In this book, Paul Rahe provides a retelling of the conflict between Greece and Persia in the early fifth century b.c.e. Among numerous books on the subject (to speak of only a fraction of the scholarly literature), one needs an angle to differentiate a new monograph. In his introduction, Rahe sets out his approach: He will focus on the Peloponnesian city-state of Sparta, since Sparta’s involvement, and above all its reputation and power to instill confidence in its allies, endowed this city with the sole ability to lead the Greek confederacy to victory over Persia. He will also sketch a portrait of Sparta in order to show how this polity reacted to the attack by Persia. The volume, book, has greater ambitions: to show how ancient city-states, with their particular moral imperatives, offer significant insights into interstate relations, in the past, present, and future.

The virtues of the book are many. It deals with a wide range of ancient sources and an even greater amount of scholarly commentary, and Rahe admirably does not let his narrative get bogged down by minor quibbles or sentence-by-sentence citations. The descriptions of military tactics, troop movements, and especially naval warfare are detailed yet approachable by general readers. The author also does a nice job of filling in gaps in the primary sources with probable suggestions, while not pressing them too hard. On the less positive side, the book suffers from its supposed focus on Sparta, as well as a number of arguments that, while provocative, appear to stretch the ancient evidence too thin.

The prologue lays out a description of the Spartan political and social system in abbreviated form (Rahe does refer the reader to his companion book The Spartan Regime, which, frustratingly, was yet to be published at the time of this writing). For all of the focus on Sparta, both in the title of the book under review and in the introduction and prologue, one might be excused for feeling slightly perplexed. Sparta is largely absent from the first four chapters, which examine the transformation of the Persian empire under Darius, Persia’s first forays into Europe, the Athenian tyranny of the Peisistratids and its overthrow, and the Ionian revolt. Students of this period will hardly be surprised by Sparta’s absence, since in the second and third quarters of the sixth century it was consolidating its power in the Peloponnese, and it was not until the end of the sixth century that it became embroiled with governmental affairs at Athens. Despite an alliance with Croesus and interventions against tyrants such as Polycrates and Lygdamis, Sparta at this time seldom looked far beyond the Peloponnese.

Sparta becomes more visible in the second half of the work, which narrates the Persian campaigns of 480–79 b.c.e. and the Greek defense against Xerxes. This is again not surprising, given Sparta’s prominence at this time and active role in Greek leadership against the Persian invasion. What is missing here is some demonstration of how Sparta’s “grand strategy” fits into all of this, and one might be disappointed to learn that by grand strategy, Rahe appears to mean simply that the military conditions that flowed from Sparta’s social system, which was highly dependent on unfree labor, severely limited any activity outside of the Peloponnese. One does not detect strategic adjustments made by Sparta (claimed at p. xiii) precisely because Sparta possessed (or at least tried to appear to possess) a static social system that reflected and advantaged the city’s stability and order. This much was accepted by Herodotus (and Thucydides), and it was not until the Peloponnesian War, with the stresses from fighting against the Athenians, and afterwards the difficulty of managing an overseas empire, that Sparta’s entrenched social system seems to have been significantly challenged.

Rather than focus on Sparta, Rahe’s main objective is to prove that the Persian Wars were caused by a religious ideology adopted first by Darius and then perpetuated by his son Xerxes. While few would deny that the Persian kingdom was traditionally an imperialistic regime, it is less clear how much Darius’s religious self-identification or self-presentation drove this expansion. It is also uncertain how far Darius and Xerxes planned to extend their empire. Rahe claims that mainland Greeks felt the threat from the very beginnings of Darius’s reign, and even at one point suggests that Sicily may have been on Xerxes’ immediate agenda (p. 204). While these claims serve Rahe’s overall thesis, a preponderance of scholarly opinion inclines to the view that Darius planned to stop the advance of his empire in Thrace (e.g., J. Wiesehöfer, “Greeks and Persians,” in K.A. Raaflaub and H. van Wees, eds., A Companion to Archaic Greece, 2009, p. 176). It is difficult to know if the invasions of mainland Greece by Darius and Xerxes should be seen in a strict sense as imperialistic at all. Herodotus frames Darius’s invasion as driven by a need to punish Athens for aiding the Ionian revolt and breaking its oath with Persia, while Xerxes was motivated to complete the unfinished business of his father. Even if we expand Darius’s motivation to include shoring up Persian control of the Aegean (e.g., P. Cartledge, Thermopylae, 2006, p. 53), it hardly establishes that he wished to make all of mainland Greece subject to himself.

Rahe’s thesis forces him to posit a long-standing sense of fear among the Spartans about the looming Persian threat. For example, he interprets Sparta’s interactions with Megara around 520 as a means of bolstering a defense against Persia (pp. 77–78), when the move was more likely aimed at strengthening the Peloponnesian League (cf. L. H. Jeffery, “Greece before the Persian Invasion,” Cambridge Ancient History, 2d ed., 4.352–53). This thesis is also undermined by Rahe’s evidence for Corinth’s desire to block Hippias’s restoration because of the Persian threat (p. 102). While this claim may be correct, Rahe, while admitting the dearth of evidence for this in the ancient sources, nevertheless leans on this silence as a product of Corinth’s understanding of the “parochial” nature of the Peloponnese and unfamiliarity with Persia in general, an interpretation that seems to undermine the supposedly prescient actions of Sparta decades before the wars with Persia.

Rahe’s claims of religious war (itself a contested issue) seem to provide a locus for the coincidence of past, present, and future concerns, as he indicates in his introduction. To this end, his arguments about religiously driven world domination and the struggle between East and West find expression in comparison to the conflicts between Christians and Muslims, specifically through the frequent invocation of crusade, jihad, and holy war. The author usually uses “crusade” and “jihad” together (e.g., pp. 164, 178, 332), though jihad is also used on its own (e.g., pp. xii, 179; notably, in the index, under “Xerxes,“ there is an entry for ”political ideology and jihad”). The purpose of this language is not entirely clear, since Rahe does not draw explicit conclusions (echoing his introduction that he will “try to demonstrate obliquely” such conclusions; p. xiii). Is it merely provocative, or does he assume that his reader will make the appropriate inferences? More direct analysis would be helpful, as I have doubts about the probity of these analogies.

Overall, The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta may inspire mixed reactions. Those looking for a military history of the Persian Wars will have much to explore, while others may find Rahe’s understanding of the etiology of Persian imperialism, or of the Greek response to the Persian threat, ultimately unconvincing. Perhaps most frustrating are his comments in the introduction about the loftier goals of the work. Rahe might have delivered a study of greater impact had he delved more deeply and explicitly into what he thinks are the connected concerns of past, present, and future regarding the Persian Wars.