaps of less importance, though it remade the Greek world following Sparta's defeat of Athens. Though admiring of Spartan accomplishments and the bravery of its warrior heroes, Cartledge takes pains to note the dark side of Spartan life: a martial society whose privileged youth took pleasure in hunting and killing slaves, whose well-organized secret police used murder and terror to keep the people in line. So much for utopia-though, as Cartledge notes, Sparta was the real-life model for Thomas More's vision of a virtuous and virile world. Chocked with learning lightly worn, and a pleasure for anyone interested in the ancient world. (Kirkus Reviews)