The Spartans: An Epic History

by Paul Cartledge

We should care about the Spartans, Cartledge argues, because they fought against all the odds to preserve the roots of our own civilisation and were just as much our ancestors as the Athenians. This general history of the Spartans accompanies a recent television series and reflects current, renewed archaeological and historical interest into this race of `warrior-heroes'. Cartledge draws on archaeological and literary evidence to examine the achievements of three generations of Spartans between 480 to 360 BC. He also examines the privileges enjoyed by Spartan women, the peculiarities of Spartan childhood and homelife and the factors that turned them into a feared fighting force. The narrative is interspersed with `snapshot' biographies of particular men and women.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Greece, Ancient, Military Fiction, Classics

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 8, 2002

About the author

Paul Anthony Cartledge is the 1st A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University, having previously held a personal chair in Greek History at Cambridge. He was educated at St Paul's School & New College, Oxford where he took his 1st degree & completed his doctoral thesis in Spartan archaeology in 1975 under Prof. Sir John Boardman. After a period at the University of Warwick he moved in 10/79 to Cambridge University where he's a fellow of Clare College.
He's a world expert on Athens & Sparta in the Classical Age & has been described as a Laconophile. He was chief historical consultant for the BBC TV series The Greeks & the Channel 4 series The Spartans, presented by Bettany Hughes. He's also a holder of the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour & an Honorary Citizen of modern Sparta. Besides the Leventis Professorship, he holds a visiting Global Distinguished Professorship at New York University, funded by the Greek Parliament.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Once upon a time, long ago actual last Saturday and far away I had a fancy to read about the French revolution, popped into an Oxfam bookshop, looked about at what they had and came out with this for two pounds and forty-nine pence, having read it, I feel it will return there shortly.

Wandering idly back since I have never lived in a bookshop or a library I wondered about left-handed Spartans, the ancient Greeks were known for their hoplite mode of fighting in close ranks were each man wore a large round shield strapped to his left arm and carried a spear in his right hand, the idea being that you could protect the right side of your body by nudging to the right of your neighbour and sheltering behind the side of his shield. Typically their armies were divided into a left, centre and right and the tendency for every-man to move rightwards meant that in battle the right flank of one army would defeat the left flank of the opposing army while the centres would clash irritably. This continued for hundreds of years apparently until the Thebians developed a cunning new deployment of a super strong left flank and so defeated their opponents on both the left and the right leaving the enemy centre feeling very lonely and homesick. This was highly efficient and sped up battles considerably, however shortly afterwards the Macedonians swept down from the north with a different innovation - a super long spear which enabled them to triumph over all opponents, which just goes to show that ideas are like buses, you wait around for centuries and then three come one after the other, three because the Romans were just across the sea biding their time to march in with a new kind of flexible tactical deployment which enabled them to crush all before them. But I am digressing from my digression which was that if you were left-handed you were pretty much buggered and not just on account of the homoerotic socialisation into adult society, apparently tools from the stone age are fairly evenly divided between being suitable for left or right handed use but hop forward in time and the familiar dominance of right-handedness is apparent creating the mystery of the revolution of the right hand, so if you were a left handed Spartan were you just a bit sub-Spartan, or was it a case of 'I'm sorry lad, but you're just not cut out for the modern military, I hear that in Athens they want rowers'. Cartledge doesn't address himself to the left-handed conundrum, but it was only an idle thought.

Cartledge, I was familiar with from In our Time an ongoing radio series on which he spoke (and sometimes still speaks) on various classical themes, and his warm friendly, mildly witty approach does translate into the book as does a conversational manner which unfortunately makes for a book that is a bit rambling and noticeably repetitive.

Naturally my second thought was along the lines of 'oi, you, why'd jer write this book then?', I had to wait until the appendix to find out that Cartledge sees his job as haute vulgarisation which in English sounds slightly less demeaning as 'popularisation' (p.255). I am divided as to whether he is successful or not, my initial thought was no, this is more of a second book, not the kind of thing a total new-comer to the subject could run away with and become entranced by, however after a night's sleep and morning coffee I feel it is more in the ok but not inspiring category, sub-Spartan for sure.

I very much enjoyed the chapter on Sparta in Early Greece, but that took the approach of historical sociology or archaeological anthropology - who were the Spartans, what were the qualities of their culture, Cartledge instead wants to take a more historical approach running from Helen of Troy ( who came from Sparta and curiously became a cult figure there curiously I think because the only two things we know about her was that she was very beautiful and that her adultery led to a ten year war, not automatically the grounds for becoming a cult figure I would have thought) through to the Roman period. He does this through a series of mini-biographies, principally of the Spartan kings, on the plus side I suppose there is a focus on famous names and mighty battles, on the downside a tendency to repeat the same information once within about about 600 words as though the book was constructed like a jigsaw puzzle out of dozens of free-standing pieces with no view to the overall picture.

For me it felt as though he succeeded in neither addressing the interesting questions about the lasting appeal of Sparta in the European imagination( Wanderer kommst du nach Spa..., or Eugenics, Spartan lifestyle and exercise) whether Spartan society was as purposive as it seems or if this is simply an effect of the distorting gaze of the admiration of our sources, several of whom found Sparta distinctly fascinating either because they approved (Xenophon) or were horrified (Aristotle on account of women being in charge relative to their position elsewhere, which is rather like a commentator from Saudi Arabia being shocked by the social dominance of women in the Yemen, or that Helen the most famous adulterous woman in Europe became the cult figure of a culture in which women's lives were severely restricted (if liberal and free by ancient Greek standards) to being mighty mothers with short cropped hair, it would be cut for their wedding and kept short there-after with wondrous wombs to produce compulsive killers and certain soldiers and had no freedom to choose their own husbands let alone run off with other men even if their husbands were red-haired and the other man was a pretty boy from Troy, although apparently the good Spartan was expected to share his wife with other Spartan men if required, nor in being a rollicking lowest common denominator story of 'gather round while I tell you about the roughest-toughest, longest-haired fighters that ever fought'. The aforementioned chapter in Early Greece seemed to me to cover more ground in less than twenty pages that Cartledge does in almost three hundred, but then Cartledge does get the opportunity to repeat himself a few times and the font size in Early Greece is smaller.

Cartledge only touches on the beginning of Sparta as a major tourist destination in the ancient world (p.237), itself a curious event since their food, the infamous black bean soup, was meant to be appallingly functional something that Cartledge says that did catch my attention was that the Spartans had no cults of Demeter nor Dionysus at least not on a comparable scale to other Greek cities, this he puts down to agriculture and viticulture being entirely in the domain of the slave Helots whose enforced servitude made the leisured adulthood of Spartans possible, the Helots also did the cooking, building and breast feeding, adult Spartans were only expect to fight and breed but even this last proved too much for them despite the wife swapping and they more or less died out over time , nor were the ancient Spartans famous for their drink and party scene, however they were famously weird and the Romans in particular wanted to experience that oddness vicariously, and so aspects of Spartan life were redeveloped in the Roman period as a kind of theatre, Spartan boys were back in the day brought up in militarised boarding schools and systematically underfed to oblige them to steal food this was felt to be a useful life skill for future soldiers , ie foraging, traditionally they attempted to steal food from the offerings made at a temple of Artemis their traditional military education apparently didn't promote initiative or inventiveness nor cunning, these were guarded by older boys who would flog any youngster that they caught. This was re-enacted for Roman era tourists, fortunately or unfortunately depending on what you thought you had paid to view, the participants would sometimes get over involved in their role-play and a younger boy would get beaten to death, most of the architectural remains of Sparta come from this era - to cater for the demands of the tourist era, back in the day when the Spartans were the archetypal master race as Thucycides imagined the physical remains of their culture would be too unimpressive for any one to believe how militarily and politically dominant they had been .

More curiously and perhaps of great interest to the state of Israel, a High Priest of Jerusalem wrote to the Spartans this was the period when Jewish culture was fascinated by Greek culture, so Cartledge tells us twice interestingly he only ever repeats himself twice, perhaps an educators trick, requesting their assistance in war against the Seleucids on the basis of their common ancestry, allowing perhaps in future for the suburbs of Tel Aviv to stretch into the Peloponnese why he thought they were related Cartledge doesn't say, though since the Romans were Trojans, one might say why not, presumably the assumption was that Hercules and Samson were the same person , despite having had ever so slightly different adventures in which case despite some superficial differences the Jews were Spartans and the Spartans Jewish, in which case Origen's comparison of Jesus to King Leonidas was quite reasonable .

I have a desire to end this review with anecdotes about the Sybarites and Pythagoras and dancing horses, but they don't really tie in the book at all, so I won't.

[Nelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a bad book. That doesn't change the fact that Cartledge is an eminent authority on Sparta and uniquely well-qualified from a research perspective to write this book. The demands of academic history, however, are not the same as those for a book produced for general consumption. This volume fails on at least three counts. First, tone. Were this a text for scholars, Cartledge would be well within his rights to write in the querulous, self-defensive tone he sometimes takes here. A general history presents settled matters to an intelligent but not necessarily specialist audience. Such a readership is not interested in the arcana of specialist debates over issues; they just want the facts, such as they are. If the facts are in dispute, a frank explanation and a clear position taken are what general history requires. Cartledge can't forgo playing swift rounds of 'cover my ass' on specialist debates that the general reader doesn't know and certainly can't be brought to care about. Such defensive gestures, if they were deemed truly necessary, should have been relegated to end notes or a more expansive set of appendices. Second, the book fails in terms of structure. A general history ought to tell an interesting story well. Given the resuscitation of interest in Sparta, in no small part because of films like _The 300_ but also because of a general fascination with the topic in the West, Cartledge doesn't have to work hard to make his choice of topic exciting. All he really has to do is get out of the way and tell the story clearly. If he can add new facts to well-worn stories (like that of Thermopylae) so much the better. The organization of this particular narrative is a disaster. The history of Sparta is divided into three periods (roughly): everything up to Thermopylae, the period of Spartan hegemony through the Peloponnesian war, and the long dissolution thereafter under the Macedonians and finally the Romans. Nothing wrong with that in principle. But the story is never told in anything like a straightforward manner. Instead, Cartledge loops forward and backward in time, dipping like a swallow into any topic that strikes him as important from moment to moment, without conveying to the reader the purpose of the digressions. One would be hard pressed from this volume to put together a coherent account of the rise, dominion and fall of Sparta. Worse, Cartledge sees fit to lard his general narrative with potted histories (mostly taken from Plutarch or Xenophon or other ancient sources) of characters he deems important. Most of the mini-biographies add little to the source material. They interrupt the flow of the overall narrative and very often repeat information conveyed two or more times elsewhere in the book. Sometimes these mini-bios are built on nothing more than a single line of reported dialogue--very flimsy scaffolding to base a 'biography' on, particularly when the larger purpose of the biography in the overall narrative isn't clear to begin with. Thirdly, this fails at the level of the sentence and paragraph. Cartledge's looping organizational style filters down to the level of the sentence, where he frequently burdens forthright statements with one qualifying clause after another. His editors have badly let him down, at times allowing him to produce sentences that are barely grammatical, with unclear referents. At other times the text is repetitive. We learn twice in two paragraphs that Augustus was known as Octavian, for instance. All of this adds up to a maddening volume. Set pieces that should have been gems in the crown of this story (the heroic defense at Thermopylae) lose luster in Cartledge's infuriating prose style. Mostly this is just kind of ineffective stuff which is depressing. But the final chapter, on hunting, turns into a nasty little set piece designed to take Roger Scruton out to the shed for daring to compare foxhunting to Spartan boar-hunting. I hold no brief for foxhunting, but surely Scruton is allowed to put the two things together if he wishes (despite his snarkiness, Cartledge provides no compelling reason why the two things can't be at least contrasted). Cartledge's final chapter thus leaves a nasty taste after a largely unedifying slog through history. Not recommended at all.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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 of our own Western civilisation." (9)

"The Spartan myth was persuasively labelled a 'mirage'... because the relation between the myth and the reality was and is sometimes shard to perceive without distortion." (36)

Ancient Sparta is a time and a place shrouded in both myth and misplaced authenticity but at the same time a center of self-identity and almost spirituality, even to people from non-Greek cultures. Noted Greek historian Paul Cartledge attempts here in this book to lend some much needed insight to the subject, offering a brief overview of what makes Sparta in and of itself Sparta whilst helping to dispel many sorts of misinformation or misperception of it.

Cartledge covers much ground in this book, albeit shortly, with many names, dates, places, and important happenings, such as Leonidas at Thermopylae, the unique role of Spartan women, religion in general, and Sparta's complex role in and outside of the Greek territories. This book shouldn't be taken as an introductory course to Sparta, as it's much to easy to get "lost in the weeds" without a general knowledge of Ancient Greece as a whole. Nor is it something for a student who already has a great grasp of Sparta. But to those with a passion for the subject that find their understanding of the topic lacking, there is a reward to turning it's pages.

[Julian Worker · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 Spartans regarding bows and arrows as effeminate as too were city walls. The Spartans were late for the Battle of Marathon for religious reasons, but did turn up in time to admire the handiwork of their Athenian neighbours.
Spartan society was set up so that all people were involved in the improvement and betterment of the city state. In part, the book focuses on certain Spartan heroes and how they helped Sparta militarily and diplomatically as well as cataloguing all the Spartan victories and defeats, some of them more famous than others. There's not too much detail of the battles but you gain an appreciation of how important the battles were, especially Thermopylae, even though the Spartan were beaten on that occasion, largely due to betrayal.

[Abigail · Rating 2 out of 5]

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, in the unfortunate territory of patronizing or condescending to the reader, sounding as though he’s aping an academic style when in fact the formal loquacity is likely more natural to him and his attempt to write for the masses is actually where he, as they say, misses the mark.

Besides the insufferable tone and overabundance of adverbs and adjectives, what really bothered me about this book was his inability to tell a story, any story in the book, in chronological order. Part of the condescension comes from his assumption that we know all the names, dates and places he tosses around as well as he does, which is exactly what you would assume in academic writing and exactly the opposite of popular writing. It’s doubly unfortunate since he probably knows more about the ancient Spartans than anyone else in the English-speaking world right now, and that knowledge won’t help anyone if it’s all locked up in his disobliging prose.

I have loved Spartan history since I first heard the story of the 300. There is much more of Sparta than Thermopylae to find interesting, yet Cartledge unfortunately manages to make it both dull and confusing. He gets 2 stars because at least all the useful information is in there somewhere.

[Myke Cole · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 Herodotus, and certainly since 300. Cartledge deals with the Spartans *fairly*, not shying away from their shortcomings and also not denying the few historical moments when they truly achieved the extraordinary.

The book’s one failing is that he assumes a degree of initiation on the part of the reader, and novices without the benefit of a timeline in their head will frequently be lost as Cartledge jumps around the timeline, chasing whatever point he is trying to make. This is one to read *after* you’ve gotten a solid basis in survey-level work covering Greek history from 800-300 BC. Otherwise, make sure you have a timeline to hand you can reference or you’re going to get lost.

Either way - highly recommended.

[Lili Kyurkchiyska · Rating 3 out of 5]

Тази книга не претендира за изчерпателност. Тя е и добро въведение (но не за пълни лаици), и връщане към базовите факти за тези биещи на очи древни елини - лакедемонците. Те са точно това, което легендата гласи и точно противното на това, което легендата гласи. А легендата е жива и до днес...

[Evan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such a disappointing book. Having recently read Tom Holland's excellent "Persian Fire" I was in the mood for some extra detail on a longer period of Spartan history but this book sadly wasn't able to provide it.
Straight from the very long and rambling introduction I was a bit worried. I don't know what Paul Cartledge thinks an introduction is actually for but in my experience it's not to give a sort of précis of the entire book you're about to read, going through pretty much every major event, often with levels of detail that leave you wondering what the point of the actual chapters will be. Of course, this leads to a tremendous amount of repetition of facts in the main bulk of the book that you've already read in the introduction, but this is as of nothing compared to the repetition delivered by his "box out" biographies.
Again, I'm really not sure what Cartledge's grasp of what a book should be actually is. If he was putting together an illustrated coffee table style book on the Spartans (and many such tomes exist on periods of classical history) then he would be quite entitled to have the main flow of the text, and the main thrust of the history it contained, taking up most of each page while boxes could appear down the sides giving more information on various people being mentioned. However, what he does in this book, which is a standard text-driven publication, is to interrupt the narrative every time a new person is mentioned to give a biography of them. Seeing as it's impossible to have a box down the side in a normal text based book he instead has to just clump this right in the middle of what you're reading so that for three, four, maybe six, seven or eight pages you have to take a sidestep and read this biography.
The problem with this is that you end up with endless repetition. The reason for this is that for many of the people (and he presents a *lot* of biographies within the book) we don't know a lot about them until they actually start achieving things. Their early lives are almost always largely unknown and it is by their deeds that we remember them from the histories of people like Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon. So what Cartledge does is to break up the narrative with a biography which then tells you everything that person did, often in quite a lot of detail and very often going decades into the future. Once you return to the narrative he then proceeds to tell you all the same things in only slightly greater detail that you've just read, often with the exact same phrasing!
What was he thinking? Has he ever read a book himself where this happens? Does he think that's normal? And, more to the point, what on earth was the editor thinking of? Did she just make sure there were no spelling mistakes and think she'd done her job? How can she have let all the endless repetition through and think it was okay. Some stories are told not just twice, but three times throughout the book, and not by saying, "as we saw earlier", but each time presented as if being told for the first time. And he keeps it right up to the very end with the penultimate paragraph presenting us with information he's already told us before.
All this is frustrating enough but there are many other failings with the book. Handy maps would have given a lot of context to events throughout the book but instead we get just two right at the front which are somewhat less than useless. They look as if they've been photocopied from some ancient school textbook and then reduced to about 25% of their true size so that it's virtually impossible to make out any of the writing on them.
There's a disappointing lack of detail to the early days of Sparta which is just not acceptable on a book about the history of Sparta and I found that I knew far, far more about Spartan society from Tom Holland's overview in the early chapters of "Persian Fire" where Sparta was just one of three societies (the others being Athens and the Persians/Medes) that he was trying to cover. We then get something important like a chapter on Women and Religion plonked randomly down into the second half of the book when it should have been near the start, in the set-up as it were, and, of course, it was repeating much of what he'd already told us by that stage anyway.
The lack of detail continues to envelop, surprisingly, the Persian War - surely the most famous moment in Spartan history. It's understandable that Holland would go into greater detail in his book on this but there were many key stories told by Holland that are bafflingly left out by Cartledge. Even when it comes to the two authors giving motives to the people of this time Cartledge always falls up short with Holland giving reasons for events which sound truer and which are backed up with whatever evidence he can provide. For instance, Cartledge has the 300 who fought at Thermopylae as being a mere suicide squad. This doesn't make any sense at all. In a war which they'd been anticipating for years why would the Spartans send one of their kings and 300 elite fighters to just die if, as Cartledge suggests, they had given up all hope of winning the war? Surely they would just not bother going at all and then submit to the Persians when they finally came down the Pelopennese. Holland's argument appeals more to common sense. That the Spartans led by Leonidas were a holding force to keep the Persians at bay to buy time for the religious festival (preventing the deeply pious Spartans' attendance) to end and thus their entire force could turn to Thermopylae. The small force under Leonidas with some allies was a compromise between their religious obligations and the utter necessity of holding the pass at Thermopylae at all costs. The version presented by Cartledge makes no sense at all.
Of course, the book even manages to end disappointingly by having no real ending at all. You would think that a book on the history of Sparta would show what happened to the city state after its fall from grace. But, no. Cartledge tells us about the final major battles they lost but nothing after that at all. No comment on the devastating effect the loss of their helot slave cities would have had on their economy and society. No comment on the gradual disintegration of their authority and the complete irrelevance they became (just a few years later!) under Philip of Macedonia and his son Alexander. All we get is fleeting references in a few of the never-ending biographies which manage to extend events beyond what should surely have been the scope of the actual book.
All in all, the book is very surprisingly lacking in some key details and is often written in a rambling and waffling style. The endless retelling of the same stories and repeating of the same quotations lends you to think that the book just hasn't been properly edited at all. Sadly, it smacks of being of the standard of being self-published and that is a very bad reflection on Channel 4 Books and its editor. I'll continue my search for a good book on Spartan history elsewhere.

[Caleb Succo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the part of the book where it talks about the Lydians from Lydia. You see, Lydia is not a person but a place. Now in modern-day Turkey. Therefore, a person cannot possibly be named Lydia.

[Trisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 have to admit the details of war, dates and names and battlefields and allies and enemies and political hoopla and the such not seem to sort of flow through me (especially dates). These form only the foundation necessary for understanding the more sociological, the anthropological, the cultural insights of which I am much more interested. But I realize that you can't have one without the other for the historical facts of a time and a people are entirely driven by the ideological - or you could invert that relationship if you would like as well, very yin and yang the events and the beliefs. Well before I go off on a terrible tangent, I'll just say that this was a fact-filled but well-written and engrossing book.

[Viktoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cartledge does a fantastic job at just giving us the facts and really demystifying the legendary spartans. They are often portrayed as these heros and great warriors but most of that is just myth, they lost more than they won and always seemed to have some religious holiday anytime they were needed for war. At any rate its a wonderful read for those who want to learn about Spartan culture, which was interesting, despite its brutality.

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter of the book is interesting, but the author's writing style makes it a tedious read at times. It tends to read more like a tedious repetition of history that frequently does not bring the subject matter to life.

I have also posted my review on Goodreads, Amazon and my review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.

[Little Timmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A partial history of the Spartans told mostly through the telling of the history of the kings. An OK read but for some reason didn't really grab hold of my interest. Not recommended as their are better history books about the Spartans out there

[Linniegayl · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay. I give up on this one. I made it through just over 50% of the book and am bored. Perhaps it was a mistake trying to read this in audio. The author skips around in time so much that I got lost many times. And the lengthy introduction (with many things later repeated in the book) should have been a sign.

Clearly some people love this book, so it obviously works for others. For me, not so much.

[ExtraGravy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed most of this book. The history was interesting and I learned many things I didn't know about early Sparta. Those elements of the book left me happy and wishing there was more. The book itself though, felt poorly assembled, like three individually solid history research papers were mashed together into a book.... that is the only way I can make sense of the repetition between the three major internal divisions. I'm don't recommend this book unless you really want some decent coverage of early Sparta and cannot find it elsewhere.

NOTE: I enjoyed his book on Thebes much more than this one. The Thebes book felt more cohesive and in-depth.

[John David · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you’re an avid consumer of podcasts or documentaries about ancient Greece – especially Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” which he has been on numerous times - you’re no doubt familiar with Paul Cartledge’s breathless excitement. His passion is always apparent, but on hearing him, you quickly realize that he’s not the best popularizer - and “The Spartans” is certainly meant to be a popular treatment - of his subject.

I’m arguing with myself about whether I even want to mention what the book says, and I probably would if it said any of it well. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. I’m exceedingly generous with my time when it comes to giving a book several chances, but this was just a huge disappointment on so many levels. I’m just going to do something I almost never do and rant about why it was so bad.

Cartledge’s tone can verge on the defensive. Instead of laying out historical position where necessary, he often presents defenses of his pet interpretations of minor disputes and figures which always detract from what little narrative thread the book manages to maintain. Of course, these minor disputes mean nothing to the target audience, who is looking for a broad overview, not Cartledge’s granular, pet takes on ancient Spartan history. Laconic narrative jumps often bring him outside of the timeline he’s discussing and are sometimes fuel for his weirdly defensive asides.

I’m sure Cartledge excels when he’s talking to other archaeologists and historians, but this book is very much in need of a talented editor and, preferably, an author who is aware of what an audience wants from a book that claims to be a general introduction to the Spartan world. There’s no doubt that he can write books like this with his eyes closed - and it appears that he may have done exactly that. Was this just an attempt to capitalize off a public that was marginally curious to learn more after seeing films like “Troy” or “300” (even though they both came out shortly after Cartledge’s book was published, not before)? I can only guess. Whatever it is, it’s not good.

[Illiterate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bitty and somewhat repetitive. Lacks the analysis of academic history and the zip of narrative history.

[The Final Chapter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mid 3. The writer undoubtedly possesses great knowledge of their subject, but could have profited from more judicious editing of the material. Cartledge details how Sparta played a key role in defending Greece from foreign conquest, thereby preserving forms of culture which lie at the root of Western civilisation. The period covered by this work, 480BC to 360BC witnessed an intense rivalry with Athens, and the eventual fall of Sparta due to it overreaching itself after defeating its main rival for political hegemony on the Greek mainland. Despite serving as a role-model for More's Utopia, Sparta was a repressive and authoritarian society. Spartans claimed that their political order, like those of other Greek city-states,resulted from the vision of one man - Lycurgus. Historians have no accurate records to determine if he truly existed, or whether he was a composite of several individuals, or whether he was simply a mythological figure. What is apparent is that some 'Year Zero' event led to the introduction of a system of socialisation, named the 'agoge', where boys were removed from their families at the age of 7 to undertake years of military training in which the individual was subsumed into the 'pack' or 'herd'. This creation of a society of fighting men and constant combat readiness was essential given the fact that there was always the threat of disorder or open rebellion from the subject population of 'helots'. These were conquered and enslaved neighbouring communities whose impact economically was to free Spartans from the woes of land hunger which afflicted their rivals and which forced overseas colonisation. Though a hereditary kingship was left in place, Sparta profited from a dual monarchy, which had no independent law-making powers. Such responsibility lay with the ruling council or 'Gerousia', consisting of 30 aristocratic members, including both kings. Only laws and decisions decided by this body were disseminated down to the 'Damos' or assembly of all Spartan warriors. The ruling council also acted as supreme court, capable of putting one of the kings on trial. Yet, the chief executive power lay jointly between the kings and the 'Ephors' - five annually selected officials who ensured the former respected the laws. Thus, when the monarchy exercised their prerogative powers of military command, two of the 'ephors' would accompany them on expedition, reporting back on their performance. Aside from his political legacy, Lycurgus was also credited with imbibing Spartan society with the psychology of absolute loyalty to the state, no better illustrated than by the creation of the 'Crypteia' or secret police, the principal aim of which was espionage on the subject 'helots' and murder of any reactionary elements arising within them. The author also provides great detail on the role of women in Spartan society. Though they enjoyed access to education denied to their counterparts in other 'polis', could own land, and participated openly in sporting competition,they had no voice in the machinery of government. Yet, despite the fact that Sparta regarded their primary function as motherhood and did in no shape or form create a feminist utopia, Aritotle would reflect external contemporary opinion in crediting their influence as the prime factor behind Sparta's demise. Sparta's rise to prominence can be dated to the growth of the Peloponnesian League between 550-500BC. This was never an alliance of equal partners, but rather constituted commitment to undertake military action under Spartan command for any action the latter regarded as necessary, with no reciprocal commitment to the member-states from Sparta. The first notable incident whereby Spartan and Athenian paths cross was in 510 when a Spartan army unseated the tyrant Hippias from rule in Athens, which paved the way for Cleisthenes to put in place a package of political reforms which ushered in democracy. The reason behind this Spartan involvement lay with Cleisthenes' acumen in sweetening the oracle at Delphi by paying for the refurbishment of the principal temple, and thereby, whenever Sparta consulted the oracle their fortune depended on coming to the Athenians' aid. Yet, in pattern with the character of their future enmity,such popularist leanings in Athens met with Spartan diapproval, leading to their renewed intervention to send Cleisthenes and his allies into exile. The puppet regime they established so incensed the Athenian population that an uprising ensued to restore democracy. The next major chapter in Spartan-Athenian relations opened with their joint refusal to pay homage to Persian overtures for submission. Not only did Athens lend support to the Ionian revolt against Persian suzerainty, but Sparta murdered the heralds sent by King Darius, and issued warnings to him of Spartan retribution should he threaten the Greek mainland. However, the Spartans missed out on the glorious victory of David over Goliath achieved by Athens at Marathon, stating religious obsrvance of awaiting a full moon before setting out on expedition. Consequently, when news arrived of the amassing of a comprehensive land and naval force by Xerxes in 481, Sparta was determined to redeem itself and achieve military glory. As such, at an emergency meeting of the main city-states held in Corinth, it was agreed to jointly face the Persian threat under Spartan command. It is amazing to think that the lasting fame of the events at Thermopylae could have had such a different outcome, as Sparta and her allies were only able to field a holding force of 300 Spartan champions with a small contingent of allied forces. This was because the Spartans were once more celebrating a religious festival, while the allies were involved in the Olympic Games. Yet,the heroics displayed by Leonidas and his brothers-in-arms in the face of such insurmountable odds gave no better example of Sparta's military strength and valour. Indeed, such was the need for Spartan warriors to achieve military honour that of the two who couldnt fight that day due to illness the first would hang himself from shame, while the second would redeem himself through his virtual suicidal death in the front-line at Plataea the following year. The heroic defeat at Thermopylae served to galvanise Greek efforts, leading to a string of victories at sea and land. An interesting footnote is provided by Cartledge in the fate of the victorious Spartan commander at Plataea, Pausanias. Regent to the underage successor to Leonidas, Pausanias allowed the victory to go to his head, and when he was removed from command, he chose exile in Byzantium, and according to legend, sought and was promised the hand of Xerxes' daughter with a view to making himself satrap of all Greece. Yet, his recall to Sparta in disgrace in 469 would be on what was regarded as the far more serious charge of inciting revolt amongst the helots. Having attempted to escape his fate, Pausanius was walled up in the temple where he had sought sanctuary and starved to death. Conflict between Sparta and Athens was almost inevitable as they were incompatible political entities. Whereas Athens represented a democratic, individualistic, mercantile, and sea-based society, Sparta embodied an oligarchic, hierarchical, traditionalist, land-based one. Their rivalry intensified almost as soon as the Persian threat was removed with Sparta wishing to have no part in the Delian League's continued struggle against Persian interests, regarding this as an attempt by Athens to establish political hegemony. Worse for their relationship, Themistocles, architect of the naval victories at Salamis and Mycale, had decided that Sparta now constituted a greater threat than Persia, and though his voicing of such ideas led to his own ostracism in 470, he appeared in Argos, and the latter's history of rivalry with Sparta received new impetus. Nevertheless, it was an act in support of their former alliance which sowed the seeds for what became known as the Peloponnesian War. In the wake of a violent and devastating earthquake in 464, Sparta became wracked by open revolt from the 'Helots', which would last for four years, and Athens was among its allies who came to its support. The sending of a large Athenian force was largely down to the influence of the pro-Spartan Cimon, who had taken over naval command after Themistocles' removal, and who was at the height of his powers. However, increasingly alarmed at the risk of democratically-minded Athenian soldiers sowing unease among the subject population, the Spartans sent their Athenian allies packing and the die was cast. For their part, the Athenians were outraged by the suppression of fellow Greeks. For his role and eventual failure,, Cimon was discredited and exiled. In 458 the former allies fought a pitched battle at Tanagra, with Sparta enjoying a pyrrhic victory, and though peace ensued, it came as no surprise that after decades of 'cold war' stand-off, hostilities eventually broke out in 431.Troubled by the expanse of the Athenian imperial authority, Sparta wrongfully accused the Athenians of breaching the conditions of the truce and the Peloponnesian War started with misplaced high hopes on the part of the Spartans for a quick and decisive victory. Yet, it would end 27 years later and only due to the assistance of the Persians. As the author notes, the Spartans' tried and tested military tactics were null and void from the outset. Slaves to their former success of hoplite campaigns laying waste to the land around Athens, they did not appreciate that they could not starve the Athenians into subjugation nor force them to enter pitched battle as they had former enemies. Pericles, like his mentor Themistocles, had long foreseen that this common Spartan approach would end in failure as Athens was not dependent on domestic grain supplies, and was protected by its walls all the way to its port at Piraeus. As such, as long as Athens maintained its naval supremacy it could be replenished by access to the breadbasket of the Black Sea region. The war would prove savage and destructive, and in no way could Athenian strategy be summed up as defensive. In 425 they launched an invasion of Messenia, establishing a base camp in the heart of Spartan-controlled territory. Not only did this force Sparta to recall its troops, but also led to one of the most extraordinary incidents of the whole conflict. This surrounds the unheard-of spectacle of a strong Spartan force blockaded on a small island off the coast surrendered on mass rather than face being starved out. The Athenian invasion had other repercussions which would determine great shifts in Spartan policy, and would bring to the fore the next influential Spartan commander, Brasidas. Firstly, the invasion persuaded Sparta of the need to open a second front in the north, with Brasidas leading a campaign to destabilise the Athenian grain route. Secondly, given the cunning strategy of the Athenians to employ soldiers of Messenian descent, and in particular those helots liberated during the revolt of the 460s, Brasidas, a non-royal himself, was able to persuade the Spartans to recruit helots into their own forces in return for manumission, together with the employment of other paid mercenaries. Indeed, Brasidas' victories in the north allowed the Spartan hawks to derail any proposals for peace. Yet, the Spartan final victory owed to a combination of factors. Firstly, there was the disastrous change in Athenian policy in 415 by launching a campaign to support allies on Sicily, draining men and resources. This was the brainchild of the Athenian political leader of the day, Alcibiades, who would seek refuge in Sparta to avoid being put on trial for treason. Secondly,Spartan prospects wee given an enormous boost by securing an alliance with their erstwhile enemy, Persia. More than anything, the latter aided Sparta in funding the creation of a fleet to outmatch the hitherto invincible Athenian navy. A third contributory factor was the internal disorder that wracked Athens in the wake of the Sicilian debacle, leading to an oligarchic coup overthrowing the democratic regime in 411. A fourth factor lay in the defections of former allies, no longer subservient to a weakened power. Finally, the emergence of Lysander cannot be underestimated. He would rise from the ranks to secure the appointment of Admiral of the Fleet, and his acumen and tactical awareness would play a major role in the final defeat of Athens in 404. The defeated rival would be deprived of its fleet and its empire, while Lysander ensured that the political price paid by Athens and many of its allies would be the loss of democracy in favour of a ruling oligarchy, answerable to Sparta. Yet, the extent to which Lysander had succeeded, given his vaulting ambition, would antagonise conservative elements of Spartan society. Ousted by those seeking less of an imperial future for Sparta, his fall was only temporary with the succession to the throne of his former lover, Agesilaus. Though lame, this king had passed through the 'agoge' with flying colours. Nevertheless, Spartan tradition had it that doom would ensue should a lame monarch ever ascend one of the thrones. During the 390s, Sparta pursued a far more expansionist policy than ever before, conducting overseas campaigns on the Asian continent against its former ally, Persia, but Agesilaus, despite enjoying both command of the army and navy, lacked the drive to venture into the Asian mainland. Then, in 394 he suffered a humiliating naval defeat at the hands of the Persians, while in the same year his beloved Lysander was killed in battle on the Greek mainland by a coalition force of domestic enemies, financed by Persia. Despite attaining two victories against the Greek coalition, the high costs of adventure led to a reversal in Spartan policy in the 380s. The price for accepting another alliance with Persia would be extremely high, surrendering the Ionian Greek cities to Persian suzerainty in return for having a free rein on the Greek mainland. This abandonment of fellow Greeks stiffened domestic resistance, leading to a fresh alliance between Athens and Thebes, and their joint forces would deliver the coup de grace for any future Spartan pretension of power with the humiliating defeat at Leuctra in 371, and the support of a fresh helot uprising in Messenia.

[Kacper · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️
Książka dobra, lecz trudna w ocenie. Autor dogłębnie przeciera się przez historię starożytnej Sparty, poczynając na legendarnej Wojnie Trojańskiej, a kończąc na posumowaniu całej jej historii i wpływu na późniejsze losy Europy. Praca ta podzielona jest na 3 obszerne części: ,,Przechodniu powiedz Sparcie"; ,,Spartański mit"; ,,Kalekie królestwo". Wprowadzenie do lektury bardzo ciekawe, współcześni historycy mogliby czerpać inspirację z Cartledge'a, który od początku nie ,,zanudza" czytelników wyrafinowanymi pojęciami, datami, czy wyrafinowanymi nazwiskami. Zamiast tego dostajemy pokaźną dawkę powszechnie znanej greckiej mitologii, z której autor płynnie przechodzi do spartańskiego ustroju i funkcjonowania tamtejszego społeczeństwa. Książka momentami nuży (momentami płynie się przez nią, niczym przez powieść historyczną, by następnie czytać fragment po kilka razy by cokolwiek zrozumieć). Mimo iż momentami fabuła jest nudna, ułożono ją w idealnym porządku chronologicznym, przez co łatwiej jest nie zgubić się w gąszczu historycznej wiedzy. Ciekawym zabiegiem, zastosowanym przez autora jest wplatanie w ciąg historii, subtelnych ciekawostek z życia codziennego spartan. W moim mniemaniu najciekawszy był dość feministyczny rozdział, dotyczący kobiet. Otóż wspomniana płeć piękna w Sparcienie była w najmniejszym stopniu zepchnięta na margines społeczny. Wręcz przeciwnie! Męski spartiata, winien był być posłuszny kobiecie (rodzina była drugą po agoge najistotniejszą kwestią dla mężczyzn). Ponad to zamężna kobieta w przeciwieństwie do faceta mogła legalnie współżyć z kochankami. Widać więc doskonale wyjątkowość Sparty wśród innych społeczeństw Świata antycznego. Generalnie lektura była przyjemna, oceniam ją bardzo pozytywnie. Zainteresowanym polecam jednak czytać w orginale, albowiem w polskin tłumaczeniu zaszło parę błędów.
W książce Paula Cartledge'a widać jego ogromne kompetencje historyczne, połączone z unikatowym stylem pisania. Mimo kilku niedociągnięć uważam to za jedną z lepszych prac historycznych, jakie czytałem w moim życiu.

[Maarten · Rating 2 out of 5]

Paul Cartledge is an undisputed authority when it comes to Spartan history, and I don't doubt the factual accuracy of this book. That said, I completely agree with the criticism that The Spartans is neither accessible to a broad audience, nor a proper work of academia - and thus fails at both.

Additionally, Cartledge is at times wayyyy to conservative in his interpretation of the value of Classics, as seen in the introduction where he hammers on the value of Greece as the birthplace of Western civilization blablabla. However, in the appendix he does give a wonderful example of the value of historians as guardians against the abuse of history, in relation to foxhunting of all things. Strangely, in the main body of the book both of these positions disappear. In itself this is fine, or even desirable, but it leads to an obvious chasm between the different parts of the book.

Finally, the editing in this book is atrocious. Some sentences are so convoluted as to be all but incomprehensible, the narrative is often confused, and the biographies are not clearly demarcated, mess up the narrative, and don't add much that could not have been incorporated into the main text.

[Ben Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent summary of the Spartan nation state that includes all of the major events and figures, but certain editorial decisions kept me from enjoying this to the fullest. Cartledge switches back and forth between chronological, short biography, and topical organizations in this history, and I think it would have been better served by sticking to just one. When going chronologically, he often interrupts the narrative with biography. When explaining biographically or topically, he tells the readers about events or battles that haven’t happened yet which muddy the waters. This leads to a frustrating back and forth that becomes harder to track than it should.

Additionally, as someone very familiar with the Greco Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, I was most looking forward to learning more about Sparta’s fall, and especially the attempted reforms of Agis and Cleomenes in the 3rd century BC. Unfortunately, this is the very same era that Cartledge gives the least detail, instead giving a factual event by event summary because of the biased sources. While perhaps accurate, it just wasn’t fun and sucked the wonder out of the attempt.

Overall, this is a good summary of the Spartans if you aren’t familiar with them, but doesn’t really offer much to those more familiar.

[Bogdan Raț · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cea mai proasta carte de istorie citita pana acum. De fapt, nici n-am dus-o la capat. E primul rating de 1/5 pe care-l ofer. Pe langa faptul ca se simte o miasma de subiectivism in fiecare pagina din partea autorului, nici nu explica anumite lucruri esentiale, cum ar fi cauza razboiului dintre Sparta si Atena. Omul e pasionat de istoria Spartei, pot sa inteleg, dar de la asta si pana la a nu vedea nimic altceva in fata ochilor, e cale lunga.

"Bazat pe surse originale, Spartanii este cartea definitorie despre una dintre cele mai fascinante culturi ale Greciei antice.", cuvintele Editurii Herald. Ar fi foarte trist daca asta ar fi realitatea. Poti afla mult mai multe despre spartani si stilul lor de viata dintr-o carte de istorie generala a Greciei antice.
Am sesizat si unele contradictii, dar ma bucur ca nu le-am tinut minte, poate doar cand spune intr-un loc ca un spartan, n-are importanta cine e dar e Brasidas, a fost asasinat din motive politice, si in alt loc ca a murit in lupta.

O mare dezamagire. Bani aruncati.

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seemed, in other reviews to garner a good deal of harsh words for the simple reason that it wasn't what the readers expected it to be, or wanted out of it. Don't assume that this work is any relative of Steven Pressfield's Gates of Fire. Where that work excelled at conveying a gripping and personal tale detailing the life of its protagonist from birth onwards in what may have been a relatively accurate portrayal of Sparta, this book details the historical accounts of Sparta and her most prominent citizens, social order, and foreign affairs. It serves its purpose well, and volunteers unpopular, but interesting information detailing a bit more of Sparta's dark side - infanticide, rape, sexism, classism, and secret police intended to murder hoplite slaves for political stability. I would recommend this book to any seeking a more intellectual and academic portrayal of Spartan society - though the writing is, admittedly, somewhat dry.

[Katrin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a complicated book. Not being fully academic, but also detailed and scientific enough to remove it from any easy reading book list, haha. Cartledge has a huge knowledge and his research on the topic is massive. For this alone he deserves more than three stars. But truly it was tough to read it through at times, with just too much politics and details to bore the bejeesus out of someone who just wants to enjoy a history of the Spartans, some capturing book about their society. In that regard it missed a bit the mark. This should have been either a pure academic paper with resources, quotes etc for his study colleagues, or to publish a much lighter version for the everyday reader. Other than that this is a massive reference to any Spartan addict who needs to know everything. It's really greatly researched and detailed.

[Joshua Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

In terms of Cartledge's actual content, this is a great book; it handles large swathes of history in manageable pieces, its repetitive in the best way in that it helps to remind readers about what has already been said and so bring up to speed with relevant events or people, and academic battles are well chosen (Cartledge is very restrained when discussing modern scholarly disagreements with Thucydides vis-a-vis the causes of the Peloponnesian War).

A minor weakness is that every so often, Cartledge's writing style is not so easy to folllow - the subordiante clasues get a bit unwiedly, but generally this is not the case. The real weakness is the formatting; why on earth did the publisher decide to stick the digressional biographies IN the main body and only mark out when they start, but not when they stop?! Stoopid mang.

George Brand smells.

[Giovanni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book about the legendary Spartans. Debunks a lot of myths about Spartans that is so pervasive in society today, mostly from the movie 300 I gather.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

A history that revolves around kings and battles and only gives some details of the average lifestyle of the ancient Spartan. Good for those who are interested in traditional histories.

[Joshua W · Rating 5 out of 5]

yippee!

[Jude Hoekstra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good overview of Sparta in some ways, mainly for being an accessible history that doesn't pander to the Spartan myth, but the structure leaves something to be desired. I wish the book went more into different aspects of Spartan society rather than mostly just retelling events covered by Herodotus and Thucydides with a Spartan focus. The narrative of the book also suffers from a weird repetition that seems to stem from different sections being thrown together without being edited as a whole. Cartledge will often introduce a historical figure, summarize his/her entire life, and then jarringly jump back to a point where that person was doing something mentioned in the summary to continue the narrative.

[Nikolay Genchev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Testosterone boost. My favorite warrior culture in all of history.