including headings The Spartan experience, Leaders of the Greek world, The Delian League, Build-up to war, Mutual destruction, ...
By the 5th century the days of the tyrants are over. The battlefield of Greek politics is cleared for a dispute between oligarchy and democracy. The struggle is a long one, though in many ways it is merely a reflection o...
Soon after the Social War another violent uprising within Italy shakes Roman confidence. This time the rebels are slaves. In 73 BC certain slaves, being trained as gladiators at Capua, break free and take refuge...
The intervention of the Spartans only serves to hasten the progress of Athens towards democracy. In 508 power is won with popular support by an aristocrat, Cleisthenes, who undermines the power of his own class by a majo...
It has seemed that neither Sparta nor Athens will ever have the strength to subdue the other. But from 415 the pattern changes. In that year Athens attempts an expedition to Sicily, hoping to capture the Corinthian colon...
All the Spartans die, selling their lives at a high price - Herodotus writes that the terrified enemy soldiers had to be whipped by their commanders into confronting these Greeks. Their fate becomes the enduring monument...
Leonidas, one of the two Spartan kings, is in command of the Greek army when the confrontation comes. His Spartan contingent is as yet only an advance guard of 300 men. He stations them under his immediate command at the...
After the defeat of Athens by Sparta in 404 an oligarchic government, brought to power by the Spartans, imposes a brief reign of terror on the city. Democracy is soon restored, but some followers of Socrates have been co...
Both the leading states of Greece - Sparta and Athens - depend entirely upon forced labour, though the system in Sparta is more properly described as serfdom rather than slavery. The distinction is that the helots of Spa...
This more radical group (calling themselves the Spartakusbund or Spartacus League, after the rebel leader of the gladiators), has split from the Social Democratic party in 1916. It is led by Karl Liebknecht and th...
