Twenty-five hundred years ago the Spartans were the indisputable military power in Greece. No city had warriors as fierce and ...

An earthquake in Sparta in the year 464 BCE started a series of events which ultimately led to the Peloponnesian War.

Athens and Sparta represented for classical thinkers distinct and opposing regimes. Democratic Athens took pride in its freedom, openness, and accomplishments in the arts and philosophy.

The Spartans cut Athens off by land leaving them their navy and the sea as their only defense. However, the early Spartan navy was inefficient. Athens outranked them easily on this field.

Perhaps the clearest rebuttal of the super-warrior myth is found in the 120 elite Spartans who fought at the Battle of Sphacteria (425 B.C.); when their Athenian enemies surrounded them, they ...

Yet Athens' economic power surpassed that of Sparta long before the war. The aggressive expansion of its alliance system, the Delian League, deeply frustrated Sparta but did not make the conflict ...

If we want to continue living in a golden era, be like the Athenians not the Spartans, says Swedish historian Johan Norberg.

When hyper-militarized, hierarchical Sparta attacked open, democratic Athens in 431 BCE, the Athenians hunkered down for war by calling the denizens of their outlying farmlands into the city ...