“History is really interesting because it’s about people. And people are interesting. So there are plenty of different ways of doing this, and I think there’s room for everybody.” — Adrian Goldsworthy

The greatest rivalry in antiquity is also uncomfortably relevant to us today. In Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece, the classical scholar Adrian Goldsworthy covers the long fifth century BC, from the Persian Wars that forced Athens and Sparta into alliance, through the Peloponnesian War that set them against each other.

The parallels of the rivalry between Sparta and Athens are uncannily relevant today. Goldsworthy traces the NATO-like structure of the Athenian alliance, with its familiar complaint that the allies weren’t paying enough. He notes that Athens, which outgrew its ability to grow its own food, had to secure its grain supply from the Black Sea — in the same way as closing the Straits of Hormuz has disrupted modern supply chains. And he observes that the Spartans won the Peloponnesian War by getting Persian money — while the Athenians were doing exactly the same thing. Persia, he notes, is always lurking in the background. There would be no “west” without it.

Five Takeaways

• Two Experiments, One Longing. Athens: radical democracy, open society, philosophy, drama. Sparta: apartheid military state, tiny elite freed from labour by helots. Two utterly different models — both driven by the same Greek longing to excel.

• Thucydides: Essential but Embittered. The essential source for the Peloponnesian War is also a slightly embittered exile who cannot hide his biases. He makes the demagogue Cleon look like a buffoon. His silences are as revealing as his words. He tells us what he wants to tell.

• The NATO Parallel. The Athenian alliance has a structural similarity to NATO: Athens as the dominant naval power, allies who won’t send ships, just cash. Successive Athenian leaders complained they weren’t paying enough. Sound familiar?

• Persia Is Always There. The Spartans won the Peloponnesian War with Persian money. The Athenians were doing the same. Both sides of Greece’s greatest conflict were funded by the barbarian power they’d united to defeat. America is now fighting a war in Iran. Persia is always there.

• Athens as University City, Sparta as Theme Park. In the Roman period, Athens became a university town for the Roman elite. Sparta invented a public performance of its old customs for Roman tourists. What we know about classical Greece is partly filtered through this late antique nostalgia.

About the Guest

Adrian Goldsworthy is a historian, novelist, and YouTuber with a DPhil from Oxford, and the author of Athens and Sparta (Basic Books, May 12, 2026), Caesar, Augustus, How Rome Fell, and many other books. He lives in Penarth, South Wales.

References

Athens and Sparta by Adrian Goldsworthy (Basic Books, May 12, 2026)
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:31 Contrasting Wyman the podcaster with Goldsworthy the academic
00:02:23 History is about people — the more the merrier
00:04:10 Goldsworthy’s YouTube channel and the new archaeology
00:05:22 Why Athens and Sparta?
00:08:40 Thucydides: essential but embittered
00:09:42 Athens and Sparta: the basics
00:13:18 Thucydides and the Persian wars
00:17:20 Athens as democracy, Sparta as apartheid state
00:18:30 Plato and those who admired the Spartans
00:31:18 The NATO parallel
00:34:43 Persia and the modern Iran war
00:37:47 Athens lives off Black Sea wheat
00:38:14 How would the Greeks see our obsession with them?
00:40:33 Athens as university city, Sparta as theme park