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Thucydides and Sparta
Edited by Anton Powell and Paula Debnar

ISBN-13 9781910589755 Hardback ppxiv,285 2021
 
Thucydides is widely seen as the most dispassionate and reliable contemporary source for the history of classical Sparta. But, compared with partisan authors such as Xenophon and Plutarch, his information on the subject is more scattered and implicit. Scholars in recent decades have made progress in teasing out the sense of Thucydides’ often lapidary remarks on Sparta. This book takes the process further. Its eight new studies by international specialists aim to reveal coherent structures both in Thucydidean thought and in Spartan reality. This volume is the second of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales applies to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome’s revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing them with a combination of historical and literary methods.
 

The editors:
Anton Powell † has published extensively on the history of Sparta, Athens – and the literature of the Roman Revolution. He was the author of an introduction to source-criticism in Greek history, Athens and Sparta (3rd edition 2016), the editor of Wiley Blackwell’s Companion to Sparta (2 volumes, 2018), and co-editor (with Nicolas Richer) of Xenophon and Sparta (2020). His monograph Virgil the Partisan (2008) was awarded the prize of the American Vergilian Society for ‘the book that makes the greatest contribution toward our understanding and appreciation of Vergil’. He has twice been Invited Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, in 2006 for Greek history and in 2008 for Latin literature.

Paula Debnar is a distinguished analyst of both Thucydides and Sparta. Her monograph Speaking the Same Language: Speech and audience in Thucydides’ Spartan debates (2001) studies the role of rhetoric in creating a sense of ethnic identity (and difference). Among her numerous other publications is ‘Sparta and Spartans in Thucydides’, a joint study with Paul Cartledge in Brill’s Companion to Thucydides (2006). Paula Debnar is Professor of Classics on the Alumnae Foundation at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts.

The contributors:

Paula Debnar, Jean Ducat, Thomas J. Figueira, Maria Fragoulaki, Emily Greenwood, Polly Low, Ellen Millender, Anton Powell
 

Contents

In memoriam Anton Powell - Thomas J. Figueira and Ellen Millender

Introduction and Acknowledgements - Paula Debnar

1. Thucydides’ general attitude to Sparta - Emily Greenwood

2. Βραδυτὴς Λακωνική: Spartan slowness in Thucydides’ History - Paula Debnar

3. The presence of Sparta in the Funeral Oration of Perikles - Jean Ducat

4. Νόμιμα ἀρχαιότροπα καὶ ἄμεικτα: Thucydides’ alienation of Spartan kingship - Ellen Millender

5. Thucydides, ethnic solidarity, and Messenian ethnogenesis - Thomas J. Figueira

6. Xenia and proxenia in Thucydides’ Sparta - Polly Low

7. The mytho-political map of Spartan colonisation in Thucydides: the ‘Spartan colonial triangle’ vs. The ‘Spartan Mediterranean’ - Maria Fragoulaki

8. Information from Sparta: a trap for Thucydides? - Anton Powell

Index
 

H-Soz-Kult Nov.2021.

"Powell’s Thucydidean trap effectively serves as a conclusion to this volume which focuses consistently on the gap between Thucydides’ perception of the Spartans and the real Spartans he was seeking to portray. It would be tempting to attribute this gap to the so-called „Spartan mirage“. But it would be better to borrow a term Emily Greenwood coined in the opening chapter of this volume: „the Spartan effect“. ... The diverse chapters in this volume show that the Spartans were not always quite as different as they wanted outsiders to see them, or indeed, as outsiders like Thucydides wanted them to be.". Andrew J. Bayliss,

Classics for all 30 March 2021.

"With chapter endnotes and bibliographies, an index and map, this volume should be of value not just to students or scholars with a specific interest in Thucydides or Sparta, but to readers interested in how history works and how historians and their sources can shape our understanding of the world. Aware of the patterns formed by human endeavour, and branding his work a ‘possession for all time’, Thucydides would surely have agreed that fake news and alternative truths are nothing new." David Stuttard,

Histos 2022, 30-45.

"This volume thus ably addresses an outstanding issue in Thucydides, the question of Spartan national character and his representation of it. Although the authors occasionally offer contrasting interpretations, all contributions to the volume are thought-provoking, innovative, and informative. The combi_x0002_nation of historical and historiographic analyses works especially well, as readers approaching Greek history and historiography from many and varying perspectives will find material to interest them." Rachel Bruzzone, Histos 2022, 30-45.