Sayings of Spartan women

The passage you quote does not address the distinction between "Spartiate" and "Spartan" that the author is attempting to make, and which is the subject I discuss in my comment above (in fact, that is the subjec of the "it" in "it appears" in my comment).

The author of the blog posts has basically made up the idea that "Spartiate" and "Spartan" are two different words with different meaning. "Spartan" or "Spartiate" on the one hand, and "Helot" on the other hand are two different categories, but "Spartan" and "Spartiate" are different Latinisations of the same Greek word, Σπαρτιάτης and not similar-sounding words with subtly different meaning, ast he author claims. This claim, that "Spartan" and "Spartiate" are different words representing different categories of people is the revisionism that I am commenting on.

Can you quote a passage from the linked series of blog posts that directly addresses this revisionism?

Yes, synecdochically and when it's clear from the context which one is meant. But when you say something like "Sparta was 80% slaves" it's not clear from the context and you have to clarify which one you mean, the city or the city-state. Otherwise you are only spreading confusion, just like the series of blog posts above.

And it is still the case that the helots were the slaves of the Spartans, that nobody called the helots "Spartans", and that nobody thought that "helots" were Spartans, not in any ancient source and not in any modern source I'm aware of outside the linked series of blog posts.

If you (or, you know, others) think this is wrong, you're welcome to show me where, in modern or ancient texts it says that "helots were spartans" and "sparta was mostly populated by slaves", or something similar -except of course for the scandalously revisionist blog posts we're discussing.

The issues with believability in the first book are mostly just around the backstory; the history of the Draka makes no sense at all.

> My impression of the early books was broadly on the evilness level of "Nazi Germany, but less incompetent".

I mean, that's up there in the evil stakes. But also, the Draka were a lot more... messed up. Both had deeply alien (and arguably rather Spartan, to go back on topic for a second) value systems, but by the time Nazi Germany fell, the vast majority of the population had only had Nazi values inflicted on them for about 15 years; the Draka social system was _centuries_ old.

No, it's not sophistry and I don't appreciate you insulting me by saying I engage in sophistry. I am sick and tired of random people on the internet accusing me of intellectual dishonesty because they have no idea what I'm talking about because they haven't any knowledge relevant to the subject at hand, other than having read a blog post or two.

As to the "the case" that "80% of the population of the Spartan state were slaves", that is an acceptable turn of phrase, but it is not what the blog author says. He says that the majority of the people of "Sparta" were slaves. This is calculated to come across as a tear down of the myth of "noble" Sparta because it makes no distinction between the free citizens of Sparta who are the ones elevated to mythical status by ignorance of history, and their slaves, who are never and under no circimstances considered to be part of the "noble warriors of Sparta" or what have you.

In short, the author is making a very clear attempt to exploit the confusion caused by the synecdochical use of "Sparta" to mean both the city and the city-state, to make a point that ultimately only serves his vanity, and is not really informative. To say that "most people of the city state of Sparta were slaves" is only revelatory to those who have no idea of ancient history.

To give you an analogy, it's like someone making a huge todo about how "Black holes are not really black". This can only be news to people who don't know what black holes are and what is meant by "black" in their name. Then instead of trying to clarify the meaning of the word "black" in "black hole" the author launches into a tirade about how black holes have been glorified as being the blackest bodies in the universe when in reality they are not even black and most of their mass is invisible because it's hidden behind the event horizon and Oh Gods! All you 've ever been told about physics, it's all wrong! You've been worshipping a black body that is not even black and is not even all there!

It's a lot of noise for nothing but internet likes and an utter appeal to ignorance that does not improve the reader's knowledge one bit. And it is many peoples' first point of entry into the subject of not only Sparta, but ancient history in general. If that first point of entry is not 300 instead, which to be sure is even worse but without which the author's blog post would not even exist, because it has nothing to say other than "300 sucks, man".

300 has Persians throwing incendiary grenades. Their king is a giant. He's carried to battle on a golden throne, like a Warhammer figure. But the author saw fit to attack 300's realism by picking apart its mythologising of "noble" Spartan warriors, which nobody has ever believed other than people who learn their history from comics and movies. This is how much the author of the blog post is interested in historic truth.

I appreciate your post and i thought it was informative.

That being said i do think you could have made your point more succinctly.

For a while, it seemed like you were arguing semantics vs actually informing the reader.

Your point is valid. I'm not sure how to present it better, but I'd posit:

"Sparta, the city, was not 80% slaves. That stat only true about the state. This distinction only matters because the author is critizing sparta society on the basis that Sparta's seat of power was slave-cornucopia. But this is false. Sparta the city is mostly spartan citizens, making the author's criticism-by-sleight-of-hand dishonest"