Edgar Degas, Young Spartans Exercising, ca. 1860, Oil on canvas, National Gallery, London. Sparta is the subject of a new book by Andrew Bayliss. The Critic’s Notebook Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. Nonfiction: Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower, by Andrew Bayliss (W. W. Norton): Plato, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Samuel Adams do not have much in common, but all four men admired one ancient Greek state more than others: Sparta.