The Spartans

In many ways, John Lee's cool, crisp delivery matches Paul Cartledge's scholarship quite well. Cartledge is meticulous and is always careful to differentiate between knowledge, conjecture, bias, and myth in his discussion of the complicated warriors of ancient Sparta. What's more, Lee can create nuances in delivery, allowing listeners to distinguish among bits of information that are actually comparatively dull (such as population statistics or facts of coinage). In that the audio version may be superior to the print version. However, Lee's delivery is at odds with some of the material. Cartledge does not shrink from mentioning some of the brutal and distasteful acts the Spartans engaged in, and in those sections Lee's civilized, melodious voice seems incongruous. G.T.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 14, 2003
Legendary for their ferocious combat skills, the Spartans built a warrior culture in ancient Greece unsurpassed for its courage and military prowess. Eminent historian Cartledge (Spartan Reflections) provides a remarkable chronicle of Sparta's rise and fall, from its likely origins around 1100 B.C. to the height of its fame and glory in the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. and its fall in the fourth century B.C. The Spartans built their society through conquest and subjugation, ruling over their subject peoples with an iron hand and putting down revolts with devastating might. Between 490 and 479, Sparta joined Athens in fighting the Persians in three key wars—Thermopylae, Plataea and Mycale—that contributed to the demise of Persian power and the rise of Hellenistic power on the Mediterranean. Cartledge punctuates his absorbing tale with brief, engaging biographies of the city-state's kings from Lycurgus, the earliest Spartan leader, who brought constitutional law to the city, to Leonidas, who led the Spartans at Thermopylae. According to Cartledge, the Spartans' legacy to Western culture includes devotion to duty, discipline, the willingness to sacrifice individual life for the greater good of the community and the nobility of arms in a cause worth dying for. Cartledge's crystalline prose, his vivacious storytelling and his lucid historical insights combine here to provide a first-rate history of the Spartans, their significance to ancient Greece and their influence on our culture. It ties in to a PBS series to air this summer. 27 b&w illus., 3 maps. Agent, Lucas, Alexander, Whitley.