Sparta was ancient Greece's most formidable warrior society. Their rigorous militaristic culture and battlefield feats have become the stuff of legend - but what are the cold, hard facts behind the six-packs and leather loincloths of the popular imagination?

Dr Andrew Bayliss of the University of Birmingham joins us to separate the fact from the fiction, explaining how a brutal education system and unyielding discipline forged this elite military state, and what eventually led to its downfall.