Athens and Sparta: The rivalry that shaped ancient Greece Adrian Goldsworthy
Event details
Two great cities. One fierce rivalry. Countless untold stories.
Athens and Sparta were the two big players in Ancient Greece. United, they helped lead the Greeks in defeating the great Persian invasion. Divided, they spread conflict and destruction throughout the eastern Mediterranean. They were not simply rivals for power, but polar opposites in culture and ideology: Athens was the outward looking, radical democracy with a maritime empire while Sparta was militaristic, rigidly disciplined and brutal. Both were experiments in how to run a state, epitomising the extremes of the Greek longing to excel.
Join historian Adrian Goldsworthy, author of Athens and Sparta, for a story not just of politics and war, but also of culture. In Athens, philosophers dissected the physical and moral world, writers spun forth comedy and drama, and new ideas filled the city. Athens could be vulgar and cruel, but no other state has ever allowed thousands of citizens to debate its laws freely. Sparta was innovative in other ways, with a society divided into strict class groups and an astonishing focus on military training. Both cities were paradoxes – they were at once remarkably ordered and surprisingly prone to savagery.
Book sales
You can buy copies of many of our speakers’ books from Fox Lane Books, a local independent bookseller and Festival partner. In some cases, author signed bookplates are available too.
About the speaker
Dr Adrian Goldsworthy studied at Oxford University, where his doctoral thesis examined the Roman army. He went on to become an acclaimed historian of Ancient Civilisations, with numerous works of non-fiction including The Eagle and the Lion, Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors, Caesar, The Fall of the West, Pax Romana and Hadrian’s Wall. His latest book is Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece (Head of Zeus, 2026)
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