IRAD MALKIN is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Greek History, Tel Aviv University. He is also a laureate of the Israel Prize for History, a foreign member of the Athens Academy, and co-founder and co-editor of the Mediterranean Historical Review. His books include Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece (1987), The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (1998), A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean (2011), and Drawing Lots: from Egalitarianism to Democracy in Ancient Greece, with J. Blok (2024).

'…This is a wide-ranging, intellectually stimulating and scholarly book which makes an important contribution to the cognitive history of Greek antiquity. Ultimately, the judicious and disciplined analysis of myths as historical formulations of a Spartan self-concept represents a more fruitful approach to the Lakonian past than undue reliance on the refracted perceptions of Athenian writers.' Jonathan M. Hall, University of Chicago

• List of maps; Foreword; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Note; Introduction to the second edition; Introduction; 1. The 'colony of the Dorians' and the return of the Herakleidai; 2. The Homeric king of Sparta: Menelaos in a Spartan Mediterranean; 3. Spartan colonization in the Aegean and the Peloponnese; 4. Taras: native hostility, territorial possession, and a new-ancient past; 5. Foundation and territory: the cults of Apollo Karneios and Zeus Ammon; 6. Myth and colonial territory: Libya; 7. Promises unfulfilled: Dorieus between North Africa and Sicily; 8. Myth and decolonization: Sparta's colony at Herakleia Trachinia; Bibliography; Index.

IRAD MALKIN is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Greek History, Tel Aviv University. He is also a laureate of the Israel Prize for History, a foreign member of the Athens Academy, and co-founder and co-editor of the Mediterranean Historical Review. His books include Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece (1987), The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (1998), A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean (2011), and Drawing Lots: from Egalitarianism to Democracy in Ancient Greece, with J. Blok (2024).

'…This is a wide-ranging, intellectually stimulating and scholarly book which makes an important contribution to the cognitive history of Greek antiquity. Ultimately, the judicious and disciplined analysis of myths as historical formulations of a Spartan self-concept represents a more fruitful approach to the Lakonian past than undue reliance on the refracted perceptions of Athenian writers.' Jonathan M. Hall, University of Chicago

• List of maps; Foreword; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Note; Introduction to the second edition; Introduction; 1. The 'colony of the Dorians' and the return of the Herakleidai; 2. The Homeric king of Sparta: Menelaos in a Spartan Mediterranean; 3. Spartan colonization in the Aegean and the Peloponnese; 4. Taras: native hostility, territorial possession, and a new-ancient past; 5. Foundation and territory: the cults of Apollo Karneios and Zeus Ammon; 6. Myth and colonial territory: Libya; 7. Promises unfulfilled: Dorieus between North Africa and Sicily; 8. Myth and decolonization: Sparta's colony at Herakleia Trachinia; Bibliography; Index.