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If you like this there's a meaty seven part blog series by historian Bret Devereaux about the mythology surrounding Sparta. It offers an account of what Sparta and the Spartan military was really like as well as how the Spartan mythos evolved. https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
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Well I am Greek and had read a lot of stuff also at school about it. In ancient Greece they were considered as such. How do you know it's a trope? Statistical data?
Yes, statistical analysis of their victories and defeats. It's an excellent book. I'd recommend it.
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I've commonly heard that Spartans were good at fighting but bad at war. Turns out that a band of illiterate warriors is largely a bad idea for an army composition. If the war goes on too long, they simply run out of supplies and leave (Or, if they're forced to fight, they run out of supplies and lose)
I was surprised to learn spartan society had pedophilia built in similar to a mentor system. Will Durant wrote about it, but I never hear anything in pop culture except the warrior bit.
Twink and bear has a long history. > The word eromenos describes an adolescent boy who is the passive (or ‘receptive’, ‘subordinate’) partner in a homosexual relationship (usually between males), opposite to the word erastes (to love, the older and active partner) in Ancient Greece. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eromenos
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Yes, statistical analysis of their victories and defeats. It's an excellent book. I'd recommend it.
It doesn't matter how "tough" Spartans were. They were largely illiterate and terrible at logistics. Its hard to win battles when you're terrible at supply lines. And its hard to keep track of supplies if you don't know how to read or write. ---------- I've commonly heard that Spartans were good at fighting but bad at war. Turns out that a band of illiterate warriors is largely a bad idea for an army composition. If…
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Twink and bear has a long history. > The word eromenos describes an adolescent boy who is the passive (or ‘receptive’, ‘subordinate’) partner in a homosexual relationship (usually between males), opposite to the word erastes (to love, the older and active partner) in Ancient Greece. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eromenos
‘Twink’ doesn’t really connote a passive role though (you can be a twink and a top). Similarly for ‘bear’. Twinks can also be post-adolescent. So I don’t think ‘twink’ and ‘bear’ are very good translations of these terms, which are based on quite a different conception of gay relationships than the one we have now.
This reminds me of my relatively new pet peeve when watching any military element in a movie. Every time they gather in a room, the soldiers arrange themselves at attention as scenery. I get that it's mostly symbolic of how organized and dedicated they are, but having been in the military, the last thing a soldier is looking to do is stand at attention. Movie soldiery (wide term to include knights, personal bodyguard…
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‘Twink’ doesn’t really connote a passive role though (you can be a twink and a top). Similarly for ‘bear’. Twinks can also be post-adolescent. So I don’t think ‘twink’ and ‘bear’ are very good translations of these terms, which are based on quite a different conception of gay relationships than the one we have now.
Happy to concede that it's more vague gesturing at "Look, a similar thing was happening 3,000 years ago and is happening today" than the same thing but it's not like it's unrecognisable.
Or, much less than an army of super warriors. They did not win more battles than their rivals. I think of them as Greece's FARC, distinguished mainly by their abuse of their own children and everyone they depended on for their own survival.
Do you have a source that dives more into this? Specifically breaking down how they weren't actually more effective, contrary to what might be considered common belief.
If you like this there's a meaty seven part blog series by historian Bret Devereaux about the mythology surrounding Sparta. It offers an account of what Sparta and the Spartan military was really like as well as how the Spartan mythos evolved. https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
Opinion is a big part of history. One historian's analysis is not fefinitive proof rather a view that may be close to the truth.
...the analysis of one historian is just that. But the analysis of many historians is more likely to be true, and the consensus of the entire field, held for decades, is even more likely. Certainly more likely to be true than a popular conception primarily driven by comic books, Hollywood films, and popularizations written by non-historians.
It's also worth looking at the historian's analysis, and questioning what sources they have, what they're claiming to know, and how plausible it is for them to make those claims. If your analysis, let's say, starts and ends with "Plutarch said it, and we should trust Plutarch", well, when Plutarch wrote about Sparta and its peak, he was writing about time as distant to him as Elizabethan England is to us, and with no more first hand knowledge.
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Opinion is a big part of history. One historian's analysis is not fefinitive proof rather a view that may be close to the truth.
Yes, but... ...the analysis of one historian is just that. But the analysis of many historians is more likely to be true, and the consensus of the entire field, held for decades, is even more likely. Certainly more likely to be true than a popular conception primarily driven by comic books, Hollywood films, and popularizations written by non-historians. It's also worth looking at the historian's analysis, and questio…
Yes, but at one point, the widely held belief was that the earth was the center of the universe, the earth itself was flat, and the sun was a god being pulled through the heavens in a chariot of fire.
So, sometimes consensus isn't right either. Just a bunch of people agreeeing because it is the path of least resistance.