CRITICISM

Boring, Terrence A. Literacy in Sparta. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1979, 115 p.

Probes the traditional attribution of illiteracy to the ancient Spartans.

Dover, K. J. “Thucydides ‘as History’ and ‘as Literature.’” In The Greeks and Their Legacy: Collected Papers, Volume II: Prose, Literature, History, Society, Transmission, Influence, pp. 53-64. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell, 1988.

Discusses Thucydides' methods and approach to the composition of historical narrative in his History of the Peloponnesian War.

Ducat, Jean. “Perspectives on Spartan Education in the Classical Period.” In Sparta: New Perspectives, edited by Stephen Hodkinson and Anton Powell, pp. 43-66. London: Duckworth, 1999.

Compares accounts by Xenophon and Plutarch of the Spartan system of public education and socialization known as the agoge.

Foster, Verna Ann, and Stephen Foster. “Structure and History in The Broken Heart: Sparta, England, and the ‘Truth.’” English Literary Renaissance 18, no. 2 (spring 1988): 305-28.

Traces affinities between Tudor England and John Ford's literary depiction of Sparta in his drama The Broken Heart.

Henderson, Bernard W. The Great War between Athens and Sparta: A Companion to the Military History of Thucydides, London: Macmillan, 1927, 517 p.

Details the events of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.) as a guide to understanding the antique history of the conflict written by Thucydides.

Higgins, Ian. “Swift and Sparta: The Nostalgia of Gulliver's Travels.” Modern Language Review 78, no. 3 (July 1983): 513-31.

Concentrates on Swift's projection of Lycurgan Sparta as a model of balanced government and civic virtue in the idealized societies of his satirical Gulliver's Travels.

Hodkinson, Stephen. Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta. London: Duckworth, 2000, 498 p.

Comprehensive, systematic, and comparative analysis of the economic structure and history of antique Sparta.

Humble, Noreen. “Was Sophrosyne Ever a Spartan Virtue?” In Sparta: Beyond the Mirage, edited by Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson, pp. 85-109. London: Duckworth, 2002.

Compiles antique attributions of sophrosyne (which translates loosely as moderation, prudence, good sense) to the Spartans from the writings of Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato, Isocrates, Plutarch, and others.

Huxley, G. L. Early Sparta. London: Faber and Faber, 1962, 164 p.

Political and military history of Sparta from the Bronze Age settlement of Laconia to the Persian Wars.

Jenkyns, Richard. The Victorians and Ancient Greece. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980, 386 p.

Studies the influence of ancient Greek culture and thought on Victorian England and surveys Victorian perceptions of antique Greece.

Kennell, Nigel M. The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995, 241 p.

Examination of the Spartan educational system that draws upon epigraphical, literary, and archaeological sources.

Lazenby, J. F. The Spartan Army. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1985, 210 p.

Study of the Spartan military and the major battles of the Spartan classical period.

Leigh, R. A. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Myth of Antiquity in the Eighteenth Century.” In Classical Influences on Western Thought a.d. 1650-1870, edited by R. R. Bolgar, pp. 155-68. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Discusses Rousseau's idealized perceptions of antique Sparta and Rome.

Marsh, David. “Sparta and Quattrocento Humanism: Lilius Tifernas' Translation of Xenophon's Spartan Constitution.” Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 53, no. 1 (1991): 91-103.

Comments on several fifteenth-century Italian translations of Xenophon's writings on Sparta.

Moore, J. M. “The Politeia of the Spartans by Xenophon.” In Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy, pp. 65-124. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.

Summarizes the content of Xenophon's third-century b.c. study of Spartan society, describing the work as “a eulogy of Spartan virtues.”

Oliva, Pavel. Sparta and Her Social Problems, translated by Iris Urwin-Lewitová. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1971, 347 p.

Detailed examination of social reform in classical and Hellenistic Sparta.

Oswald, Eugene. “In Sparta and Troy.” In The Legend of Fair Helen as Told by Homer, Goethe, and Others: A Study, pp. 35-100. London: J. Murray, 1905.

Impressionistic study of the mythological Helen of Troy that mentions her presence in Sparta.

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Spartan Women. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2002, 198 p.

Full-length history of women in ancient Sparta that features sections on education, marriage, motherhood, the aristocracy, and religion in Spartan society.

Powell, Anton, and Stephen Hodkinson, eds. The Shadow of Sparta. London: Routledge, 1994, 408 p.

Collection of essays on the representation of Sparta in classical Greek literature.

———, eds. Sparta: Beyond the Mirage. London: Duckworth, 2002, 354 p.

Collection of fourteen essays on Spartan history, economics, politics, literature, and society by various contributors.

Snyder, Jane McIntosh. “Women Poets of Fifth-Century Greece: Myrtis, Korinna, Praxilla, and Telesilla.” In The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome, pp. 38-63. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.

Briefly mentions the now lost writings of the Spartan poet Megalostrata.

Supple, James J. “Arms and Letters.” In Arms Versus Letters: The Military Ideals in the Essais of Montaigne, pp. 62-105. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Includes some discussion of Montaigne's admiration for Spartan military virtue.

Turner, Frank M. “The Victorians and Greek Antiquity.” In The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain, pp. 1-14. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981.

Assessment of Victorian Hellenism.

Watt, Roderick H. “‘Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta’: History through Propaganda into Literary Commonplace.” Modern Language Review 80, no. 4 (October 1985): 871-83.

Traces the efforts of Nazi propagandists to link the German Third Reich with the past glories of Graeco-Roman civilization, specifically highlighting a proposed affinity between the Nazi catastrophe at Stalingrad and the heroic defeat of Leonidas I and his Spartan warriors at Thermopylae in 480 b.c.

———. “‘Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta’—A Postscript.” Forum for Modern Language Studies XXIII, no. 3 (3 July 1987): 274-79.

Continues the discussion of an earlier essay by Watt, noting the presence of the Stalingrad-Thermopylae motif in post-1945 German literature.

Woodhouse, W. J. King Agis of Sparta and His Campaign in Arkadia in 418 b.c.: A Chapter in the History of the Art of War among the Greeks, Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1933, 161 p.

Military history of the Arkadian campaign that follows Thucydides's account of the Peloponnesian War.