Articles

in Hindsight in Greek and Roman History, ed. Anton Powell, Swansea (Classical Press of Wales) 2013, pp. 91-112.

This article explores and analyses the ways in which historians, both modern and ancient, have applied hindsight to the Spartan empire of 404-371 B.C., and to its downfall. Many modern treatments of the period are even labelled as studies in Spartan failure, and thus betray a tendency to over-emphasise error and lack of foresight on the part of Sparta.Read more...

in Sparta in Modern Thought. Politics, History and Culture, ed. Stephen Hodkinson, Ian Macgregor Morris, Swansea (Classical Press of Wales) 2012, pp. 315-42.

This article explores the ways in which an ancient history textbook by the well-known archaeologist and educator Otto-Wilhelm von Vacano, entitled 'Sparta: The Life-Struggle of an Aryan Master Race', was used to encourage pupils at the Adolf Hitler Schools to identify with young Spartans, and to see Spartan history in proto-National Socialist terms.Read more...

in New Voices in Classical Reception Studies ejournal, Issue 7 (2012), pp. 25-39.

This article examines the ways in which Ancient Spartan history and mores, and in particular the Spartan art of war, were often portrayed as providing useful precedents for the Prussian military. Commentators frequently saw the Officer-Corps as embodying a type of ‘new Sparta’ in Prussia, recreating a similarly militaristic and socially exclusive society in contemporary terms.Read more...

in Das antike Sparta, ed. Anton Powell, Vassiliki Pothou, Stuttgart (Franz Steiner Verlag), 2017, pp. 157-180.

Based on an abridged version of the third and fourth chapters of the author's doctoral thesis, this article provides a useful summary of those findings which concern laconophilia in the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps. The paper on which the article is based was first presented at a conference of the International Sparta Seminar which took place at Regensburg University in September 2009.Read more...