Myke Cole sets out to deconstruct the myth of Spartan warrior supremacy, not out of hostility to the Spartans, but frustration with the mythologizing of these very real people who had gifts and virtues, but also flaws. Another significant motivation is the misuse of the myth rather than the reality of the Spartans in support of hard right ideologies, and not just in the US, but at least throughout the cultural West.
The Spartans are revered and nearly worshipped as the ideal warriors, men who valued war, despised money, and served the good of the state over personal reputation and comfort. What Myke Cole shows us, in this careful, well-researched, and very readable book, is a culture of men as variable and human as any others. They were in some ways better soldiers than others contemporary to them. The Spartan hoplites did some regular training. It was more than most other Greek city-states did, but nothing close to the professionalism attributed to them by myth. It did give them a degree of organization and discipline that was, for most of their history, rare in the armies of other contemporary armies. That was a real advantage, especially when fighting other Greek hoplites.
