He's the most legendary warrior king in history. With his 300 brave Spartans behind him, King Leonidas stood against the mighty invading Xerxes and stopped him in his tracks. The story has been told ...

Myke Cole - Co-author, The Killing Ground: A Biography of Thermopylae Ancient Sparta has been held up for the last two and a half millennia as the unmatched warrior city-state, where every male ...

This story appears in the November/December 2016 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Sparta’s enemies, when facing the intimidating Spartan forces, would see a wall of shields ...