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Sayings of Spartan women

penelope.uchicago.edu

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Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#31

Post by chalst »

orange_joe wrote: post #16

It’s worth mentioning that Spartan women held huge amounts of wealth due to the violence within their society (men’s wealth would be inherited by their wives who would then remarry). According to Aristotle (who is very biased) the women lived lives of luxury. The point of this is that the women who extol the violence of men have a material self interest in the deaths of their men (minimally as a class, potentially in…

It's worth noting that Aristotle was not a disinterested commentator on Sparta: he loathed the relatively high amount of freedom Spartan women had compared to Athenian women, and went out of his way to argue that when bad things happened to Sparta it had resulted from this.

See, e.g., http://jsphfrtz.com/aristotles-interpretation-of-spartan-wom...

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#33

Post by xgb84j »

emadabdulrahim wrote: post #19
intrepidhero wrote: post #6

An awful lot of those sayings are extolling "willingness to commit violence" as a virtue. That's not the sort of society I think we should emulate.

Doesn't it depends on the context? Defending an elderly from assault or protecting one's family from a reckless person is violence in the name of virtue.

While violence is sometimes justified, I think it's still better to build a society that tries to solve its problems without violence or prevents problems that can only be solved with violence.

When you have reckless people attacking the elderly you need better psychological healthcare and a better social system to prevent that.

I understand your point and in a narrow context it's definitely true, but in a larger context you can prevent most violence by changing society.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#34

Post by clairity »

mc32 wrote: post #5
tokai wrote: post #4

Hm, all most all of them are horrible. It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise when it was an awful inhumane culture and society that didn't even last that long.

Aside from Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League), Sparta is always portrayed as cruel and inhumane, deservedly so. On the other hand, they were, apparently, good at waging war one way or another. I've not seen it associated with philosophy and civilization as Athens was, among others.

> “…Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League)…”

the point of sports in the ivy league is also competition, whether they’re able to be as competitive as other leagues or not.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#36

Post by Miraste »

platz wrote: post #24
kleiba wrote: post #2

...and then there's Schopenhauer: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/483552-the-cheapest-sort-of...

> a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen seems like an overstep

Schopenhauer is one of history's biggest assholes, it's like his whole thing. No one liked him even when he was alive.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#37

Post by forgetfulness »

jacobmischka wrote: post #9
mc32 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League), Sparta is always portrayed as cruel and inhumane, deservedly so. On the other hand, they were, apparently, good at waging war one way or another. I've not seen it associated with philosophy and civilization as Athens was, among others.

According to Deveraux (article series linked in another comment) they weren't even good at that!

They had a professional officer corps and drills. In fact, that's mostly what the Spartiate class was really.

Since other city states had armies comprised of the gentry donning a suit of armor when needed, it made a lot of a difference in that context.

Well it turns out that you can have a worthwhile society while also having a professional officer corps and drills, it's just that the Spartans didn't.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#38

Post by cabalamat »

jacobmischka wrote: post #9
mc32 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League), Sparta is always portrayed as cruel and inhumane, deservedly so. On the other hand, they were, apparently, good at waging war one way or another. I've not seen it associated with philosophy and civilization as Athens was, among others.

According to Deveraux (article series linked in another comment) they weren't even good at that!

Indeed. They were good are producing high-quality individual infantrymen. But (1) there weren't very many of them, and (2) there's a lot more to winning wars than how tough your infantry are.

I'm reminded of Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo who both thought that Americans were only interested in money and sex, decadent, undisciplined and unmilitaristic (all true, to some extent), and that therefore they'd be easy to beat in a war. It didn't quite work out for them!

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#39

Post by baud147258 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #11

I don’t think Sparta was as cruel and callous as portrayed. I think our view of Sparta is influenced by two main things: 1. Spartan propaganda. It was in Sparta’s interest to portray themselves as crazy, devoted warriors who relished the thought of dying for their country. How would you feel going up against a bunch of guys who would rather die on the field of battle than go home in defeat and have their own mothers…

> Spartan propaganda

Sparta milked the Thermopylae battle a lot, presenting themselves as defender of Greek independence against foreign invaders, sometime even as they were taking money from them to pay for their wars against other Greek cities

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#40

Post by dragontamer »

mc32 wrote: post #5
tokai wrote: post #4

Hm, all most all of them are horrible. It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise when it was an awful inhumane culture and society that didn't even last that long.

Aside from Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League), Sparta is always portrayed as cruel and inhumane, deservedly so. On the other hand, they were, apparently, good at waging war one way or another. I've not seen it associated with philosophy and civilization as Athens was, among others.

Sparta was good at fighting, but bad at war!

Spartans were known to have terrible logistics, they couldn't field an army for more than a year. Back then, most armies needed to live off the fat of the land and/or have huge supply trains to remain effective, and Spartans had neither skillset. (When talking Bronze age tactics: this was the key advantage of slingers, who could craft their sling-bullets from clay and rocks found near the battle areas. Mass production and distribution of arrows was still not mastered in the 1000 BC-era or so)

As such, Spartans would "gloriously" run into a few battles, declare themselves superior, then go home. While the enemies would just keep marching towards their target, sustainably pressing forward.

Its like watching an expert Sprinter battle a Marathon Runner. War is a marathon, not a sprint. Consider the Persian armies that fought against the Greeks: thousands of miles away from home.

In contrast, Spartans fought on their home turf and barely were able to do so effectively. Sure, they won a lot of battles, but holding back the Persian army required more than just winning a battle here or there.

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That's why the Athenians worshiped Athena: the goddess of wisdom _and_ war. They realized that waging war was both an issue of might and intelligence. Intelligence to move your supplies and organize them so that your armies can stay in the field longer than your enemies.

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That being said: the Marine Corps glorify the Spartan way of thinking, because the USA's Marine Corps are designed to be the spearhead of battle.

The Army is more about logistics. Its got less glory but is more practical. They don't glorify the Spartan way.

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