The Bronze Lie

MYKE COLE

The author of Legion versus Phalanx cheerfully tells us he’s not an academic historian, but has taken on this challenge to disprove the myth of Spartan invincibility and its use by the far right as a racist template. With his chatty, informal style it’s easy to get into but it starts to sound like a bloke down the pub at times. To be fair, Cole says that this is his aim and he backs up assertions with copious research and quotes. What is slightly less palatable is the endless denouncing of some random historical fact as part of the Bronze Lie, when it was no more than some writer’s opinion written 1,000 years ago and not part of any global Spartan propaganda machine. At times it feels like Cole is addressing far right nationalists rather than informing the reader. That said, he is meticulous in combing through the Spartan system, why it was inevitably doomed to failure, in picking apart the military record and showing all the evidence of disastrous campaigns and political corruption at home.

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• Osprey Publishing

• ISBN 978-1-4728-4375-3

• 468 pages • Hardback • £25