SPARTA E ATENE

The rivalry between two of the most powerful States of Ancient Greece, each with its own ideology and organisation and both destined to enter the myth and become the reference point of radically different forms of government.

Athens and Sparta had the same culture, spoke the same language, honoured the same gods. They fought side by side against a common enemy, the Persians, to defend what, as Greeks, they considered the emblem of their own civilisation, what distinguished them from the rest of the world: that is, their condition as free citizens and not as subjects. Yet the relationship between the two polis has always been tricky, steadily worsening until it reached a point of no return. For years, historiography has wondered whether the way Sparta and Athens are depicted by the known sources is a truthful representation of the two cities or a more idealised version of them. Furthermore, it has been recently doubted whether Sparta was actually so radically different from the Athenian model - the two States might be more similar then we have been accustomed to think. Eva Cantarella sets out from the story of this ancient rivalry to analyse the way Western culture has been using the two cities' social systems which, from time to time, were invoked both by those who aspired to found a democratic state and by those who wanted to create an authoritarian, totalitarian, tyrannical state. Eva Cantarella is one of the leading experts on ancient history and law. She was Professor of Istituzioni di Diritto Romano at Milan University and Visiting Professor at New York University, the University of Austin in Texas, and in Warsaw, Athens, Granada, Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela. She has authored more than 20 works, which have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Greek and Turkish, and has published numerous articles in both Italian and foreign scientific journals and collective volumes. For many years she has contributed to the cultural pages of "Corriere della Sera", and in 2003 she won Premio Bagutta with Itaca. Eroi, donne, potere tra vendetta e diritto. Her research on the relationships between anthropology and law, family law, criminal law, and on women's history and the history of sexuality, have deeply marked current views on ancient history and contemporary society.