Customer Reviews

The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Paul Cartledge of Cambridge university is the Secretariat of Laconian scholars, and he's more than a couple of links ahead of the rest of the field. By far & away he is the premiere authority in the world on all things Spartan. He is the primary Hellenist that other scholars use to quote in their works.

With that in mind, it is natural that Cartledge would be the preferred choice to write a mainstream book about the history of the Spartans. That, in fact, is precisely what he has done with the present study. This is by far the most accessible works in the Cartledge canon; prior knowledge of Greek history is not necessary to engage the text.

By the same token, what must be remembered is that this is an overview of Lacedamon history. While most everyone will learn a great deal from this work (whether they possess an understanding of classical history or not), I would nevertheless recommend other works by Cartledge for those who wish to dig deeper into the Spartan archives. SPARTAN REFLECTIONS would be a good place to start.

One of the few beefs I have w/the present work is that the author tends to skip around chronologically quite a bit. While not a serious impediment for one to decide against purchasing this book, it nevertheless can get a wee bit annoying.

Possibly the very best attribute of this work is that it gives a balanced portrayal of the ancient Lacedamons. It is easy for we moderns to have an enormous admiraton for their military prowess and at the same time be mortified by the reprehensible way in which they treated their slaves (Helots).

Both of these reactions are all too human. Some authors have concentrated soley on the one while neglecting the other. Cartledge, on the other hand, strikes a nice Aristotelian Golden Mean. He does not deify the Spartans, nor does he demonize them. Rather, he simply tells us of their history the way it really happened.

If you're looking for an introductory book on Spartan history, this just might be an ideal place to start. In addition to the standard text are myriad paintings as well as some photographs of Spartan artifacts. All-in-all, a must-have book for the philhellene.

At the narrow mountain pass of Thermopylae, the Greek army led by the Spartan king Leonidas faced the invading Persians in a fight to the death - did you know that Leonidas's wife was named Gorgo and was quite an extraordinary woman in her own right and "had a mind, and a voice, of her own"? It's true, "Gorgo was sharper and smarter than all the other Spartans, especially the men in authority." Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes ... - and won undying fame in defense of Western civilization.

That's my problem with this otherwise well-informed book: it digresses much too often. There's little compelling narrative drive to the writing and it appears more to be a collection of "snapshot biographies," etymological musings and Hellenic place names rather than a book one would read straight through. "The Spartans" reminds me of lecture notes in its discursive style - rambling, albeit authoritative - or notes designed to accompany the PBS TV series.

"Tell 'em what you're going to tell `em; tell `em; and then tell `em what you've told `em." We read on page 121 that Leonidas - who died with his entire command at Thermopylae - had a son with Gorgo, and we are reminded on page 258 that Leonidas - who died with his entire command at Thermopylae - had a son with Gorgo. Pausanius dies, returns, dies again. As does Lysander and Brasidas and Artilochus and... Events described in one chapter reappear two or three chapters later - with no added value.

I understand how some reviews say the book's "like a graduate student's thesis" and others claim it's "too general." Detailed information regarding a sculptor's birthplace or various alternate spellings for a Greek city lead one to believe an extended discussion of minutiae will follow but no, hold on, the author stops and moves on. Then is it a book for the general reader? In my opinion, not really: if you don't already have a basic knowledge of Greek geography, governments, politics, and a rough chronology of important events, you're likely to be swamped trying to make sense of all the book's information.

How did the Spartans avoid other city-states frequent civil wars? Was the Spartan's egalitarianism fundamental to their stability? What did other Greek's really feel of Spartan enslavement their fellow Greeks? How could a nation of citizen-soldiers survive with so few citizens to soldier? Why were there no other "Spartas" in Greece? Was Spartan society fundamentally flawed since it had to arm to the teeth even without external enemies? The author could have explored in depth speculative "opinion" questions like these thereby increasing the interest of probably both general and knowledgeable readers.

Long story short: Repetitive, poor ("cut-and-paste") narrative, and pedantic. Donald Kagan's Peloponnesian War is a far better model for historic writing than this volume. I read Cartledges' Spartan Reflections in the hope that the book would have what The Spartans lacked but no joy: it was even more academic. You might take a look at Wm. Forrest's A History of Sparta but it's a very dry, academic book - however it reads a bit more smoothly.

Author Paul Cartledge quite obviously knows his stuff, and shows it in his book "The Spartans." Unfortunately, it appears that he knows his stuff a little too well for his book to be of much interest to non-academic readers. This is surprising, given that the book is being marketed as a companion piece to an upcoming PBS special about Greece's legendary warriors. Though the book is relatively brief at around 300 pages, it is so packed full of dates, names, places and events as to become bewildering to anyone who is not already intimately familiar with the subject matter. I'm a history buff myself, but I had a hard time following the narrative. The author writes as if he's addressing graduate level history students with a speciality in the subject.

Overall, "The Spartans" is very well researched, but will be of little interest to general readers.

Sometimes this book seemed as wide as Texas and just as dry. I love ancient Greek history, and in particular the peculiar culture of Sparta, but after so many pages I was just ready to fall on my sword from the boredom of pages interspersed with sporadic paragraphs of interest. Nothing shielded me from the weight of mind-numbing information that I desperately wanted to find interesting.

Judging by all the five stars for this book, I can only conclude that I lack the intellectual depth for this, and I should cry in my helmet.

For this book, I would do something a Spartan would never do--surrender.

Books for the general reader tend to be written in a very chatty and friendly way; the authors are often non-experts in the field and, although interesting, these books may contain errors ultimately due to the authors' understandable lack of knowledge in the field. At the other end of the spectrum are books written by experts for experts such that the text is essentially unintelligible to the general reader. Finally, there are many books that fall, to varying dregrees, in-between these two extremes, that is, the friendly writing style and the expert author, and this book is clearly one of them. The author is a well-respected expert in ancient history with specialization in ancient Spartan history. Readers get the benefit of expert knowledge presented in a most accessible manner. The prose is clear and written in a very engaging professional style. The author clearly states his references and often adds his own views on various matters - definitely a plus. I cannot imagine a more thorough history of ancient Sparta in such a short book, i.e., on average, there is so much information per page that I, for one, would benefit by reading it again. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in ancient Greek history - it does not disappoint.

This was the first book on the Spartans I ever read, and it is still the best. I used it as a springboard to delve further, but the fact is that little is known about the Spartans, and I still keep coming back to this book to put everything in perspective. It is easy to read (nowhere near as dry as the same author's history of Lakonia) and pretty much has everything known about the Spartans as a people if you don't want to muddle around in timelines, sources, pottery, etc. One reviewer here thought it was confusing for some reason. My condolences. For everyone else, there is no better place to start. The text is never dry, gets into specifics only when the need arises, yet gives a complete and detailed picture without insulting the reader's intelligence and Cartledge's prose here (unlike his other book) rolls right along with a wry wit. You will learn of Spartan attitudes, structure of their government, customs, etc. Don't worry about it being a companion book to a TV documentary. I never saw it and the book stands firmly on its own.

I also highly recommend a collection of essays about different aspects of Spartan life written by a variety of eminent archeologists called (appropriately enough) "Sparta", edited by Michael Whitby and available on amazon.com It is quite readable, and is the MUST HAVE companion book to the above.

Sparta tends to be a jumble of images (a heroic stand at Thermopylae) or words (Molon labe!) for most people so it's nice to see a survey of the Spartan world. Cartledge surveys not only Sparta's impressive martial record but also peers at its unique society. While he's an expert on the subject, Cartledge doesn't communicate his knowledge ponderously, rather The Spartans is written with an impressive clarity and inciveness. Outside of his bizarre little attack on English fox hunting in the appendix (in which he explores Spartan hunting -- animal and human), Cartledge's The Spartans is an absolute winner.

Herodotus, the father of all historians, said there is a "Hellenic sameness in blood and speech, shared religious shrines and sacrifices, and a general uniformity in the manner of life." He saw the Greek city-state as an inclusive society of "hoi Hellenes", the inhabitants of the Greek peninsula who shared a similar language and roughly the same religious beliefs, who experienced a typical climate and geography, farmed and fought in near-identical fashion, and were part of a unique and elsewhere unknown political institution, the polis.

The exception to that Greek pattern of sameness has always been Sparta. The ancient tradition, fostered by the Spartans themselves and promoted especially by the Athenians, was that Sparta was 'other', crucially different in basic ways from all other Greek cities and societies. Key to the myth of the Spartan warrior and his ideal of self-sacrifice was the compulsive education system called Agoge that turned boys into fighting men whose reputation for discipline, courage and military skill was unsurpassed. The main expression of citizenship for adult men was the participation in communal dining along with mess companions, whereas women benefited from a surprising degree of freedom.

Sparta lived under the constant menace of a revolt by the Helots, the class of serf-like peasants submitted around Sparta's home territory of Laconia and Messenia in ancient times, who vastly outnumbered the Spartans and provided them with the economic basis of their unique lifestyle. Spartans lived on a constant war footing against the threat of enemies from within as well as without. Other Greeks, who also depended on servile manpower by foreign slaves, were shocked by this enslavement of fellow Hellenes.

Paul Cartledge's book takes its reader through the different stages of Sparta's history, starting with the foundation of the city-state by the mythical Lycurgus and the rapture of Helen by the prince of Troy, and going through the successful resistance against the Persian Empire around 480, the epic confrontation between Sparta and Athens in the Peloponnesian War of 431-404, and Sparta's triumph that ended abruptly along the lines of a doom-laden prediction about a crippled kingship. Lively vignettes about Spartan heroes are inserted in the narrative: King Leonidas who led the resistance against the Persian army at the Thermopylae, his wife Gorgo who, asked about the power enjoyed by Spartan women, responded that it was "because we are the only women who give birth to (real) men," and many others.

Finally, beautiful illustrations are included in the book. Bronze figurines of proud hoplites clad in their red cloak or donning their crested helmet were popular ornaments that helped popularize the myth of the Spartan warrior throughout the Greek world and beyond. A very large bronze krater or mixing-bowl used to mix wine with water offers a testimony of the skill of Laconian craftsmens, most of whom belonged to the class of Perioeci or 'out-dwellers', as Spartans themselves were banned from engaging in any trade apart from war-making. A sprightly figurine of a young female in athletic pose illustrates the grace, freedom and social status that distinguished Spartan women from their relegated sisters in other Greek states. A reproduction of Jacques-Louis David's painting Leonidas at Thermopylae, his masterwork, displays strong homoerotic undertones that somehow escaped censorship in Napoleonic France. And the statues of Spartan warriors that modern Greece erected on its street crossings and monuments echo the lyric accents of Lord Byron who fanned philhellenic sentiments throughout Europe by appealing to the noble figure of Leonidas.

I could not disagree more with the mundane reviews regarding this book. While I would agree that this book "isn't for the general reader," I say that because I no longer believe the general reader is an intelligent reader. However, for those that are intelligent readers, Cartledge's book is an interesting, fun, and informative place to begin.

Because Professor Cartledge does use an approach that skips around at times, it has the effect of weaving the entire work together quite nicely (and more so if one actually finishes the book). The reader learns the processes of history, mythology, and memory all within the narrative; and nothing could be more beneficial to the non-specialist of this period than these aspects.

Through this work, the reader gets a sense of the broad outlines of the Classical Era and Sparta's legacy today. Of particular note, two aspects of this work are highly informative: the legacy of King Leonidas I, and a historiographical analysis of Spartan hunting practices and its contemporary relevance. More to the point, Cartledge's work makes the whole process relatively painless.

I had very little knowledge of Ancient Greece when I began reading this book. Unfortunately, I am still ignorant afterward. I gamely read through the introduction and two chapters of the book before realizing that I was retaining very little new information. The author throws names and dates around without providing a clear structure for understanding them. For example, he may mention three different people in two different centuries within one sentence, but he fails to explain who those people are or why he is writing about them. I finally decided that the book was wasting my time and put it down into the "recycle" pile.

What I expected was a succinctly written primer on the history of the Spartan people. What I received was a jumble of names and dates that resembles nothing more than a rambling discourse. A clear story following the boring, but comprehensible, process of cause and effect would have made this much more valuable.