An invaluable collection of images, descriptions and bibliography of each of the 288 artifacts of the exhibition, covering a wide range of historical, archaeological, cultural and artistic aspects of the two city-states of Athens and Sparta from the Archaic to the Classical periods, when both were the protagonists of affairs in the ancient Greek world. Athens-Sparta explores the cultural development of the two most important city-states in ancient Greece, along with the two cities' formations. Artistic, social, and cultural developments from the Late Geometric period through the Archaic period (8th to the 5th centuries B.C.) are scrutinized as well as the continuously changing dynamic between the two cities during the Persian Wars (500 B.C. to 449 B.C.) and the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C. to 404 B.C.). This fully illustrated volume not only focuses on the objects, such as the metal work and pottery that were included in the exhibition, but through a series of extensive essays examines the broader context of the artistic developments of the time. Contributors to the exhibition catalogue include, in addition to the editor, Dr. Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of History and Classics at Yale University; Dr. Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History, Chairman of the Faculty of Classics, and a Fellow of Clare College, at the University of Cambridge, as well as eminent Greek historians and archaeologists like Georgia Kokkorou Alevras, Professor of Classical Archaeology at University of Athens; Dr. Yanis Pikoulas, Professor at University of Thessaly (IAKA), Editor of Horos; Dr. Yannis Touratsoglou, Emeritus Director of the Numismatic Museum and of the National Archaeological Museum; and Ismini Trianti, Professor of Classical Archaeology at University of Ioannina.