He burst onto the scene in 425 B.C. during Sparta’s struggle against Athens in the Peloponnesian War, breaking through a large cordon with just 100 men to relieve the beleaguered city of Methone ...

Unlike Athens to the north, Sparta was famed for its austerity—its “spartan” character—was, and is, proverbial. A state run by an inflexible military regime, whose people existed almost ...

Setting out from Athens, Phidippides made for Sparta journeying by way of Eleusis, Megara, and Corinth. Greek couriers of his day are believed to have been able to cover over a hundred kilometres ...

Even Athens, by far the largest of all city-states ... were relatively small. Sparta had even fewer citizens, but was in many ways an exceptional case. Its powerful military elite ruled over ...