Notes and quotes concerning Myke Cole’s, The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy. From Amazon:

“The last stand at Thermopylae made the Spartans legends in their own time, famous for their toughness, stoicism and martial prowess – but was this reputation earned?”

“This book paints a very different picture of Spartan warfare – punctuated by frequent and heavy losses. We also discover a society dedicated to militarism not in service to Greek unity or to the Spartan state itself, but as a desperate measure intended to keep its massive population of helots (a near-slave underclass) in line.”

Cole is not saying that the Spartans were bad fighters, just that even in their glory days they were not overwhelmingly superior to the warriors of other Greek city-states. In fact, they could be skilled with soft power. The Peloponnesian wars were finally decided by money:

“Lysander charmed him as much as Alcibiades had Tissaphernes, convincing the young prince [the Persian Prince Cyrus the Younger] to open his coffers to the point where sailors in the Spartan fleet were paid more than their Athenian counterparts. Lysander’s thinking was that the higher pay would encourage skilled rowers to desert the Athenian cause and come over to the Spartan fleet. This strategy would turn out to be devastatingly effective.”

“the writing was on the wall : after years of being on the naval back foot , Lysander and Cyrus had finally figured out how to beat Athens at sea – the higher pay offered by the Spartan fleet was starting to tell as experienced rowers deserted the Athenian fleet to work for higher wages serving Sparta.”

He has a chapter on “The Spartans and the Political Far Right,” emphasizing the Right’s use of the myth of the Spartans, rather than the reality

“Thermopylae imagery was rife in the campaign imagery supporting candidate Donald Trump in his bid for the American presidency. Writing for the Washington Post in 2016, reporter Ishaan Tharoor pointed out that a YouTube video posted by a user under the handle ‘Aryan Wisdom’ depicted then-candidate Trump as Leonidas, holding back an invading tide that included Soros and Obama. At the time of this writing , the video has been viewed roughly five million times.”

Well worth reading.