Sparta ─ The Body Politic

This is the 7th volume from the International Sparta Seminar. Chapters by distinguished scholars deal with the politics of Spartan nudity; the insecurity of Spartan kings and their involvement with divination; the social meaning of the prominence of animals in Lakonian vase-painting and in naming; what Lakonian vase-painting reveals about local consumerism; the ' ghost of the Lakedaimonian state' and the position of Sparta's perioikoi; Ephorus' idealising view of Sparta; how Spartan women policed the behaviour of men; and how 20th-century intellectuals compared Sparta with Nazi Germany.

Anton Powell is the author of Athens and Sparta (2nd edn., 2001) and of Virgil the Partisan (2008). He founded and, with Stephen Hodkinson, organises the International Sparta Seminar. He has conceived and edited numerous collective volumes in Ancient History. He is the editor of Wiley-Blackwell's Companion to Sparta (2011, forthcoming). Powell has recently been Visiting Professor at L'Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris and at the University of Bordeaux.

Stephen Hodkinson is an internationally-recognised authority on the history of Sparta. Author of numerous influential studies in Greek history, his book Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta (2000) is the leading work in its field. Stephen Hodkinson is Professor of Ancient History and Director of the Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies at the University of Nottingham.