The Peloponnesian War is the name given to the long series of conflicts between Athens and Sparta that lasted from ... the alliance had become an empire in all but name. Over the next two decades ...

Europe: In 510 BC, after a protracted struggle with its Etruscan kings, the nobility of Rome overthrew their monarchy and established ... some similarities with Sparta. Rome's great rival was ...

King Agesilaus II—who led the Spartan Army at the peak of its power in the fourth century B.C.—proclaimed that one of Sparta’s greatest strengths was its citizens’ “contempt of pleasure.” ...