THE WALLS OF SPARTA

The ancient Greek city-state of Sparta runs on war and gay passion in this period novel.

Marshall University classics professor Lloyd bases his book on the life of fourth-century B.C.E. Spartan King Agesilaos II, who fought many battles in Persia, Greece, and, in his 80s, Egypt. The sprawling narrative unfolds in episodic chapters told from the points of view of characters around Agesilaos—family and friends, military subordinates, political rivals, servants—who get embroiled in the historical events of his reign. Through them, the author paints a rich portrait of Spartan life, taking in everything from hairstyles to interpretation of Delphic oracles and fleshing out its harsh warrior ethos, which blends ruthless elitism with stoic self-sacrifice. Spartans casually murder slaves; youths gouge out opponents’ eyes in friendly wrestling competitions; soldiers charge into battlefield blood baths; and their mothers celebrate when they die heroically. Lloyd’s Sparta also has homoeroticism in its bones thanks to the custom of older men taking younger male lovers as well as high standards of physical fitness and a general disregard for clothing. Characters wrestle in the nude, run footraces in the nude, harvest grain in the nude, attack the enemy army in the nude, and gather firewood on snowy mornings in the nude. The book is thus suffused with an ogling sexual tension that proceeds to sexual release in the many graphic love scenes, which include brotherly incest. The author’s storytelling, centered on the wily, charismatic figure of Agesilaos, has a Homeric ring to it in its gripping, gory fight scenes (“Another splintered spear, not the king’s, ran through the youth’s throat, spewing a fountain of blood, as from some gigantic sacrificial bull”), its lyrical pastorals (“He jumped into the cold stream, and like the piercing and sudden aching that comes with a fevered sickness, the river’s current swept through him”), and its sometimes stilted speechifying. (“My friends, I cannot be more thankful than I am to this, the greatest king of the Spartans in their long history, this Agesilaos, an unassuming and quiet man.”) The sex can be intrusive, but Lloyd’s vigorous prose and immersive evocation of this storied era are often captivating.

An entertaining, if heavy-breathing, re-creation of classical Greece at its manliest.