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Were Spartans Really That Great?

Dan Snow's History Hit

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Sparta was ancient Greece's most formidable warrior society. Their rigorous militaristic culture and battlefield feats have become the stuff of legend - but what are the cold, hard facts behind the six-packs and leather loincloths of the popular imagination?

Dr Andrew Bayliss of the University of Birmingham joins us to separate the fact from the fiction, explaining how a brutal education system and unyielding discipline forged this elite military state, and what eventually led to its downfall.

Andrew's book is called 'SPARTA: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower' and publishes on the 18th September, 2025.

4:12 The Rise of Sparta & The Enslaved Helots
13:46 The Surprising Power of Spartan Women
17:20 Creating Warriors: The Brutal Spartan Upbringing
22:51 The Battle of Thermopylae: Fact vs. Fiction
39:35 The Peloponnesian War & The Decline of Sparta
45:58 Why Are We Still Obsessed With The Spartans?

Produced by Mariana Des Forges, edited by Natija Grauzinyte & the channel manager is Vilde Øksnes.

Join Dan and the team for the first-ever LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask!

Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on...

You can find more Dan Snow's History Hit on the audio podcast here: https://podfollow.com/dan-snows-histo...

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All music from Epidemic Sounds.

#DanSnowsHistoryHit #HistoryPodcast #Sparta

20 Comments

@JedoDre 1 year ago

It's a little insulting to assume that people only know Spartans from the movie 300....Some people also know them from Halo.

@MollymaukT 1 year ago

Sparta may not have had the best army in antiquity but it sure had the best marketing department

@BradyRamaker 1 year ago

The part in 300 where leonidas mocks the Athenians for having trades and working sounds badass until you realize the Spartans are basically Calvin Candy but with the aesthetic of the Liver King.

@Rydonatello 10 months ago

Dude showed up with a Spartan beard. Respect.

@vincenthickey8622 1 year ago

Excellent guest speaker. Knowledgeable and insightful.

@innosanto 1 year ago

Thoucydides said - I remake from memory generally - " Spartans don't even build walls because they say their soldiers are their walls. They don't build many projects. In the future it will be hard for people to see the power of Sparta when they see their buildings."

@KieferBradshaw 1 year ago

Dan Snow is definitely one of my favorite historians. His knowledge is truly impressive

@johnminehan1148 1 year ago

The first thing you learn as an Infantryman: "The best time to counterattack is right after the enemy takes their objective."

@TomFynn 1 year ago

"a lot of their dancing was done in full armor"
The line "we're knights of the round table, we dance whenever we're able" suddenly comes to mind.

@deansnipah1392 4 months ago

It was failed to mentioned that Sparta pretty much self destructed. They became obsessed with being the perfect race, that any child born with any slight imperfection was instantly murdered. This went on until their population dwindled significantly

@Rips23 9 months ago

There was a previous film in my boyhood around 1962 called 300 Spartans. The story sat deeply.

@jakhaughton1800 1 year ago

At school in The Lebanon our history lessons started with Mesopotamia and worked round Golden Crescent through the Phoenicians to Egypt and eventually to Greece and Rome. Spartan history always fascinated the students.

@laurence7181 1 year ago

Great. Dr. Bayliss is a wonderful guest.
More, please.

@Azog150 1 year ago

Always liked you on the telly. Never thought to look for you on YouTube. This was an excellent presentation with a great guest speaker. Subscribed.

@Hugh_Morris 1 year ago

Please get Roel on to talk about ancient Greece

@papajohnloki 1 year ago

it's amazing that the Thespians who also sacrificed themselves get such a raw deal . although the movie 300 hundred spartans does give them and their leader Demophilus a good part. there is actually a monument to them at thermopylae

@jamesmather2839 1 year ago

Thank you for reminding me of my 1986 Dissertation, "The Spartan System of Land Tenure and its Effect on the Homoioi Class in the Classical Period". (If only I'd followed the suggestion at the time of working it up into something bigger. Not a sexy subject, so there was scope then, but it's been done in these ensuing 40 years.)
It would have been good to hear a bit more about the perioicoi early on in the description of the social structure of Sparta, since they were essential to it.

@TheTudorgirl 11 months ago

Great guest-speaker, could have listened to him for three hours!

@PianoSkillBoy 1 year ago

Dan, my GF and I just did the exact tour in Boston of your Boston Tea Party documentary on HH. It was a great day so thanks a lot

@jeffreyhenion4818 1 year ago

“It is notorious that the Lacedaemonians themselves, while they alone were assiduous in their laborious drill, were superior to others, but now they are beaten both in war and gymnastic exercises. For their ancient superiority did not depend on their mode of training their youth, but only on the circumstance that they trained them when their only rivals did not."

- Aristotle, Politics