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Sayings of Spartan women

penelope.uchicago.edu

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Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#51

Post by Applejinx »

dragontamer wrote: post #40
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.

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 rock…

Makes sense. It's like a perfect metaphor for imbalances between individualism and collectivism.

Seems like Sparta internalized personal valor so intensely that the only collective good they could possibly understand, was to project the whole country as an imagined heroic individual, and then try to individually triumph in the name of that country.

Meanwhile, there's a lot of countries out there with more of an interest in community spirit and collective action. I daresay there's good metaphors for leaning too far in that way, as well, but Sparta did get wrecked in the end by the collectivists, who quite simply out-organized them and provided better support for their soldiers.

If honor dictates you have to jump over the ten foot wall ALONE, you ain't doing it, and humbler people who build a human pyramid and lift up those not good at climbing… their whole army's gonna be on the other side of that wall, anytime they want.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#52

Post by Taywee »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #23

Anyone noticed the html filename is "sayings_of_spartan_women*.html"? That asterisk in the filename doesn't cause the webserver to explode?

It really shouldn't. An asterisk is perfectly legal in a filename and in a URL path. It is a special shell character, but if your webserver is looking up static files via the shell, you need a different webserver pronto.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#53

Post by cafard »

Miraste wrote: post #36
platz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well, Nietzche liked Schopenhauer at least until after Untimely Reflections was published.

Schopenhauer certainly could bad-mouth anyone or anything. But remembering him for that is like remembering Dijkstra for the put-downs of Basic or Fortran rather than for his constructive work.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#54

Post by marcosdumay »

dustintrex wrote: post #22
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…

Some of the 5% of Spartan women who were full citizens, perhaps. However, Sparta was an extremely unequal society, with some 85% either slaves or helots (also slaves, but owned by the state, not individuals).

Well, that goes for every commentary on ancient societies. Unless it's explicitly about slaves and outcasts, it's about the at most 10% of the society that wasn't.

At some point the Romans got more people to participate on their society, but that's centuries after any of that.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#55

Post by scns »

Miraste wrote: post #36
platz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Have to concur, sadly. I don't take advice on ethics from a man who kicked the woman, who took care of his house, down the stairs.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#56

Post by Applejinx »

Taywee wrote: post #47
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.

Who is suggesting we emulate it? Can't things just be interesting historically?

Yes. It's worth study. Especially since, all the world over, we've got resurgence of Spartan attitudes towards virtue, valor, and violence.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#57

Post by some_random »

Reminder that Spartan society was nightmarishly abusive to every single member from its slave class to its ruling class in the name of military supremacy, which they failed at. The only thing they were truly successful at was propaganda, which still dominates the way they are looked at today.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#58

Post by rdmond »

JasonFruit wrote: post #32

Why are these Spartans using Scottish dialect?

Spartans spoke a different dialect of Greek (Doric) than the Athenians (Attic) and it used to be fairly common to translate bits of Doric as if they had been spoken by a Scottish Highlander.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#59

Post by Applejinx »

refurb wrote: post #49
xgb84j wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

What about the people that are violent, not because of mental illness, but because well, they want to cause others pain?

Rule of law and systemic governance will always be more practical to manage this, than dependence on heroic vigilante justice to meet an evil individual with a heroic individual, on the spot and ready to act.

There's a variety of reasons for this, but one of 'em is that in a condition of systemic governance, there's some societal pressure against the kind of sadism you mention. In a world like Sparta, it's hard to tell the heroes from the villains, and anybody might lash out at any time. Even the quotes given, spell out situations where random violence was just a part of everyday, expected life. This causes tensions and grudges.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#60

Post by lq313c »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #41
herio wrote: post #7

On the topic of Spartan societey in general, a really good read is https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/ by Dr. Bret Deveraux. Long read but well worth it for interested people.

It is a very interesting series. However, I think he understates classic Spartan military prowess. If you look at Deveraux's list of military victories and defeats, you will see a lot of the defeats came after the Peloponnesian war. I believe even Greek sources talked about how Spartan society became softer after winning the Peloponnesian war. Also, the Spartans were famous for their army not their navy. If you take…

He also points out that the Spartans fought primarily against much weaker opponents, making their military prowess not so impressive. If I constantly pick fights against children, my win rate would be quite high as well.
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