Greeks - in later times - saw Athens as 'the Hellas of Hellas', but in the classical period many Athenians thought otherwise. Athens might be a school of Hellas, but the school of Hellas was Sparta. Militarily and morally, Sparta was supreme. This book explores how Athenians - ordinary citizens as well as writers and politicians - thought about Sparta's superiority. Nine new studies from an international cast examine how Athenians might revere Sparta even as they fought her. This respect led to Plato's literary creation of fantasy cities (in the Republic and Laws) to imitate Spartan methods. And, after its military surrender in 404 BC, ruling Athenian politicians claimed that their city was to be remodelled as itself a New Sparta.

Paul Cartledge is A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University, UK, and a Fellow of Clare College. He has published extensively on Greek history over several decades, including The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece (1997, new edition 2002), Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past (2004, revised edition 2005), Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice (2009), and Democracy: A Life (2016).

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 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 Sup�rieure in Paris, in 2006 for Greek history and in 2008 for Latin literature.