The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, Chapter IV, and the Development of Spartan Historical Studies (2024) By Stephen Hodkinson

https://www.academia.edu/112979304/The_Origins_of_the_Peloponnesian_War_Chapter_IV_and_the_Development_of_Spartan_Historical_Studies_2024_ This article examines the impact on Spartan historiography of Chapter IV of G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972), focusing on his discussions of Spartan politics and society in Sections v–vi. These sections fit oddly within the overall chapter, but they blew a breath of fresh air into Spartan studies through their revisionist approach, intimations of the socio-economic bases of policy-making, and extended accounts of ‘real-life’ political episodes across the classical period. Along with Moses Finley’s near-contemporary article on Sparta, OPW significantly influenced the following generation of British historians (including the author), although they often adopted different interpretations or developed new perspectives on Spartan society only hinted at by de Ste. Croix. OPW also had an important impact on Western European historiography on Spartan politics. Its combination of constitutional and societal approaches gives it an enduring currency in the context of developing Historical Institutionalist approaches to political studies. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. ...