Review: Sparta at War

By Scott M. Rusch

This dense but short tome is all about the city-state of Sparta and their wars, namely the Persian wars around 480BC and the Peloponnesian war, 431-404 BC. It begins with some detail of the Spartans themselves as a society, but rapidly moves into recounting and updating the aforementioned wars with a both modern – and educated – perspective. Dr Rusch is a Greek military history expert, particularly on the Peloponnesian War, and so this is very much for readers looking for historical, factual recounting and exploration.

As most historians have had to, it leans heavily on the primary sources of Herodotus, Thucydides as well as the less reliable Diodorus, Plutarch and Xenophon.

Culture and controversy

The first part of the book necessarily establishes who the Spartans were: their culture, their differences to other Greeks and the usual elephant in the room of their enslavement of a slave class: the helots. The primary sources of the Spartans, as I mentioned before, are sparse: but Dr Rusch includes the known ones, including the poems of Tyrtaeus to help establish the wider society of the Spartans. They were not only warriors, but Greeks who engaged in art, landowning, and poetry.

There was, however, a lot of war, and this is very much the focus of this book. In a sense I was glad, as some ancient history books titles can be quite misleading and not really precise enough. Imagine, for example, if this were focussed heavily on Spartan culture and their societal structure and nature. Some of this is here, but it serves as a necessary prelude and includes just the right amount of detail.

The book includes a comprehensive set of battles the Spartans engaged in: Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, Aegospotami, Pylos & Sphacteria and more. They help establish a picture of Sparta through the ages, calling out the heroics of Brasidas, the ‘redemption arc’ of the exiled Gylippus, the – possibly cowardly – or sensible Agis and of course Leonidas.

Sparta rallied most famously at Thermopylae to hold the Persians and died to a man. As commonly seen in the history books but not outside of them, he acknowledges the presence of other Greeks during the battle. It certainly was a brave action, but often the focus - as seen in the fun but far from fictitious 300 films – is usually on the Spartans themselves. Historians have been speaking about the Spartan myth for years, and although Dr Rusch doesn’t focus on this, he does a historians’ job of calling out what seems accurate or not.

Give me your best arms

The main strength of this book is very much its military analysis. This is unsurprising given the author’s background and it does give it a USP versus other books on the Spartans and their wars. The positioning of fleets, the importance of rations and supplies, the arrangement of the trireme – Dr. Rusch doesn’t miss on these aspects, and it is where this book excels. We occasionally get into the nitty-gritty details which historians have debated – how the phalanx fought, techniques used within the phalanx, the Spartan usage of cavalry. You’ll learn a lot about how the battles were fought.

Something this book is to be applauded for is the colour pictures and black and white maps. There’s plenty of them, and a historian’s task is often to create an accurate picture. I suspect the usual challenge is cost, but they add so much to the narrative I wish more historical books would include them. For the Peloponnesian War, there are many names and factions, and to cover a wide period filled with battles it is really assisted by the maps – of Greece but also to hone in on specific details.

We are missing Thucydides’ last book of the Peloponnesian War, so for the last period of it we rely on the less reliable Diodorus, Plutarch and Xenophon. Dr Rush does a good job of highlighting the issues with these, without over-elaborating. This is representative of the book as a whole: containing all the important parts and it never feels tired. Where I would say the book loses points is that it can be dry and heavy on terminology. There isn’t a huge amount of flow between the battles, and why they were happening. Of course this is a stylistic/approach choice: the book would have to be significantly longer to achieve this, but it may have made it more readable for some. I think this book might be a struggle for somebody not interested in the Spartans or familiar with at least some of the information, but it is unlikely many people fitting that description are buying this.

Other Bibliography/recommendations

In terms of other books you might read about the Spartans, the Peloponnesian war has been handled arguably foremostly by Donald Kagan, but also Victor Davis Hanson. Paul Cartledge is one of the most well-known and published writers on the Spartans themselves, and a great starting point. Paul Anthony Rahe has several books covering almost everything. Stephen Hodkinson, Anton Powell, Elizabeth Rawson and others have argued for a tempering of the Spartan myth: that which you know is likely exaggerated for an extent. For example, much that we know about the Spartans in terms of their near-mythological prowess comes from the Roman writer Plutarch, writing 2nd century AD. We don’t have evidence to supplement many of the outrageous claims, although their militaristic nature and the heroism of Thermopylae is, to my mind, very much justified. Certainly their prowess had a reputation because they were successful in many battles, but they also surrendered in some and late on in the Peloponnesian War, lost battles and skirmishes.

Final score

This is a detailed, expert knowledge of the Spartans, and perhaps essential reading for a recounting of their wars. It can be dry and heavy in places – there are many names, battles, skirmishes, and the book is shorter than, say Donald Kagain’s Peloponnesian war, which tends to do a better job of linking events together for that reason. But in its military analysis it is unsurpassed – you should maybe add a point to the score if that is what you’re looking for. An excellent historical recounting.

8/10