I'm John Batchler. I go immediately to Andrew Bay Bayless, University of Birmingham, whose new book

Sparta tells a story that is never old, the story of a warrior cult in classical Greece,

tangling with its neighbors and finally taking on the great avatar of democracy, Athens,

and falling short, then victorious, and then falling off

the page of history.

The story is Sparta, the rise and fall of an ancient superpower.

Everything you've ever heard about Sparta in this book is all connected, all the pieces.

For example, the Battle of a Thermopylae, the 300.

All of those pieces connect to a longer story of what Sparta was to the people of its time,

the Hellenic people. I welcome you, Andrew, and thank you very much, Professor. I want to begin with the terrain. I have

never been, I've been to Greece, but I've not been to the Peloponnesian Peninsula. You have.

Sparta's on the Eurotas River. The photographs I've seen with your encouragement show a mountain range, two mountain ranges, and a valley like a hollow in the mountains.

Sparta looks to be right in the center of it. Where did the people who settled there come from?

Where were their original roots? Good day to you, Andrew.

Well, hello, and thank you for having me, John. It's a pleasure to talk to you about the Spartans and your

audience as well. Where did the Spartans come from? Well, there's what we know for sure and what the

Spartans said. So they actually believe they were the descendants of the, well, the descendants of the

great grandsons of Heracles, and they'd come back into the Peloponnese,

but they're almost certainly people who were there, who later on kind of reimagined themselves

as being the descendants of Heracles.

The Spartans, the city state of Sparta, that city that's four villages in the middle of the Eritas Valley

is in an absolutely

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