Maarten's Reviews > Spartans An Epic History

Paul Cartledge is an undisputed authority when it comes to Spartan history, and I don't doubt the factual accuracy of this book. That said, I completely agree with the criticism that The Spartans is neither accessible to a broad audience, nor a proper work of academia - and thus fails at both.

Additionally, Cartledge is at times wayyyy to conservative in his interpretation of the value of Classics, as seen in the introduction where he hammers on the value of Greece as the birthplace of Western civilization blablabla. However, in the appendix he does give a wonderful example of the value of historians as guardians against the abuse of history, in relation to foxhunting of all things. Strangely, in the main body of the book both of these positions disappear. In itself this is fine, or even desirable, but it leads to an obvious chasm between the different parts of the book.

Finally, the editing in this book is atrocious. Some sentences are so convoluted as to be all but incomprehensible, the narrative is often confused, and the biographies are not clearly demarcated, mess up the narrative, and don't add much that could not have been incorporated into the main text.