In the past twenty years the study of Sparta has come of age. Images prevalent earlier in the 20th century, of Spartans as hearty good fellows or scarlet-cloaked automata, have been superseded by more complex scholarly reactions. As interest has grown in the self-images projected by this most secretive of Greek cities, increasing attention has focused on how individual Greek writers from other states reacted to information, or disinformation about Sparta. The studies in this volume provide new insights into the traditional historians' question, "What actually happened at Sparta?". But the implications of the work go far beyond Laconia. They concern preoccupations of some of the most studied of Greek writers, and help towards an understanding of how Athenians defined the achievment, or the failure, of their own city.

Contents:
1. Euripides and Sparta 2. Laconica: Aristophanes and the Spartans 3. The Duplicitous Spartan 4. Two Shadows: Images of Spartans and Helots 5. Xenophon, Sparta and the Cyropaedia 6. `Blind Ploutos'?: Contemporary Images of the Role of Wealth in Classical Sparta 7. Images of Sparta: Writer and Audience in Isocrates' Panathenaicus 8. Plato and Sparta: Modes of Rule and of Non-rational Persuasion in the Laws 9. Aristotle on Sparta 10. Sparta Re(de)valued: some Athenian Public Attitudes to Sparta between Leuctra and the Lamian War

Democratic Athens is often viewed - mistakenly - as the model ancient Greek state. This volume of papers by a wide range of contributors sets the record straight by examining the huge variations of political systems and forms of regional community around the Hellenic world. It highlights the immense political flexibility and diversity of ancient Greek civilization.

The study of the Spartans is now pursued more widely and intensively than ever. Indeed, no longer is Sparta the 'second city' of ancient Greece. This volume, the fourth in the established series on which Powell and Hodkinson have collaborated, breaks fresh ground, not least in the range of its contributors. The authors of the fourteen new papers represent nine different countries and demonstrate many of the fertile modern approaches to the history, the archaeology - and the still-influential image - of the city on the Eurotas.

Democratic Athens is often viewed - mistakenly - as the model ancient Greek state. This volume of papers by a wide range of contributors sets the record straight by examining the huge variations of political systems and forms of regional community around the Hellenic world. It highlights the immense political flexibility and diversity of ancient Greek civilization.

The name "Helots" evokes one of the most famous peculiarities of ancient Sparta, the system of dependent labor that guaranteed the livelihood of the free citizens. The Helots fulfilled all the functions that slaves carried out elsewhere in the Greek world, allowing their masters the leisure to be full-time warriors. Yet, despite their crucial role, Helots remain essentially invisible in our ancient sources and peripheral and enigmatic in modern scholarship.

This book is devoted to a much-needed reassessment of Helotry and of its place in the history and sociology of unfree labor. The essays deal with the origins and historical development of Helotry, with its sociological, economic, and demographic aspects, with its ideological construction and negotiation.