Resources
The following are a selection of resources which provide current and well-researched information regarding the history, society, culture, and representation of ancient Sparta.
If you want a general overview of where scholarship on Sparta is at present, you might like to read this article by Stephen Hodkinson on ‘New Approaches to Classical Sparta’, which was published in the Journal of Classics Teaching (vol. 27) in 2013. It surveys recent trends in research on Sparta, and is aimed at teachers and advanced students.
Lukas Thommen has kindly made available for personal use this vast bibliography indexing published research on Sparta. While no bibliography can be comprehensive of everything that has ever been published relating to Sparta, this resource extends to more than 120 pages and more than 2500 entries, in multiple languages, and will be of great use to any interested party.
Find an Expert: The Sparta Directory
This directory lists key information for more than 50 participating scholars with research expertise relating to Sparta, spanning four continents, including current location, contact information, and specific areas of research interest/expertise. The information provided is up to date as of September 2026.
Jean Ducat (1933-2024) was a renowned French archaeologist and historian of ancient Greece, who participated in multiple meetings and publications of the International Sparta Seminar, as well as authoring monographs on the helots (in French) and on Spartan Education (in English). Here, ISS-member Nicolas Richer presents an homage to the man and his research achievements, as well as a bibliography of his extensive published works.
Available in Greek and in English. This is the website of the Amykles Research Project, a major undertaking involving multiple members of the ISS. Its aim has been to excavate, research and publish in pursuit of a better understanding of the Amyklaion: this sanctuary, located approximately 5km to the south of modern Sparti/ancient Sparta, was dedicated to Apollo Amyclae, and was one of the major cult sites of ancient Sparta, in particular as the home of the Hyacinthia festival.
The Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies is a research centre based at the University of Nottingham, UK, whose membership in many instances overlaps with that of the ISS. It regularly organises conferences, as well as the Sparta Live! online seminar series. Its website hosts four web-published volumes, including multiple chapters relating to Sparta, on themes including ‘Being Peloponnesian’, ‘Conflict in the Peloponnese’, ‘Honouring the Dead’.
Bad Ancient is a fact-checking website run by ISS-member Owen Rees, for which academics write detailed answers to questions about the ancient world, with an emphasis on debunking false or misleading popular perceptions. It features multiple articles on Sparta, including Stephen Hodkinson on whether Sparta was a Communist State, Owen Rees on the Spartan krypteia, and James Lloyd on the Spartans’ usage of music.
Ask Historians is a Reddit community (or ‘Subreddit’) which seeks to provide academic-level answers to questions about history. It is actively moderated in order to remove inappropriate or inaccurate content. Content relating to Sparta includes posts on whether the military worship of the Spartans is justified, how Spartan society functioned, the causes of Sparta’s radical decline in citizen numbers, and a discussion of the blog series “This. Isn’t. Sparta.” by Bret Devereaux (on which see below).
This is a series of blog posts analysing Sparta and the myth of Sparta, written by historian Bret Devereaux (North Carolina State University, USA) and hosted on his personal website.
Originating in the Covid-19 lockdowns, Herodotus Helpline is an international scholarly community which organises a peer-reviewed and open-access online journal, Syllogos, and an online seminar series. Episodes particularly relevant to Sparta include Elton Barker (The Open University, UK) on the Spartiate Aristodemus, Maddalena Scarperi (University of Pennsylvania, USA) on King Cleomenes, and Maria Pretzler (Swansea University, UK) on ‘Herodotus and the Peloponnesians’.
This volume on the reception of Graeco-Roman antiquity in the twenty-first century, edited by Kim Beerden and Timo Epping, and published by Sidestone Press, is free to read online. It includes the articles ‘Spartans on the Capitol: Recent Far-Right Appropriations of Spartan Militarism in the USA and their Historical Roots’ by Stephen Hodkinson, ‘Leonidas Goes North: Swedish Appropriations of Sparta and the Battle of Thermopylae and their Wider European Context’ by Johannes Siapkas and Thomas Sjösvärd, and ‘Pop Culture against Modernity: New Right-Wing Movements and the Reception of Sparta’ by Julia Müller.
An online open-access journal, associated with the Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University, Classics@ frequently publishes online volumes of papers on a given theme, such as their volume on Women and Property which includes an article by Stephen Hodkinson on ‘Female Property Ownership and Status in Classical and Hellenistic Sparta’.