This book was freaking amazing!!! You not only get the lives of Lycurgus, Agis, and Cleomenes some of the most amazing Spartans of all times (of course you get some Leonidas as well). All of which covers some fairly epic moments in history, but it also includes a collection of Xenophons writings on Spartan society. You get a pretty good picture painted here of what life was like in Sparta. Man it was tough! No portion better embodies the lives and minds of the spartan than his sections on "Sayings" which is famous quotes from men of spartan society. I think Plutarch was inspired when he included this section. It really gives you a feel for what Spartans valued and honored.

Given Sparta’s reputation as this brutally harsh martial society: were there very obvious social, political, economic or even geographical factors that produced that society?Not that he takes out his anger on the patricians in his party – instead, he reserves this for the “metropolitan elite” who tried to frustrate “the democratic will of the people”, and whose praetorian guard are – somewhat paradoxically – formed by those Francois dubs “Marxists”, myself among them. Presumably, in the fight against the Persians, the Athenians and the Spartans were in an alliance, along with all the other Greek cities. Don’t they have to fight alongside each other? Thermopylae was just the Spartans, but most of the time they were having to organize themselves collectively, right?

The reason I’ve chosen him for Sparta and the Spartans is because he’s the first surviving author who describes the Spartans for us. He doesn’t just talk about them in the Persian Wars, he actually introduces us to the Spartans and tells us about their practices, the different ways their society works and its historical origins. He travelled to Sparta, as well, probably around 450 BC, which makes him quite special for us as a primary source. That’s a generation after the Battle of Thermopylae, but he talked to people who were around at the time and, obviously, when it comes to the Spartans, the first thing anyone really thinks of is the Battle of Thermopylae. Herodotus is our first proper narrative account of the Battle of Thermopylae. Actually, if Christopher Howarth is any good at all as a researcher, he can’t have provided poor Francois with any real assistance either: a few keystrokes would have led either or both of them to the intelligence that I am not now and never have been a Marxist; nor am I – as Francois seems to believe – a “sociology professor”. When a snake had coiled round the key on the inside of the gate and the seers were declaring this to be a portent, he remarked; Plutarch portrayed Spartan boys as receiving little schooling. But Stephen Hodkinson, an professor emeritus of ancient history at the University of Nottingham, UK, says there are hints in other sources that they received “the standard Greek elementary education in reading, writing, numbers, song and dance.”

How bad these solecisms – stylistic and grammatical – really are, is debatable. That Francois should be unable to spot myriad literals, typos, misspellings and egregious repetitions in his own text is perhaps excusable – even we who make our living reading and writing can become astonishingly word-blind when it comes to our own copy in particular. For tyros it’s far worse – which explains, among other reasons, why publishers exist. The thing I always explain to my students—when I’m talking to them about what they should be finding in this book—is the sheer deluge of evidence about wealth in Sparta. The supposedly austere Spartans don’t have wealth, but there’s wealth everywhere in Sparta and Steve really emphasizes that in this book. It’s a wonderful reappraisal of how Spartan society really operated. It’s one of those works that has just changed how we view Sparta.

This book provides brief biographies of four notable figures from Sparta: Lycurgus, Agesilaus, Agis IV, and Cleomenes III. Lycurgus (~800BC), a legendary figure, was the lawgiver of Sparta. He transformed the ruling Spartiates into a formidable military force, supported by the labour of conquered Messenian slaves and the trade of relatively free Perioeci. Agesilaus governed Sparta during 400-360BC. His rule witnessed the decline of Sparta's hegemony in Greece post-Peloponnesian War. The city-state transformed from a dominant force to a middle power after they were defeated by Thebes in 371BC. The subsequent liberation of the Messenians by Thebes dismantled Sparta's erstwhile militaristic and societal structures. When you talk about wealth, you’re not just talking about the agricultural produce of an estate that allowed Spartans to fight. You’re talking about luxury. There’s a long collapse. The reason I said at the beginning that Spartan greatness ends in the 370s BC is that Thebes invaded Spartan territory and liberated the Messenians. So they cut Spartan territory in half and deprived them of much of their estates and their labour force. There were still Helots working on estates in Lakonia, but they basically shattered the wealth of the Spartan citizens. That reduced Spartan power quite significantly and then it declined more and more over the ensuing generations until the Roman conquest.It was part of a successful defence of Greece and it certainly had an inspiration factor. Diodorus, who was writing in the first century BC and the first century AD, actually said that the men who fought and died at Thermopylae were more important and had done more for the freedom of Greece than the Greeks who won at Salamis and Plataea, because their incredible bravery in the face of overwhelming odds had inspired the Greeks. He said that every time the Persians remembered the Spartans at Thermopylae it made them quake with fear and anytime the Greeks thought of the Spartans at Thermopylae it inspired them to achieve greater things themselves. So, it’s a spectacular defeat, but a morale-inspiring one, if you want to think about it that way.