Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sayings of Spartan women

penelope.uchicago.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–224 of 224 posts

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#221

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #219
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 we…

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…

Thanks and you're right that I could have made my point more concisely. The series of comments I made in this conversation were not my most well-written ever.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#222

Post by spaced-out »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #219
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 we…

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…

>"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"

Except, as the author points out, the Spartan system that he's criticizing requires the Spartiates to have a plantation of helots to support them so they can spend all their time training for battle. A man in ancient Sparta could only be a Spartiate if they had a plantation of helots (if they lose their plantation they lose their status as a citizen), so the helots were just as much a part of Spartan society as they were.

Re: Sayings of Spartan women

#223

Post by int_19h »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #217
int_19h wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still the case that 80% of the population of the Spartan state was slaves. That's what's relevant to this conversation; the rest is just sophistry.

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 we…

The author is addressing the perception of Sparta as it exists in popular culture today. Which is to say - the perception that is fueled by movies like 300, and the military culture that adopted that perception to glorify itself by proxy. Because of that, the vast majority of people are not aware that Spartans were a tiny minority of the residents of Sparta (the state), or that most residents were slaves. If you do, great - but your assertion that the article "does not improve the reader's knowledge" is not grounded in reality.
Post reply on HN