Originating mainly from conquered regions like Messenia, the Helots were essential to the Spartan economy, allowing the ...

We like how they support gay rights and how women are allegedly treated as equals within the Israeli army. One aspect of Sparta that was not discussed in my history lessons was their treatment of ...

Sparta spent nearly three centuries as the preeminent military power in Ancient Greece. It rose to dominate the Peloponnese, Greece’s large southern peninsula, and led an alliance of city-states ...

Today's current affairs seem so mirrored in the past; the great events of long, long ago seem so similar to what’s happening today. Not events ...

Racially ‘pure’ Sparta brutalised and enslaved an entire people called the Helots, subjecting them to legalised murder once every year, in a kind of classical world version of The Purge.

Time and space shifting: author David Cairns on the difficulties of writing detailed historical fiction set in Scotland from Australia. I have just finished my sixth novel – all relating events in the ...