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Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#101

Post by rsynnott »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #97
rsynnott wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Read history; and make up your own mind. You actually have to be pretty careful with this, particularly for the ancient world stuff. The 'historians' of the ancient world were not really historians in the modern context; they were generally closer to gossip columnists. If you uncritically read the main sources on late Republic and early Imperial Rome, say, you'd get some very weird (and contradictory) ideas about i…

Of course. So let me make a further suggestion: read modern historians (or read them too ). I don't know who are the authorities on Sparta and ancient Greeece. But don't get your opinions about those subjects from an internet rant aimed at shocking people who only know Sparta from its depiction in 300 and who can legitimately not tell apart the hyperbole and the fantasy from reality. Read "history", in general. Don't…

The author is an academic historian. And it’s not… saying anything very controversial. It’s pretty much the mainstream view on Sparta.

I mean, obviously reading more is better. But this is a perfectly fine resource and links to lots of further reading. This blog is a far better thing for a normal person to read than the stuff you linked; it basically represents current understanding, whereas some of what you linked, while important sources _because we don't have all that many sources_ (historians have to take what they can get; for an extreme example see the Historia Augusta...) are bordering on fanfiction.

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#102

Post by deathcakes »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #78
dendriti wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are "history" in the sense of academic historical text looking at primary sources. They were all written with agendas, none of which were "document the historical reality of the Spartans".

Really? Herodotus, "the father of history" is not history? Anyway, I suppose I shouldn't be pessimistic and take your one comment as an indication that a random blog post on the internet is treated as a more authoritative source than the original texts from which it -ultimately, though evidently indirectly- draws its information. Edit: >> They were all written with agendas, none of which were "document the historical…

Herodotus made a hell of a lot up, relied on oral reports and explicitly states that none of what he writes is intended to be relied on - it is merely what people told him. I think you actually need to read the linked blog that you seem so dismissive of, and come up with some substantive rebuttals to the points he makes rather than just making this rather lame appeal to historical authority.

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#103

Post by deathcakes »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #99
eesmith wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many types of history. Herodotus was not writing from any sense of a modern 'academic historical text'. The evidence is, contrary to what you write, that the author of the series of posts directly comments on Herodotus, and uses Herodotus as a primary source. Eg, in https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p... > Which brings us back to Herodotus (remember, way back in the first of these,…

>> There are many types of history. Herodotus was not writing from any sense of a modern 'academic historical text'. Sure. So read modern academic historical texts, if you prefer- but don't take your knowledge of history from a blog rant on the internets. The passages you quote make it clear that the author of the blog posts is commenting on sources commenting on Herodotus. He cites Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, e…

To this particular point, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartiate would seem to suggest (admittedly poorly cited) that there was in fact a distinction made within Spartan society between free and enslaved Spartans.

The only reference it sources is confusingly Xenophon, who you have admonished others for not reading - I confess I haven't myself, so will do some digging!

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#104

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

eesmith wrote: post #98
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but are you saying that the blog posts above are an objective analysis of historical sources, without "biases, [disagreement], making things up" etc? No, seriously, when you read that blog post, did you think "ah, that is an objective analysis of history, without any personal opinions or any attempt to promote an agenda"? Because that's not at all what I thought!

Objectivity is impossible, and no one here is making the point that the author of this series had no personal opinions on the topic. It's a given that the author of this series has a bias, just like everyone does. Part of the academic tradition is to cite references (as this author does) and present the reasoning behind the arguments (as this author does). That said, if Herodotus does have biases in his Histories, ho…

What Herodotus (and Xenophon, Thucydides, Plutarch, etc) is writing about happened more than 2000 years ago. I don't have any "bias" that relates to what he wrote. I just can't get worked up about how the ancient Spartans murdered their slaves, as I can't get worked up about how every other Greek city did not grant any rights to "free" women, or how the priests of the Aztecs sacrificed POWs and then sold their flesh to the market to be consumed by the ordinary citizens of Tenochtitlan, or about the cannibalism at the siege of Maara [1].

Generally I find it ridiculous to moralise about ancient peoples. The blog posts above are just one big moralising moralisation about ancient Sparta. People who share their link are probably people who really get all their knowledge of history from films like 300, people who sincerely, honest-to-G0d, hand-on-heart, thought the Spartans were noble warriors with huge gnashers and sculpted six-packs, who are utterly shocked to learn about the helots, and about the Agoge, and how the 300 Spartans of Leonidas were not alone in Thermopylae, hence why a blog rant appeals to them as some kind of font of revelatory knowledge.

And hence my advice to such people to read actual history and not continue to take their knowledge of history from shallow, unscientific sources like blog rants. Intellectual laziness is what makes people keep sharing this rubbish, not any kind of desire to know any sort of unbiased, objective truth.

__________

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Ma%27arra#Cannibalism

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#105

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

rsynnott wrote: post #101
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. So let me make a further suggestion: read modern historians (or read them too ). I don't know who are the authorities on Sparta and ancient Greeece. But don't get your opinions about those subjects from an internet rant aimed at shocking people who only know Sparta from its depiction in 300 and who can legitimately not tell apart the hyperbole and the fantasy from reality. Read "history", in general. Don't…

The author is an academic historian. And it’s not… saying anything very controversial. It’s pretty much the mainstream view on Sparta. I mean, obviously reading more is better. But this is a perfectly fine resource and links to lots of further reading. This blog is a far better thing for a normal person to read than the stuff you linked; it basically represents current understanding, whereas some of what you linked,…

Well, now I don't know why you are being downvoted. Here, have a compensatory uppie. dang says that's part of being a good citizen around here.

Edit: re fanfiction. I honestly have no idea what you mean. Fanfiction? Who else do you think has more accurate and objective accounts of ancient history than ancient historians? Do you think modern historians have some kind of crystal ball that they can look through the mists of time and see with clear eyes the things that happened 2000 years ago?

Ancient historians were not very accurate or even honest, or objective. What better sources are there? You really think that an internet rant is a better source for historical knowledge than ancient authors? I mean, if you really think so I am really going to bang my head on the wall very, very hard in complete despair. This is the internet?

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#106

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

deathcakes wrote: post #103
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There are many types of history. Herodotus was not writing from any sense of a modern 'academic historical text'. Sure. So read modern academic historical texts, if you prefer- but don't take your knowledge of history from a blog rant on the internets. The passages you quote make it clear that the author of the blog posts is commenting on sources commenting on Herodotus. He cites Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, e…

To this particular point, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartiate would seem to suggest (admittedly poorly cited) that there was in fact a distinction made within Spartan society between free and enslaved Spartans. The only reference it sources is confusingly Xenophon, who you have admonished others for not reading - I confess I haven't myself, so will do some digging!

A distinction was certainly made between free citizens of Sparta and their slaves! Just to be perfectly clear, I don't disagree with that.

What I point out is that this distinction was not made by using different words that both meant "inhabitant of Sparta", in particular not "Spartiate" and "Spartan". As far as I can tell, the slaves of Sparta were only known as "helots".

The general point is that the ancients didn't think of the slaves living in a city as "citi-z-ens" of that city, probably because they were not actually citizens, in the legal sense, according to the laws of the era. For example, you will find no ancient source, and I believe no modern source either, calling the slaves living in Athens, "Athenians". They were the Athenians' slaves, they lived and worked in Athens, but they were not "Athenians".

This is not completely unlike modern times. For example, I live and work in the UK, but I'm by no means "British" and nobody would refer to me and others like me as "British", simply because we live and work in Britain. Rather, "British" is reserved for, well, citizens of the United Kingdom. The rest of us that have the malfortune to be domiciled on the British Isles are "immigrants" (or "bloody foreigners"), in any case there are different words, with different roots, to describe us.

I'm happy to clarify this further if there is still confusion. I blame the author of the blog posts for the confusion, btw.

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#107

Post by ceejayoz »

gremloni wrote: post #73
ldbooth wrote: post #15

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.

It’s a little hard to believe all the men were gay. Is being gay a choice?

What I wear is a choice most of the time, but at my wedding, it was traditional to don a tuxedo, so so I did it.

Being gay is about what you’re attracted to. Fucking a fleshlight doesn’t mean you’re attracted to them, after all.

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#108

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

deathcakes wrote: post #102
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Herodotus, "the father of history" is not history? Anyway, I suppose I shouldn't be pessimistic and take your one comment as an indication that a random blog post on the internet is treated as a more authoritative source than the original texts from which it -ultimately, though evidently indirectly- draws its information. Edit: >> They were all written with agendas, none of which were "document the historical…

Herodotus made a hell of a lot up, relied on oral reports and explicitly states that none of what he writes is intended to be relied on - it is merely what people told him. I think you actually need to read the linked blog that you seem so dismissive of, and come up with some substantive rebuttals to the points he makes rather than just making this rather lame appeal to historical authority.

Yes, I've read the linked blog post, thank you very much for making an ass of u and me.

And btw, that Herodotus, while being "the father of history" was full of shit, is something that any Greek school kid will tell you readily, so bringing this up is just a shallow dismissal of my point: that all we know about ancient times is what ancient authors have written, like Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato, and Plutarch. You will not learn more about ancient times by a blog post that quotes them second- and third-hand, all the while expressing strong personal opinions about what they have written, than if you read the actual first-hand sources, biased as they may be.

Like, you're the second or third person who makes this point: Herodotus confabulated. Sure. And who else didn't? Who else are you going to get your knowledge of what happened 2000 years ago than from the people who wrote about it all around the time it was going on?

I mean, do you think there are some other, magickally objective and accurate sources about ancient Sparta, than the ancient Greek authors I suggest people read?

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#109

Post by rsynnott »

Jensson wrote: post #77
ceejayoz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28711149 Specifically, part VI and VII of that series. > In short: Sparta’s overall military performance is profoundly average over the Classical period. They don’t even manage a winning record! > It is hard to avoid the conclusion that while Spartan tactics may have been modestly better than most other Greek states, Spartan operations were dismal, placing severe limits on how eff…

Sparta at its peak was 10-20 times smaller than Athens. With such a huge population difference you'd expect Sparta to not even put up a fight, but they did and often won and took over large parts of Greece. So to me it is strange to say that the spartan people didn't punch above its weight militarily. If they didn't nobody would have written about them since they were just another small town in Greece. The problem wi…

> Sparta at its peak was 10-20 times smaller than Athens.

No, it wasn't. It had a broadly similar population; it's just that most of that population were slaves. And they did have slave auxiliaries, so it wasn't necessarily a manpower issue.

Re: Sparta was more than an army of super warriors

#110

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #56
bennylope wrote: post #3

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...

The article you link is the worst kind of telling of history: overflowing with bias, preaching and pontificating and making moral judgments left and right about things that happenned more than 2000 years ago. It is an internet rant, designed to provoke clicks and outrage, and its only reason of existence is the existence of the film, 300, a fantasy, that presents a fantastical image of Sparta, that the author then pr…

In the end, you're downvoting me for calling out an angry rant on the internets as an angry rant on the internets and for calling out your intellectual laziness that accepts to get its knowledge second- and third-hand, from angry rants on the internets, as intellectually lazy.

This is the internets. A toxic shithole full of intellectually lazy and wilfully ignorant people who don't want to know, don't want to learn, don't want to read and study, just want to be entertained and outraged and cancel each other out. Like a good, old, Roman mob.

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