During the Greek civil war, Aristophanes wrote the comedy Lysistrata which, behind its Battle-of-the-Sexes plotline, critiques the war between the Spartans and Athenians. Like Confucius, who used the private family to dictate how a king should govern his country, Aristophanes used the private disput...

Pericles of Athens and Archidamus of Sparta devised net assessments that both believed would provide strategies that would bring victory and peace for their respective states. This essay will show that Archidamus did a better job of net assessment prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. A...

How does the section of Thucydides narrative about the debate at Sparta and the declaration of war show the Spartans as being unwilling to enter into a war with Athens? Thucydides is thought by some to be the true father of history; most historians before him, such as Herodotus, could be more acc...

Governmental Techniques in the Ancient World Throughout history, many techniques have been used for organizing society. Experimentation with different styles primarily took place in the ancient Mediterranean world. Athenian democracy, Hebrew temple state, Hellenic city-states, Helleni...

In his introductory remarks to William Baker's essay on the early "Organized Greek Games" of the classical era, one of the editors of The Western Experience, Steven Golden, writes that sports are not merely a kind of sideshow to a nation or a society but a mainstream component of that soci...