With the release of the big budget Wolfgang Petersen movie, Troy, interest in the Trojan War and life in ancient Sparta has increased.  At least the people at The Hstory Channel hope that it has.  They have put together some of their shows covering that era and released them in a two-DVD set entitled Troy:  Unearthing the Legend.  Though a majority of the programs actually deals with Sparta (there is no modern evidence that the war that Homer described in the Iliad ever took place) this set gives you a good idea what life must have been like centuries before Christ was born.

Disc one contains the entire miniseries The Rise and Fall of the Spartans.  This program, which runs over three hours, presents a very thorough look at the Greek city-state of Sparta.  The program starts off by looking at the founding of the area, and a problem that Sparta had created for itself.

Sparta enjoyed a prosperous time, but their population grew.  So in 735-715 BC they waged war, and eventually conquered Messenia a much larger neighboring city-state. The problem was that Messenia was huge, and had a much greater land mass and many more people than Sparta had.  This situation of a small army ruling a large populace incited the Messenians to revolt, only to be beaten down. Realizing that the situation was untenable, the Spartans took drastic measures and remade themselves into a warrior race. The entire population consisted of solely of solders.

The show talks in detail about the class system they had, the government, and the impossibly intrusive laws that were enforced.  Laws that controlled almost every aspect as of the citizen's lives: from what people wear to the floor plans of their houses even to how they spoke.

Sparta also had a very complex and interesting political system that had a large numbers of checks and balances to ensured that no one man would obtain too much power.  It was an odd system where they had two ruling kings, but a system that worked well for hundreds of years.

A good part of the show covers the education and training of the Spartan soldiers, and the trials they were constantly subjected to.

After the groundwork has been set, the program gives an overview of the entire history of Sparta.  From the early days when they reformed their society to the time when they were the most fear warriors on the planet.  It is said that just the sight of a Spartan Phalanx with their raised shields was enough to send troops fleeing.

The most famous battle in the history of Sparta was, of course, the battle at Thermopylae in 480BC.  In this battle, the Persian King Xerxes and 200,000 men were marching into Greece.  The Spartan King Leonidous only had 7000 men, but with him was a group of 300 hand picked warriors.  Leonidous and his 300 men held off the Persians for nearly three days.  Wave after wave of Persians were beaten back, and though the 300 eventually fell, their stand became the stuff of legend.

The program covers the entire Persian War, where Sparta and Athens were allies, and then moves on the Peloponnesian War where the two states were enemies.  The series ends by showing the events and explaining the reasons behind Sparta's eventual downfall.

This was a very well done series, and it paints a vivid picture of life in Sparta.  The experts that they interview are very knowledgeable and help to put a human face on this race of warriors.   The show is able to cover all the pertinent facts, without becoming bogged down in them.  The filmed reenactments, though fairly sparse, keep the show entertaining and lively.  This is a very good series that offers an excellent overview of Greek history.
 

Disc two starts off with an episode of Ancient Mysteries:  The Odyssey of Troy.  This 45 minute show, hosted by Leonard Nimoy, recounts the story of the Trojan War, as related by Homer in the Iliad.  But was this epic story based on fact, or was it just a good tale?  This program talks to several scholars and examines the various questions that are still unanswered:  Who was Homer?  Was there a real Helen?  Where was Troy located? And did the war actually occur?  It also covers the history of the archeological search for Troy, most importantly how a German self-made millionaire and amateur literary sleuth Heinrich Schliemann discovered the site that in now referred to as Troy in the late 1800's.  Though more questions are raised than are answered, this show gives a good background to what is actually known, and what is hypothesized about this famous conflict.

The next show on this DVD is Treasure!  The Ancient Gold of Troy.  This program concerns itself with the treasure of Troy that Schliemann discovered in 1873 at the archeological site that he was excavating.  Schliemann's discovery of the city of Troy, the problems he had excavating the site, and the discovery of the treasure are all presented, as well as the way that Schliemann smuggled the golden hoard out of Turkey.

The narrative of this show focuses on the treasure of Troy, rather than the city itself.  They relate how it was displayed in Germany for decades, only to be lost during WW II.  These important archeological artifacts were eventually found is a museum basement in Moscow.

This show was much weaker that the other shows in this set.  The controversy surrounding Schliemann and his discovery isn't even touched upon in this show.  The fact that Schliemann's version of how he found the treasure is know known to have been a fabrication wasn't mentioned at all, nor was the accusation that he actually bought the treasure and planted it at the dig site.  These critiques aside, there is a lot of padding in this show, and doesn't hold the viewers interest as well as the other programs in this set.

The last show is In Search of History:  The Trojan City.  This show is another good overview of they mysteries surrounding Troy and what current archeologists think.  The only problem is that it is almost identical to the Ancient Mysteries episode.  They cover the same stories, use the same footage, and even include the same interview clips with various scholars that the earlier show did.  It seems like they just reedited the footage that they had and wrote a new voiceover.  (Nimoy does not narrate this show.)
 

Audio:

This made for TV program has a two-channel soundtrack that suits the program well.  While the battle scenes were not dynamic and forceful, they were suitable for the show.  The narration and interviews were easy to hear, and the soundtrack was free of hiss and noise.  There were no subtitles.

Video:

The full frame picture was fairly good-looking, though not outstanding.  The colors were not vibrant, and the blacks were more of a very dark gray.  About average for a made for TV documentary.  The only real problem I had was with the digital encoding.  There was a lot of aliasing and a good amount of cross colorization.  These defects caused the line drawings that are shown to waver and have artificial rainbows.  The Spartan shields often had a stair step effect around the edge instead of being perfectly round.   There was a lot of video crammed onto each DVD, and that was probably the reason for all of the defects, but I'm still surprised that they didn't do better.

The Extras:

There are no extras included on this set.

Final Thoughts:

I really liked this set.  I would have preferred it if they had split the Spartans series over two discs and included the first two shows on disc two as bonus features, one on each DVD.  This may have solved the digital artifact problems they had, and there wouldn't be any big loss missing the In Search of History episode since it is just a reedited version of the Ancient Mysteries program that is included.  In any case, they didn't do that so we are stuck with a good amount of digital defects on both discs.

This set really has more to do with Sparta than with Troy, which is understandable since archeologists are still not sure that they know where Troy is, or if it ever really existed.  But this set does give a good look at like during the Bronze Age, and fills in what details it can about Troy itself.  Recommended for history buffs and those who want to learn a little more about our past.