This 2007 film was partly inspired by Bettany's documentary 'The Spartans' Bettany travelled to Sparta as an undergraduate at Oxford. She was fascinated by the Spartans; this extreme culture that took boy-children away from their mothers at seven, that pursued military excellence to its very limits, and yet that allowed women a freedom they enjoyed nowhere else in the Ancient World. Ever since that first, solo trip she has specialised in the study of Ancient Sparta. Using thi