The Archidamian War was in Thucydides’ view caused mainly by Sparta wanting to ‘take down’ the power of Athens, while its course was shaped largely by Sparta’s reliance on conventional tactics and limited resources, compounded by its ‘slowness’ to act. This notion of a mismatch between highly ambitious strategic objectives and deeply inadequate tactical means remains pervasive in scholarship on the war. However, Thucydides’ record of Spartan actions is open to a different interpretation: Sparta’s main strategic goal was merely to preserve its hegemony over its allies, and accordingly it needed to support the military ambitions of the latter, especially Corinth and Thebes on whose military resources Sparta was dependent. Sparta initially did the minimum necessary to keep Corinth and Thebes onside but, in the face of Athens’ refusal to compromise, gradually developed more ambitious strategic goals of its own. When Sparta applied conventional tactics and limited resources it was in pursuit of specific, restricted strategic aims, but when Sparta pursued more ambitious strategies it developed new, complex and often daring tactics to match. Their ultimate lack of success was largely the result of Sparta having to make concessions to the mutually incompatible strategic interests of Corinth and Thebes.

Mostly, Greek historians treat going to war as something that Greek states do, without there needing to be much account of why they do it. Different were epic wars – the Trojan War and then the Persian War – and Thucydides’ long treatment of the causes of the Peloponnesian War is a direct product of his insistence that this was the greatest war. What his account shows us is what he thought needed explanation, and it is as much his identification of factors as the scale of his discussion of causation that makes Thucydides’ account stand out. His is an account peculiar for the failure to point the finger at individual political leaders, something that elsewhere in his History Thucydides is not reluctant to do. Thucydides never asks whether different action by Athens might have avoided war, avoiding discussing either Athenian policies or politics. The reasons for that are best sought not in Thucydides’ politics, but in his determination that this should be seen as an epic war.

The pressure of war often drives change. This was no less true of the Peloponnesian War in its effect on constitutional thinking at the end of the fifth century. While Thucydides in his analysis of the Peloponnesian War suggests that it was differences between constitutional types that lay behind the conflict (democracy versus oligarchy), it was in fact the war that clarified these differences. Thus it was that ideas around democracy became more clearly defined. However, it was thinking about oligarchy which experienced the most radical changes. Earlier in the fifth century, oligarchy had been recognised as a constitutional form but had been fairly loosely defined. By the end of the war, however, some Athenians in particular, who wanted to effect regime change, played with ideas of oligarchy in a fairly imprecise way based on number, wealth or class. Initially, this lack of clarity worked in the favour of the reformers, but eventually it led to the downfall of both the oligarchies of 411 and 404/3. Nevertheless it was the war itself which ultimately forced the conceptual opposition between oligarchy and democracy, which Thucydides was then able to write retrospectively into his analysis of the Peloponnesian War.

Chapter 4 is in part an examination of a Mycenaean divine Potnia, one affiliated with the “labyrinth,” the Potnia of the dabúrinthos (δαβύρινθος). The labyrinthine space with which she is associated is an Asian cult notion introduced from Anatolia to Balkan Hellas. This chapter also examines the Rājasūya, a Vedic rite of consecration by which a warrior is made a king and a likely cult counterpart to the Mycenaean initiation of the wanaks.

Chapter 6 examines Iranian cult and myth as evidenced in the Nart sagas of Transcaucasia, but also among Scythians as well as in Zoroastrian tradition, including the psychotropic cult substances Haoma (Iranian) and Soma (Indic). The Greek polis of Dioscurias in the Caucasus is explored as a place where Hellenic and Indo-Iranian divine-twin myth and cult affiliation meet, as indeed they do in the Pontic polis of Sinope. Aeolian connections are conspicuous at both locales.

Chapter 5 considers the Indic divine twins, the Aśvins (Aśvínā), or Nāsatyas (Nā́satyā), their association with the Indic Dawn goddess Uṣas, and their place in the Indic Soma cult. Discussion then shifts to the kingdom of Mitanni in Syro-Mesopotamia, a place into which Indic culture was introduced as Indo-Iranian peoples migrated southward through Asia, as also at Nuzi. There is good lexical evidence for the presence of a Soma cult in Mitanni, and Soma-cult ideas appear to have spread out of Mitanni, through Kizzuwatna, into the Luvian milieu of western Asia Minor, where such ideas would almost certainly have been encountered by resident Mycenaean Greeks, intermingled biologically, socially, culturally, and linguistically with Luvian populations. With that spread certain elements of Soma-cult ideology were mapped onto Anatolian cult structures.

Chapter 3 examines the Mycenaean wanaks and lāwāgetās, figures responsible for leading Mycenaean society in specific ways and who correspond notionally to figures implicit in Indic and Iranian social structures – figures who descend from still more ancient Indo-European antecedents charged with the task of leading society through the spaces of the Eurasian Steppes and in migrations southward out of the Steppes.

The warfare of the Greek city states was limited by their means, lacking military academies, professional officers and standing forces. Small communities fought local wars with levies of citizens, often highly motivated, but precious to the polity, which could not be kept in the field for long. Fruits of victory were modest, and defeat could put the survival of the whole state at risk. Fortification as a passive defensive policy was essential. In offensive warfare, states and coalitions mostly pursued a strategy of opportunism, in which the desirable was subordinated to the attainable. Commanders typically tried to avoid decisive engagements due to the risks involved; they focused their attacks on exposed targets like farmland, small towns, isolated garrisons and unprepared enemy troops. They relied heavily on local dissenters and deserters to guide and facilitate operations. When wealthier states like Corinth, Athens and Syracuse found themselves able to invest in warfare, we clearly see their dissatisfaction with this strategic straitjacket. The rapid development of fleets, extensive fortification networks, standing corps of specialist troops and siege technology allowed these states to dominate their less fortunate neighbours. This gives the lie to old notions that the Greeks preferred their wars to be limited in scope. A state that had much more than the others could disrupt the entire system, as Macedon would eventually show.

Classical Greece was a high period for city networks, with trading centers dotting the map of the Aegean Sea like “frogs around a marsh” in the words of Aristotle. These were strange times, where Spartans annually declared war on their slaves. Where the Athenian reformer Solon banned the export of vital foodstuffs – on penalty of death – while at the same time laying the groundwork for unprecedented political pluralism. Yet we see an uncommon iteration of city networking that was well ahead of its time. Embedded in the lives of these cities was an early echo of the modern. Athens was the alpha city in a polis system of autonomous city-states that, at its height, spanned from Spain to Africa to the Black Sea with a total population of thirty million people. This was an incredible period of seafaring. Language, culture, aesthetics, and revolutionary political ideas flowed in the currents alongside goods and services in an elaborate trading network. Far from localized cultures of self-sufficiency, most Greek cities depended on trade for basics such as foodstuffs, but also for military, intellectual, and cultural production.

Chapter 2 surveys phrases with the verb boulomai that describe the ability to do “whatever one wishes” or to live “however one wishes” as freedom in order to demonstrate that democratic freedom was understood as the ability to bring one’s will to fruition. These phrases are found in a wide range of genres, including history, philosophy, oratory, drama, and epigraphy. By defining themselves as free in contrast to slaves, Athenians perceived their actions and decisions as emanating from themselves rather than a master. Freedom was thus defined as not simply a prerequisite status for citizenship, in contrast to birth or wealth, but a personal capacity for action. This positive freedom was a central aspect of citizen identity, rendering scholarly accounts focused on negative freedom incomplete. The distinctive feature of democratic freedom was the insistence on the self as master of action; as a citizen, one did what one wished. Positive freedom gave rise to procedural components in Athenian administration and law, notably voluntarism and accountability, as well as served as a distinctive core marker of identity in contrast with other states, such as Sparta and Persia.

A look at Spartan commemoration in the Peloponnesian War, focusing on Brasidas and the rhetoric of liberation. Brasidas was a new kind of Spartan that put freedom in the forefront, which led to Brasidas receiving more lavish commemoration but also drew Sparta into more wars.

Introduction to Spartan society and commemoration. A discussion of terms, methods, and themes. An introduction to memory studies. A look at the topography of ancient Sparta.

The author first addresses the contents and the nature of the proems of the Histories, secondly the arrangement of Ephorus’ work and, thirdly, the main contents of each of the thirty books that formed it.

The Introduction sketches out the key themes of the book, offers a justification for focusing on the identity of the American soldier as a key issue in the Army’s post–Cold War transformation and introduces the reader to literature on ‘warrior culture’. Just as Army leaders and ordinary soldiers often meant very different things when they spoke about warriors, so contemporary historians, anthropologists and classicists have used the term in various ways. Thus, the latter part of the Introduction spends some time examining how the term has evolved and been deployed in different contexts.

This chapter focuses on ancient Sparta as a representative case for the general reception of classical antiquity in heavy metal music. The Spartans are the basis of songs and albums by dozens of bands across the globe: their last stand at Thermopylae is the most popular ancient battle in metal music, and their king Leonidas is one of the most popular ancient figures. Their appropriation by metal bands is a product of their rise in popularity in popular culture since the premiere of the 2006 film 300, and as in pop-culture, their appeal resonates with political and nationalistic agendas, especially of Greek bands. Sparta’s wide appeal harmonises with metal’s core ethos of hypermasculinity, the liberation of animal instincts and the disruption of systems of conformity and control. As with other topics from the classical world, heavy metal music takes the Spartans from both ancient sources and modern media and remakes them in the image of its own counterculture, that of the few standing defiant against the many.