Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean

Examines the use of mythology to justify conquest and colonization across the Spartan Mediterranean in the archaic and Classical periods.

Irad Malkin (Author), Nicholas Purcell (Foreword by)

9781009466080, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 June 2024

334 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.62 kg

'… 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

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.

List of maps
Foreword
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Note
Introduction to the second edition
Introduction
1. The 'colony of the Dorians' and the return of the Herakleidai
2. The Homeric king of Sparta: Menelaos in a Spartan Mediterranean
3. Spartan colonization in the Aegean and the Peloponnese
4. Taras: native hostility, territorial possession, and a new-ancient past
5. Foundation and territory: the cults of Apollo Karneios and Zeus Ammon
6. Myth and colonial territory: Libya
7. Promises unfulfilled: Dorieus between North Africa and Sicily
8. Myth and decolonization: Sparta's colony at Herakleia Trachinia
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1]