Many self-professed champions of freedom throughout the centuries have looked to ancient Sparta as an inspiration. The doomed stand of 300 Spartan warriors against the Persian Empire at Thermopylae in ...

A tough military society, Sparta had its own secret service, the Crypteia, specially trained young men for covert operations ...

Athens and Sparta were two very different societies, yet the two legendary city-states hold priceless historic value for ...

Sparta had a highly unusual system of government. Two kings ruled the city, but a 28-member 'council of elders' limited their powers. These men were recruited from the highest social class, the ...

Beginning in the 14th century, when Greece was wracked by political and social struggles, monks began building a series of ...

At the end, just 300 men stood between victory and the collapse of Western civilisation. It was the summer of 480BC. The Persian invasion force under Great King Xerxes had swept down from the north to ...