Thermopylae: The Battle that Changed the World

By Paul Cartledge

Go tell the Spartans, Passerby,

That here, obedient to their laws, we lie'

Thus did the poet Simonides remember the three hundred elite Spartan warriors who, led by their king, Leonidas, faced the vast, inrushing Persian army at the ‘hot gates’ of Thermopylae and fought to the death for an ideal dearer to them than life itself – the ideal of freedom. Paul Cartledge’s offers a compelling re-examination of this crucial moment in history, a epic clash of civilizations that helped shape the identity of Classical Greece and our own cultural heritage.

‘Our greatest living expert on Sparta tells the story of that fearsome city’s finest hour. The result is a book that wonderfully demonstrates the capacity of profound scholarship to thrill, to move and to inspire’ Tom Holland, author of Rubicon and Persian Fire

‘The world's leading authority on ancient Sparta’ Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Aug 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9780330475624

Paul Cartledge

Paul Cartledge is A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and emeritus A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture in the Faculty of Classics, where he taught from 1979 to 2014. His undergraduate and doctoral qualifications were obtained at Oxford, where he completed a dissertation on the archaeology and history of early Sparta under the supervision of Professor Sir John Boardman. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of well over a score of books, including The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece; The Spartans: An Epic History; Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past; Thermopylae: The Battle that Changed the World; and Democracy: A Life. He co-edits a monograph series, sits on the editorial boards of three learned journals, and serves as consultant in ancient history to publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and an Honorary Citizen of Sparta, Greece, and holds the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour awarded by the President of the Hellenic Republic.

Reviews for Thermopylae

[sandydog1_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An ok re-hash of Herodotus, and a nice readable summary of this ancient Persian War. The author provides Interesting accounts of Spartan society. The later chapters provide a description of Western Civilizations artistic and literary response to this epic battle. There's some redundancy throughout the book, but it's not too tedious.