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FREETHE SPARTANS: AN EPIC HISTORY EBOOK

Paul Cartledge | 288 pages | 29 Aug 2013 | Pan MacMillan | 9781447237204 | English | London, United Kingdom The Spartans: An Epic History - Paul Cartledge - Google Books

No eBook available Amazon. My approach to learning about something new is to get as many books as I can — in no particular order — read them all, and try to average things out. Read full The Spartans: An Epic History. This was ok, The Spartans: An Epic History some points of interest, but I probably would have gotten more out of the actual book than I did the audio. As others have noted, there is not much "flow" but rather a bit of Account Options Sign in. My library Help Advanced Book Search. Get print book. Shop for Books on Google Play Browse the world's largest eBookstore and start reading today on the web, tablet, phone, or ereader. The Spartans : An Epic History. Paul Cartledge. Pan Books- Extinct city - pages. Paul Cartledge argues that the Spartans are our ancestors, every bit as much as the Athenians. But while promoted democracy, individualism, culture and society, their great rivals Sparta embodied militarism, totalitarianism, segregation and brutal repression. Bibliographic information. The Spartans Paul Cartledge No preview available - The Spartans: An Epic History - Paul Cartledge - Google книги

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want The Spartans: An Epic History Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. The Spartans were a society of warrior-heroes who were the living exemplars of such core values as duty, discipline, self-sacrifice, and extreme toughness. Paul Cartledge brin The Spartans were a society of warrior-heroes who were the living exemplars of such core values as duty, discipline, self- sacrifice, and extreme toughness. Paul Cartledge brings to life figures like legendary founding father Lycurgus and King Leonidas, who embodied the heroism so closely identified with this unique culture, and he shows how Spartan women enjoyed an unusually dominant and powerful role The Spartans: An Epic History this hyper-masculine society. Based firmly on original sources, The Spartans is the definitive book about one of the most fascinating cultures of ancient Greece. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. Published August 10th by Vintage first published November 8th More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Spartansplease sign up. My 15 yo son is look ing for a good book about the Spartans. What would you recommend? See 1 question about The Spartans…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Once upon a time, long ago view spoiler [ actual last Saturday hide spoiler ] and far away I had a fancy The Spartans: An Epic History read about the French revolution, popped into an Oxfam bookshop, looked about at what they had and came out with this The Spartans: An Epic History two pounds and forty-nine pence, having read it, I feel it will return there shortly. Wandering idly back view spoiler [ since I have never lived in a bookshop or The Spartans: An Epic History library hide spoiler ] I wondered about left-handed Spartans, the ancient were known for their Once upon a time, long ago view spoiler [ actual last Saturday hide spoiler ] and far away The Spartans: An Epic History had a fancy to read about the French revolution, popped into an Oxfam bookshop, looked about at what they had and came out with this for two pounds and forty-nine pence, having read it, I feel it will return there shortly. Wandering idly back view spoiler [ since I have never lived in a bookshop or a library hide spoiler ] I wondered about left-handed Spartans, the ancient Greeks The Spartans: An Epic History known for their mode of fighting in close ranks were each man wore a large round shield strapped to his left The Spartans: An Epic History and carried a spear in his right hand, the idea The Spartans: An Epic History that you could protect the right side of your body by nudging to the right of your neighbour and sheltering behind the side of his shield. Typically their armies were divided into a left, centre and right and the tendency for every-man to move rightwards meant that The Spartans: An Epic History battle the right flank of one army would defeat the left flank of the opposing army while the centres would clash irritably. This continued for hundreds of years apparently until the Thebians developed a cunning new deployment of a super strong left flank and so defeated their The Spartans: An Epic History on both the left and the right leaving the enemy centre feeling very lonely and homesick. This was highly efficient and sped up battles considerably, however shortly afterwards the Macedonians swept down from the north with a different innovation - a super long spear which enabled them to triumph over all opponents, which just goes to show that ideas are like buses, you wait around for centuries and then three come one after the other, three because the Romans were just across the sea biding their time to march in with a new kind of flexible tactical deployment which enabled them to crush all before them. But I am digressing from my digression which was that if you The Spartans: An Epic History left-handed you were pretty much buggered view spoiler [ and not just on account of the homoerotic socialisation into adult society hide spoiler ]apparently tools from the stone age are fairly evenly divided between being suitable for left or right handed use but hop forward in time and the familiar dominance of right-handedness is apparent creating the mystery of the revolution of the right hand, so if you were a left handed Spartan were you just a bit sub-Spartan, or was it a case of 'I'm sorry lad, but you're just not cut out for the modern military, I hear that in The Spartans: An Epic History they want rowers'. Cartledge doesn't address himself to the left-handed conundrum, but it was only an idle thought. Cartledge, I was familiar with from In our Time an ongoing radio series on which he spoke and sometimes still speaks on various classical themes, and his warm friendly, mildly witty approach does translate into the book as does a conversational manner which unfortunately makes for a book that is a bit rambling The Spartans: An Epic History noticeably repetitive. Naturally my second thought was along the lines of 'oi, you, why'd jer write this book then? I am divided as to whether he is successful or not, my initial thought was no, this is more of a second book, not the kind of thing a total new-comer to the subject could run away with and become entranced by, however after a night's sleep and morning coffee I feel it is more in the ok but not inspiring category, sub-Spartan for sure. I very much enjoyed the chapter on Sparta in Early Greecebut that took the approach of historical sociology or archaeological anthropology - who were the Spartans, what were the qualities of their culture, Cartledge instead wants to take a more historical approach running from Helen of Troy who came from Sparta and curiously became a cult figure there view spoiler [ curiously I think because the only two things we know about her was that she was very beautiful and that her adultery led to a ten year war, not automatically the grounds for becoming a cult figure I would have The Spartans: An Epic History hide spoiler ] through to the Roman period. He does this through a series of The Spartans: An Epic History, principally of the Spartan kings, on the plus side I suppose there is a focus on famous names and mighty battles, on the downside a tendency to repeat the same information once within about about words as though the book was constructed like a jigsaw puzzle out of dozens of free-standing pieces with no view to the overall picture. For me it felt as though he succeeded in neither addressing the interesting questions about the lasting appeal of Sparta in the European imagination Wanderer kommst The Spartans: An Epic History nach Spa The aforementioned chapter in Early Greece seemed to me to cover more ground in less than twenty pages that Cartledge does in almost three hundred, but then Cartledge does get the opportunity to repeat himself a few times and the font size in Early Greece is smaller. Cartledge only touches on the beginning of Sparta as The Spartans: An Epic History major tourist destination in the ancient world p. This was re- enacted for Roman era tourists, fortunately or unfortunately depending on what you thought you had paid to view, the participants would sometimes get over involved in their role-play and a The Spartans: An Epic History boy would get beaten to death, most of the architectural remains of Sparta come from this era - to cater for the demands of the tourist era, back in the day when the Spartans were the archetypal master race as Thucycides imagined the physical remains of their culture would be too unimpressive for any one to believe how militarily The Spartans: An Epic History politically dominant they had been. I have a desire to end this review with anecdotes about the Sybarites and Pythagoras and dancing horses, but they don't really tie in the book at all, so I won't. View all The Spartans: An Epic History comments. This is a bad book. That doesn't change the fact that Cartledge is an eminent authority on Sparta and uniquely well-qualified from a research perspective to write this book. The demands of academic history, however, are not the same as those for a book produced for general consumption. This volume fails on at least three counts. First, tone. Were this a text for scholars, Cartledge would be well within his rights to write in the querulous, self-defensive tone he sometimes takes here. A general h This is a bad book. A general history presents settled matters to an intelligent but not necessarily specialist audience. Such a readership is not interested in the arcana of specialist debates over issues; they just want the facts, such as they are. If the facts are in dispute, a frank explanation and a clear position taken are what general history requires. Cartledge can't forgo playing swift rounds of 'cover my ass' on specialist debates that the general reader doesn't know and certainly can't be brought to care about. Such defensive gestures, if they were deemed truly necessary, should have been relegated to end notes or a more expansive set of appendices. Second, the book fails in terms of structure. A general history ought to tell an interesting story well. All he really has to do is get out of the way and tell the story clearly. If he can add new facts to well-worn stories like that of Thermopylae so much the better. The organization of this particular narrative is a disaster. The history of Sparta is divided into three periods roughly : everything up to Thermopylae, the period of Spartan hegemony through the Peloponnesian war, and the long dissolution thereafter under the Macedonians and finally the Romans. Nothing wrong with that in principle. But the story is never told in anything like a straightforward manner. Instead, Cartledge loops forward and backward in time, dipping like a swallow into any topic that strikes him as important from moment to moment, without conveying to the reader the The Spartans: An Epic History of the digressions. One would be hard pressed from this volume to put together a coherent account of the rise, dominion and fall of Sparta. Worse, Cartledge sees fit to lard his general narrative with potted histories mostly taken from Plutarch or Xenophon or other ancient sources of characters he deems important. Most of the mini-biographies add little to the source material. They interrupt the flow of the overall narrative and very often repeat information conveyed two or more times elsewhere in the book. Sometimes these mini-bios are built on nothing more than a single line of reported dialogue-- very flimsy scaffolding to base a 'biography' on, particularly when the larger purpose of the biography in the overall narrative isn't clear to begin with. Thirdly, this fails at the level of the sentence and paragraph. Cartledge's looping organizational style filters down to the level of the sentence, where he frequently burdens forthright statements with one qualifying clause after another. His editors have badly let him down, at times allowing him to produce sentences that are barely grammatical, with unclear referents. At other times the text is repetitive. We learn twice in two paragraphs that Augustus was known as Octavian, for instance. All of this adds up to a maddening volume. Set pieces that should have been gems in the crown of this story the heroic defense at Thermopylae lose luster in Cartledge's infuriating prose style. Mostly this is just kind of ineffective stuff which is depressing. But the final chapter, on hunting, turns into a nasty little set piece designed to take Roger Scruton out to the shed for daring to compare foxhunting to Spartan boar-hunting. I hold no brief for foxhunting, but surely Scruton is allowed to put the two things together if he wishes despite his snarkiness, Cartledge provides no compelling reason why the two things can't be at least contrasted. Cartledge's final chapter thus leaves a nasty taste after a largely unedifying slog through history. Not recommended at all. View all 4 comments. Apr 02, Cody rated it really liked it. Noted Greek historian Paul Cartledge attempts here in this book to lend some much needed insight to the subject, offering a brief overview of what makes Sparta in and of itself Sparta whilst helping to dispel many sorts of misinformation or misperception of it. Cartledge covers much ground in this book, albeit shortly, with many names, dates, places, and important happenings, such as Leonidas at The Spartans: An Epic History, the unique role of Spartan women, religion in general, and Sparta's complex role in and outside of the Greek territories. This book shouldn't be taken as an introductory course to Sparta, as it's much to easy to get "lost in the weeds" without a general knowledge of Ancient Greece as a whole. Nor is it something for a student who already has a great grasp of Sparta. But to those with a passion for the subject that find their understanding of the topic lacking, there is a reward to turning it's pages. Apr 08, Julian Worker rated it it was amazing. The Spartans: An Epic History - Paul Cartledge.. | History Books & Magazines | VK

To browse Academia. Skip to main content. Log In Sign Up. Download Free PDF. Linda Leestemaker. Give reasons for your answer. I am aware of the policy against plagiarism at Rhodes University. I hereby state that the written work I hand in is my own writing and that everything is referenced correctly. The two states were famous, but who was the more enlightened one during their reign in 5th century BC Greece? Athens and her democracy Athena, patron-goddess of Athens, gave the city a sacred olive tree, symbolizing prosperity and peace 2. Until this day, the The Spartans: An Epic History tree stands on the Akropolis, and Athens most definitely was one of the most prosperous cities in antiquity. Our constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, [ In the 5th century BC, over Of which only Male Athenian citizens, The Spartans: An Epic History from an Athenian mother and Athenian father, above the age of 20 could take part in the democracy. They had to be educated in public speaking and had served in the military. By law, women, slaves and foreigners were completely excluded from any share of power. The oligarchy of Sparta Sparta was feared by other countries for its army. This war-state conquered the main land of Greece by force, or by smart propaganda and diplomacy. The city-state was proud of its connections to Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in Ancient Greece and the cause of the bloodiest war in antiquity Sparta was, unlike Athens, an oligarchy. But the state did not have a tyrant The Spartans: An Epic History, actually, became quite famous as the state that overthrew other tyrants 5. Sparta was ruled by two kings, who were equal in power and kept each other in balance, and a handful of high-class officials. Spartan male citizens were trained from the age of 8 to be citizens of the war-state when they were around the age of 20, by living in barracks and training to be fully part of Sparta 6. Pan Books 2 Pausanias. Description of Greece. Bailkey, R. Heath and Co. To them, politics were less important than to the Athenians, although every Spartan citizen had to gain a certain level of education. There was one big difference between the two famous city-states. Their allies adopted the Spartan policies, but not the other way around 8. And if force did not do the trick for the war-state, they went over onto propaganda and diplomacy, as they did with the Persians for years This seclusion was a sign of wealth, as a wealthy woman could sent slaves on errands But it was also because women were seen as weak and inferior. Then life would have been good. Athena had a high-priestess, and the harvest-goddess Demeter had several priestesses. There also was a strong connection between Dionysus the god of ecstasy, celebration and wine and the public appearance of Athenian women 14, as they did attend the theatre in his honour The Spartans: An Epic History girls were married around the age of 14, engaging in childbirth when they were 16 years old The common age difference around 20 years between wife and husband improved the seclusion of women as an 14 year old girl would never be able to stand up against her 30 year old husband who had military training, years of education and a status in the society of Athens. But even though we know all this, it cannot be concluded if women were happy or unhappy. Life as some sort of possession or prisoner seems highly immoral nowadays, but these women were protected and taken care of in an economical way. And they had their power in the Athenian religion, which they used freely. Heath and Co 8 P. Pan Books 9 John Jackson, lecture of 10 P. Pan Books 11 S. Schocken Books 12 S. Schocken Books 13 Euripides. Medea, page Schocken Books 15 S. In the eyes of most Athenian men, it was outrageous that boys and girls had the same education. The Spartan women were not overruled by men like their Athenian sisters, they were full citizens and highly independent. Spartan women were The Spartans: An Epic History, physically trained and seen as full members of society. A Spartan woman got married between the age of 18 and 20 with a male citizen of their own age, and she owned her own ground, household and other properties. Sparta was proud of its female citizens. Clytemnestra, wife of king Agamemnon, and her sister Helen of Troy were both Spartans, and honoured in their city-state. Those two women are still famous in our modern time. Enlightened Although you could state that the democracy is the most enlightened form of politics, the one in Athens had many flaws. They excluded most of their citizens of power. The oligarchy was a more old fashioned form of government, with the two kings that ruled Sparta it was a fair regime that could be overthrown if a king became too much like a tyrant. Also, the way Sparta treated its female citizens was highly enlightened above the Athenian ways. By overseeing this as a whole picture. I conclude that in my opinion, Sparta was more enlightened than Athens. Their government was fair to all citizens and to foreigners, and their citizens were treated alike no matter what their gender was. Sources 1. The Spartans: An Epic History Books 2. Classics handout: Herodotus and Thucydides 3. Heath and Co 4. Pan Books 5. Lectures of John Jackson, from until 6. Classics handout: The Classical Studies Handbook The Spartans: An Epic History. Schocken Books 18 P. Pan Books. Related Papers. By Kimberly Webb. Conflict in the Peloponnese: Social, Military and Intellectual. By Vasiliki Brouma. How did the rites of passage in Sparta contribute to their representation as a " military society ". By Natalie Dent. Slavery as a political problem during the Peloponessian wars. By Bernat Montoya. Download pdf. Remember me on this The Spartans: An Epic History. Enter the email The Spartans: An Epic History you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up.

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