Well you should read the Odyssey (the Lattimore translation is quite good and accessible to the modern reader; don't know if it's still in print) and if you have the patience, the Illiad. The motivations of Hector, Odyssius et al are pretty obscure when viewed through a contemporary western perspective, but make more sense when viewed through the prism of their "cousins" in medieval Indian hinduism (or that some of my relatives in the Indian countryside back in the 1980s :-( ).
Some things that will seem clear and obvious through a modern lens are in fact utterly obscure, even, or perhaps especially, in translation. For example the famous Homeric line, "the wine-dark sea"...well it doesn't mean anything like you could imagine, for their whole model of colour utterly different from ours. Ironically this code was cracked by, of all people, Gladstone: here's a good essay on this though his monograph is quite readable: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2010/06/fathoming-the-winedark-s... -- notice this essay also references Vedic literature so my comment about Hinduism is not random. This kind of thing was quite puzzling to me as a high schooler trying to struggle through Homer and knowing that I would be immediately found out and screwed if I tried to use one of the translations to get a sense of the story...you get the plot in translation but can only dimly see the social order.
I also recommend Plutarch's Lives, although (or perhaps because) he attempted to bend the Greeks' actions to what we might consider a more modern frame, that of Rome. In particular though read Solon, Pericles (!!) and Alcibiades for clues into how they lived.
As for the Spartans in particular: basically any movie you've ever seen on the subject might as well be science fiction. The closest modern model I could come up with would be some Nazi fantasy crossed with Trotsky. The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse
by Paul Cartledge's "The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse" is probably the best for the lay reader and will probably blow your mind.
Ancient Greek is worth learning IMHO and has opened up much more intellectual opportunity to me than the parallel years of Latin ever did. Both are Indo-European (aka "Indo-German" in German!) languages so pretty easy to learn.
>'"the wine-dark sea"...well it doesn't mean anything like you could imagine, for their whole model of colour utterly different from ours.'
Doesn't seem like everyone agrees with this speculation:
>"I'm even less impressed by Gordon's argument: it relies on oinops meaning 'wine-dark'. The trouble is, that's not a firm foundation. Strictly literally, the phrase straightforwardly means 'wine-faced sea', from οἶνος 'wine' + ὄψ 'face'."http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/01/colours-in-homer-2...
Indeed, these things are complex and incomplete. However I mentioned it as a non-obvious example of how we can be lured into inaccurate interpretations due to our contemporary assumptions.
(by the way I say "inaccurate" but not "wrong" as the point of contemporary reading of classic texts (or any text) is to find insights into your own states, unless you're a historian or historiographer).
It seems more likely to be a translation issue to me. This is the first I've heard of it but I'd guess "wine-faced" refers to the shimmering surface rather than the color.
Some things that will seem clear and obvious through a modern lens are in fact utterly obscure, even, or perhaps especially, in translation. For example the famous Homeric line, "the wine-dark sea"...well it doesn't mean anything like you could imagine, for their whole model of colour utterly different from ours. Ironically this code was cracked by, of all people, Gladstone: here's a good essay on this though his monograph is quite readable: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2010/06/fathoming-the-winedark-s... -- notice this essay also references Vedic literature so my comment about Hinduism is not random. This kind of thing was quite puzzling to me as a high schooler trying to struggle through Homer and knowing that I would be immediately found out and screwed if I tried to use one of the translations to get a sense of the story...you get the plot in translation but can only dimly see the social order.
I also recommend Plutarch's Lives, although (or perhaps because) he attempted to bend the Greeks' actions to what we might consider a more modern frame, that of Rome. In particular though read Solon, Pericles (!!) and Alcibiades for clues into how they lived.
As for the Spartans in particular: basically any movie you've ever seen on the subject might as well be science fiction. The closest modern model I could come up with would be some Nazi fantasy crossed with Trotsky. The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse by Paul Cartledge's "The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse" is probably the best for the lay reader and will probably blow your mind.
Ancient Greek is worth learning IMHO and has opened up much more intellectual opportunity to me than the parallel years of Latin ever did. Both are Indo-European (aka "Indo-German" in German!) languages so pretty easy to learn.
HTH