If I invade your land, King Philip of Macedon threatened Sparta, "I will destroy everything: the fields, the people and the city - so that you cannot recover and rise again." The Spartans' answer had only one word: "If". At the same time, Philip was at the head of the most skilled army on earth, which enslaved and subdued almost all of Greece. All of Greece - except for one city. What, then, caused a small town to respond with such fierceness to threats of destruction? The answer is that Sparta was not just another city. Sometime, probably during the eighth century BC, something dramatic happened there: leg planted next to leg, shield pressing against shield, the Spartans crossed Mount Taygetus and its snowy peaks, the only obstacle that stood between them and their neighbors, and conquered their land. They expanded their borders several times, while imposing on the conquered population one of the harshest slavery regimes in history. The tremendous effort in holding such a vast territory forced the Spartans to change the social order according to which they lived, thus turning themselves into a phenomenon unlike any other in the history of the world. The book Shvim reviews almost a thousand years of Spartan history: how a pastoral city in the heart of the fertile valley became a closed and enclosed city, a city that sanctified above all qualities such as obedience and discipline, and did not allow its citizens to engage in any profession other than war. A unique city, which continues to be the object of admiration of many cultures and people, more than two thousand years after it fell from its greatness. Neil Barr is a historian of antiquity and the classical period. He is one of the founders of the project "Big History, Small", a project whose goal is to make history accessible to the general public.
