"Myke Cole has provided his readers with an interesting product.

This is not the work of a serious professional historian. Myke is upfront about this, saying, "My only qualification is that I really, really, like this stuff." He desires to reach a popular audience, informing us, "writing Legion Versus Phalanx cemented my belief that it's possible to write history that rests on a foundation of rock-solid scholarship and reads like a conversation in a bar with your nerdy friend." The informal writing lives up to this billing, with secondary commentary like, “surprise, surprise.�

As a book with a popular audience, it is one that also has an overt political agenda (and I don't say that as condemnation.) It is a book that is largely designed to correct your friends who have Molon Labe tattoos. Myke's title, "The Bronze Lie" is simply a new way of wording "The Spartan Mirage", a concept which has been present in scholarly circles for at least a century. His thesis is essentially that Spartan warriors were human: that they had foibles and flaws like the rest of us. Of course, he is very correct in this. As such, Myke tells us things that professional historians (and those of us who buy their books) have known for a long time: the Spartan state was highly repressive, the Spartan population was mostly slaves and second-class citizens, the elite Spartaitae (citizens) had a mediocre win-loss record on the battlefield, and Spartan citizens frequently fled from, and even surrendered in battles that weren't going their way.

But this, perhaps, is the fundamental problem with the book: who wants to hear this? The thesis of the book is likely to go-over like a lead balloon with those who have Molon Labe tattoos. Indeed, Myke writes that he received death threats in the process of researching and writing the book. The frameworks that Myke uses, such as toxic masculinity, give these readers an ideological excuse to dismiss the book out of hand, as the only other review I can see of this book already indicates.

Professional historians are likely already familiar with this topic, and likely to look askance at a book which includes wargames and reenacting in its bibliography before primary sources. Likewise, historians will not be impressed that Myke disagrees with modern scholars because he has, "participated in enough reenactments to know what this entails." There are no footnotes, at least not in the version of the book I purchased. Does Myke read classical languages, or is he using sources entirely in translation? His translation of Archidamus in Thucydides reads like The Message translation of the bible. While he is very clear and upfront about his biases (commendable), he is more silent on the scholarly apparatus that underpins his work. Likewise, separating sources into the category of “Osprey Books� and “Other Modern Works,� will likely not please historians. So, the target audience of the book is a popular modern audience who does not have a strong background in ancient warfare, and is not invested in the modern Spartan myth?

Myke is an engaging writer, and even a competent military historian. This book moves beyond the realm of military history into social, cultural, and intellectual history, and it is clear that Myke does not have as strong background in these areas. For example, he claims that helots “outnumbered Spartan citizenry by a huge number.� This is where a more formal scholarly apparatus would be useful: Does Myke agree with Paul Cartledge or Richard Talbert’s models of 10:1 or 8:1? Does he buy into Thomas Figueira’s newer estimates of a 3:1 or 5:1 ratio? Instead we are left with a blanket claim about the nature of Spartan society with no supporting evidence.

The book also suffers from something akin to mission creep. A list of laser-focused objectives in the introduction gives way to a book that is artificially divided into three sections, some of which have no-overt bearing on the initial objectives. Myke tries to describe Spartan society, its ethos, the entirety of Spartan military history, how ancient battles functioned broadly, how to analyze ancient sources, and the historical memory of Sparta in modern politics. In the end, we are left with a book that attempts to do too much and is overly guided by its (probably correct) anti-Spartan thesis. This is the frustrating part: Myke is talented writer. His thesis is essentially right. But to quote his analysis of Archidamus, “being right isn’t the same as being convincing.�"