This story appears in the November/December 2016 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Sparta’s enemies, when facing the intimidating Spartan forces, would see a wall of shields ...

Many self-professed champions of freedom throughout the centuries have looked to ancient Sparta as an inspiration. The doomed ...

Boy Scouts, members of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post #7248 in Sparta, and Wendy Wyman and her family gathered at the ...

While many people were making Thanksgiving preparations or getting a start on their Christmas shopping, more than 500 people ...

The thirty tyrants of Athens were only in power for eight months but still managed to kill five percent of the city's population.

More atrocities followed when the assembly voted to chop off the right hands of all prisoners of war in an attempt to prevent them fighting again. Sparta suggested peace, once again Athens refused.

It was made up of lots of smaller states. These states were always squabbling and often went to war. Sparta and Athens fought a long war, called the Peloponnesian War, from 431 to 404BC.

With a foothold in Sicily the Athenians would also gain a tactically advantageous position from which to attack Sparta, if war broke out between the two great powers once more. Setting off with a ...