The essential philosophy of Sparta: Survival of the fittest.
...as long as he's from the ruling caste, that is.
... a caste originating as the most fit, no doubt
Sayings of Spartan women
121–130 of 224 posts
Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#122I don't understand the point of changing words like "many" to "mony" or "man" to "mon". I mean if you're anyway writing the entire thing in modern day English then why do this. Is it just for the effect of it I.e., making it look sophisticated? or is it some kind of attempt at retaining the originality/authenticity?
It's supposed to be conveying some kind of regional accent/dialect, I think. A bit from the same translation:
A Spartan, being asked if the road into Sparta were safe, said, That depends on what kind of a mon ye are; for the lions gang about where they wull, but the hares we hunt over that land."
Edit: poking around the translation some, it looks like it's supposed to represent the Doric Greek dialect.
Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#123I don't understand the point of changing words like "many" to "mony" or "man" to "mon". I mean if you're anyway writing the entire thing in modern day English then why do this. Is it just for the effect of it I.e., making it look sophisticated? or is it some kind of attempt at retaining the originality/authenticity?
I think I vaguely recall the explanation from a classics course many, many, many years ago, but I can't find a source without investing a ton more effort, so take this with a grain of salt: IIRC, Plutarch wrote the sayings in intentionally archaic (for his time) Greek. He lived hundreds of years after Sparta had disappeared as a power in the ancient world, so he could have intended it to demonstrate the great antiquity of the quotations, or he could have done so to paint the Spartans as rough-around-the-edges rustics. The translation attempts to mimic this effect by translating the archaic-sounding Greek as archaic-sounding English.
Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “…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.
You could be right and I might be wrong. I get the feeling for them it’s more focused on sportsmanship and fellowship than adversarial competition. If the focus were on winning then they’d recruit like the other schools for their sports teams (pac10, bigEast, etc. I know some have expanded and names have changed)
perhaps a greater percentage of ivy athletes play for "the love of the sport", as something less than 1% of all college athletes will go on to a professional career (and few of those will by ivy leaguers), but competition is certainly still central. folks who go to exclusive schools tend to be quite competitive, practically by definition. winning and being competitive are certainly not the same though. these athletes want to win, even if they're at a disadvantage and don't win as often as the big sports schools. note also that ivy leaguers tend to do better at sports in which money hasn't heavily distorted the playing field.
the problem for ivies with respect to recruiting (for winning) is the academic admissions floor, not money (harvard and yale having two of the biggest endowments in history) nor necessarily even an aversion to cheating and corruption. top athletes are too conspicuous not to draw outsized scrutiny in that regard, and tarnishing the brand that way just isn't worth it.
Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#125Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a very biased article that is playing up all the aspects of Spartan society that modern audiences would find repulsive for internet likes. At the end of the day it is not unlike the film it criticises (300) except it's going all the way to the other end and painting a portrait of a grim, evil empire. It is good to keep in mind that pretty much all ancient societies had norms and customs that we find repulsive…
Iirc that series addresses this critique in some depth, pointing out that sparta was particularly awful even by the standards of other greek states. Another interesting bit was how it's historically rare for slave-owning societies to have more than 50% of their population enslaved. Since sparta was closer to 80% enslaved people, they relied on particularly brutal methods to keep down the regular slave revolts, making…
> Another interesting bit was how it's historically rare for slave-owning societies to have more than 50% of their population enslaved
Probably worth noting, then, that in 1860, South Carolina and Mississippi had over 50% population enslaved, and four more states over 40% population enslaved.
Considering that American-owned slaves were treated much crueler on average than Ancient slave populations, I'm curious whether Spartans were more or less like Americans in this regard. A glorious empire built on brutality and moral superiority.
Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say that one is de facto slave if their superiors can rape or kill them without legal repercussions.
I would agree to that. They still would have to fear, that someone leaks the video of it - and some superior needs a scapegoat to punish, because everyone here respects human rights etc. A legally owned slave, was legally OK to be raped or killed. And ok to proudly tell everyone about it.
>They still would have to fear, that someone leaks the video of it
Is it really a deterrent, though? You said yourself that it'd be scapegoated and its not like they depend on good PR to keep their goodies, they own the country after all.
Also I can't help but wonder what these people talk about behind closed doors, do they really play by the same rules you and I would be held accountable to behind closed doors?
Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#128The essential philosophy of Sparta: Survival of the fittest.
If by "fittest" you mean "lucky enough to be born into the ruling class".
Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#129I don't understand the point of changing words like "many" to "mony" or "man" to "mon". I mean if you're anyway writing the entire thing in modern day English then why do this. Is it just for the effect of it I.e., making it look sophisticated? or is it some kind of attempt at retaining the originality/authenticity?
Some people take the Sapir-Whorf theory too seriously: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
In what sense is that connected to the above?
Re: Sayings of Spartan women
#130Hm, 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.
> It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise Do we? I thought it was fairly well-known to be extremely nasty.
It remains extremely popular with chuds, who actually want our society to be nastier than it already is.