The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece by Paul Cartledge. 

2/5 rating. 

Book #22 of 2020. Read April 12, 2020.

This was an in-depth discussion about Ancient Sparta, from before their rise to prominence and power, all the way to their eventual fall and movement into a normal city in Greece (from somewhere before 1,000 – 200 or so B.C.E). Overall, this book had a lot of info, and it wasn’t terribly boring, it just put into complete realization how little I know about Ancient Greece. Paul kept discussing new leaders and locations within the confines of Greece and beyond and even when he mentioned a little more information, I felt like I didn’t know enough to grasp the full meaning.

While this book solidified the fact that the Spartans were indeed complete badasses, unless you have a pretty in-depth knowledge about Sparta and Ancient Greece and want to just learn a little more, I would not waste my time reading this book.

I was at least happy to know that according to sources from the time, two of the better lines from “300” were at least relatively close to the actual utterances at Thermopylae: 

“When told that there were so many archers on the Persian side that their arrows would blot out the sun, the Spartan Dieneces, one of the 300, promptly replied: ‘So much the better – we shall fight them in the shade!‘” 

“To his men, at break of the third and final day of the resistance in the pass, [Leonidas] reportedly said something like ‘Eat a hearty breakfast, as tonight we shall dine in Hades.’”

IG Link.