SOURCE: Powell, Anton. “Life within Sparta.” In Athens and Sparta: Constructing Greek Political and Social History from 478 BC. Second Edition, pp. 218-70. London: Routledge, 2001.

In the following excerpt from his monograph originally published in 1988, Powell probes the daily aspects of classical Spartan culture, including its secrecy, communality, and austerity.

Spartan Secrecy and Deceptiveness

What went on inside Sparta was a question which intrigued many Greeks of other cities and is the subject of much recent study. In the fourth century, during or soon after the period of Sparta's empire, several studies of the subject were published.¹ Xenophon, the author of one of them, began his work by observing that the Spartans had the greatest power of any Greek community but also one of the smallest populations.² This paradox was no doubt widely felt; Sparta's extraordinary dominance called for an explanation. For this, Thucydides,³ Xenophon and others looked to...