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The Spartans by Andrew J. Bayliss (Hardcover, 2020)
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The image of Sparta, and the Spartans, is one dyed indelibly into the public consciousness: musclebound soldiers with long hair and red cloaks, bearing shiny bronze shields emblazoned with the Greek letter lambda.
- Buy it nowThe Spartans by Andrew J. Bayliss (English) Hardcover Book
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The image of Sparta, and the Spartans, is one dyed indelibly into the public consciousness: musclebound soldiers with long hair and red cloaks, bearing shiny bronze shields emblazoned with the Greek letter lambda. 'This is Sparta!', bellows Leonidas on the silver screen, as he decides to lead his 300 warriors to their deaths at Thermopylae. But what was Sparta? The myths surrounding Sparta are as old as the city itself. Even in antiquity, Sparta was a unique society, considered an enigma. The Spartans who fought for freedom against the Persians called themselves 'equals' or peers, but their equality was reliant on the ruthless exploitation of the indigenous population known as helots. The Spartans' often bizarre rules and practices have the capacity to horrify as much they do to fascinate us today. Athenian writers were intrigued and appalled in equal measure by a society where weak or disabled babies were said to have been examined carefully by state officials before being dumped off the edge of a cliff. Even today their lurid stories have shaped our image of Sparta; a society in which cowards were forced to shave off half their beards, to dress differently from their peers, and who were ultimately shunned to the extent that suicide seemed preferable. Equally appalling to us today is the brutal krypteia, a Spartan rite of passage where teenagers were sent into the countryside armed with a knife and ordered to eliminate the biggest and most dangerous helots. But the truth behind these stories of the exotic other can be hard to discover, lost amongst the legend of Sparta which was even perpetuated by later Spartans, who ran a thriving tourist industry that exaggerated the famed brutality of their ancestors. As Andrew Bayliss explores in this book, there was also much to admire in ancient Sparta, such as the Spartans' state-run education system which catered even to girls, or the fact that Sparta was almost unparalleled in the pre-modern world in allowing women a clear voice, with no fewer than forty sayings by Spartan women preserved in our sources. This book reveals the best and the worst of the Spartans, separating myth from reality.Product Identifiers
PublisherOxford University Press
ISBN-139780198853084
eBay Product ID (ePID)8046627981
Product Key Features
Number of Pages192 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication NameThe Spartans
Publication Year2020
SubjectHistory
TypeTextbook
AuthorAndrew J. Bayliss
FormatHardcover
Dimensions
Item Height171 mm
Item Weight288 g
Item Width126 mm
Additional Product Features
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited Kingdom
Title_AuthorAndrew J. Bayliss
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Ratings and reviews
Most relevant reviews
- 01 Aug, 2020
Little disappointed...
Great content but very limited. Book is painfully SMALL in size - resembles a child’s book. Considering the subject is one of the most talked about civilisations in history .... could have been more. However knowledgeable work I prefer The Gates Of Fire by Steven Pressfield.Verified purchase: YesCondition: New
- 19 Aug, 2020
SPARTANS GOOD READ
GREAT BOOKVerified purchase: YesCondition: New
