'This mystery exercise, used by wrestlers like Milo and gladiators like Spartacus, was ditch digging. Digging with a shovel ...

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 ...

King Agesilaus II—who led the Spartan Army at the peak of its power in the fourth century B.C.—proclaimed that one of Sparta’s greatest strengths was its citizens’ “contempt of pleasure.” ...