A Companion to Sparta

by Anton Powell (Editor)

The two-volume A Companion to Sparta presents the first comprehensive, multi-authored series of essays to address all aspects of Spartan history and society from its origins in the Greek Dark Ages to the late Roman Empire.
- Offers a lucid, comprehensive introduction to all aspects of Sparta, a community recognised by contemporary cities as the greatest power in classical Greece
- Features in-depth coverage of Sparta history and culture contributed by an international cast including almost every noted specialist and scholar in the field
- Provides over a dozen images of Spartan art that reveal the evolution of everyday life in Sparta
- Sheds new light on a modern controversy relating to changes in Spartan society from the Archaic to Classical periods

Genres: History, Nonfiction

848 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Anton Powell (born 1947) teaches Greek classics at the University of Wales. He is the author of several books and lives in the countryside of Wales.

Reviews

[Rebecca]

A great (in both senses of the word) collection of essays on the world of ancient Sparta. This of course means that your interest in each article may vary, that there are some re-hashes, but all in all quite the go-to-book on the subject.

I just wonder a little about the last essay, a comparison on Spartan and British public school education... It is in the section on reception in more modern times - but the others were more straight up discussion on how Sparta was viewed later. This essay was wasn't at all bad, it was quite interesting actually, but it did feel a bit out of place (and there was no article on the reception of Sparta in Britain, when it had been on France, Germany and North America).

[Gillian]

A great collection of writings that really helps seeing beyond the Spartan Mirage and why Sparta would be the way it is.