Greek attitudes to settlement and territory were often articulated through myths and cults. This book emphasizes less the poetic, timeless qualities of the myths than their historical function in the archaic and Classical periods, covering the spectrum from explicit charter myths legitimating conquest, displacement, and settlement to the 'precedent-setting' and even aetiological myths, rendering new landscapes 'Greek'. This spectrum is broadest in the world of Spartan colonization – the Spartan Mediterranean – where the greater challenges to territorial possession and Sparta's acute self-awareness of its relative national youthfulness elicited explicit responses in the form of charter myths. The concept of a Spartan Mediterranean, in contrast to the image of a land-locked Sparta, is a major contribution of this book. This revised edition contains a substantial new Introduction which engages with critical and scholarly developments on Sparta since the original publication.

‘…This is a wide-ranging, intellectually stimulating and scholarly book which makes an important contribution to the cognitive history of Greek antiquity. Ultimately, the judicious and disciplined analysis of myths as historical formulations of a Spartan self-concept represents a more fruitful approach to the Lakonian past than undue reliance on the refracted perceptions of Athenian writers.'

Jonathan M. Hall - University of Chicago

‘… it has fallen to Malkin to pin down for the rest of us a large swath of that most enigmatic and elusive thing: the Spartan mind.'

P. George