How Sparta beat the odds
The Spartans Andrew J. Bayliss OUP £10.99 ★★★★★
The Spartans are endlessly intriguing – to their Greek contemporaries, who speculated about their austere lifestyle and martial prowess, and to scholars throughout history. Curiosity breeds embellishment, but Andrew J. Bayliss’s myth-busting account aims to find the truth behind the ‘Spartan mirage’. To complicate matters, little literature survives from Laconia, the Spartans’ home region, leaving historians reliant on outsider sources, which often perpetuate stereotypes and promote rivals’ agendas.
At the legend’s heart lies the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), a David-andGoliath tale that has spawned blockbuster interpretations such as the film 300 – the number of Spartans that faced down Xerxes’s alleged three million Persians, before being betrayed by a fellow Greek. Sparta reviled cowardice and shamed survivors – sometimes unfairly, as in the case of Pantites, a messenger who outlived Thermopylae through no fault of his own, but hanged himself nonetheless.
His fate speaks volumes about this secretive military state – which espoused equality but was destroyed by systemic injustice. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the helots, a subjugated population whose resentment erupted in revolts in 464 BC. At the top was an elite army of ‘gentleman warriors’, whose status was safeguarded by mandatory food contributions produced by slave labour. The regime’s admirers include Machiavelli, Robespierre and, disturbingly, Hitler – brutal Spartan practices informed Nazi policy.
Helen of Troy, former Spartan queen, gave her kinswomen a reputation for beauty and promiscuity, magnified by their scantily clad athleticism – unusual in Ancient Greece, where most women led sedentary, secluded lives. Female outspokenness prompted Aristotle to decry the Spartan ‘gynaecocracy’, although this was sadly far from the reality.
With a succinctness worthy of his subjects – whose ‘linguistic austerity’ inspired the word ‘laconic’ – Bayliss distills extensive research to offer an engaging, lucid insight into this unique society.