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Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

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Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#21

Post by dotancohen »

frozenport wrote: post #15
wisty wrote: post #3

As far as I can tell, infanticide was accepted in ancient Greece and Rome at a lot of points. Ancient historians did have a habit of making assumptions that previous societies, they might have assumed that infanticide was common in Sparta because to a later ancient Greek that would have been how they would think weeding out weakness would be done (and Spartans liked to give the impression that they have always been t…

Well Roman laws contained fairly severe penalties for infanticide [1], while the practice was common it was certainly frowned up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide

Often, you'll find that taboos or prohibitions in one society often correlate with prevalence of the practice among neighboring states. "They do that, we do not" is not uncommon even today, and during antiquity was important enough to codify into law.

Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#23

Post by clavicat »

I’m reminded of a similar archeological controversy, that of child sacrifice in ancient Carthage. It was interesting because it demonstrated the way that the political concerns of our time shape our understanding of the ancient past.

Beginning in the seventies, scholars were motivated to revise the allegations of Carthaginian child sacrifice, claiming that it was racist Roman propaganda designed to abuse the memory of an enemy power (even though the same claims can be found in Greek sources from the time of Alexander the Great). It’s not hard to detect the influence of black emancipation and the Vietnam War in these efforts. For decades, this interpretation held sway until recently, when archeologists revisited the question and found that no, in fact the Carthaginians really had been sacrificing children all along.

This article informs us that Spartan eugenics inspired the Nazis, quoting a scholar who says that “It’s gotten used for some pretty nefarious ends”. One can easily see how our revulsion towards such atrocities could motivate our search for reasons to discredit the precedents that have been used to justify them.

Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#24

Post by akkartik »

scndrycntct wrote: post #16
Talanes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even within Sparta, proper Spartans didn't make up the majority of the population, so you'd still have to distinguish between Spartan infants and helot infants.

Pretty pedantic. I think we can agree that since the title and parent comment mention "Spartans", they are talking about the Spartans and not other residents.

Helots were 85% of the population[1]. GP is pointing out that random skeletons don't come with residency papers describing which kind of residents they belong to.

[1] Source: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#25

Post by CoastalCoder »

Ansil849 wrote: post #19
gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #2

I haven’t read the archeologist’s work. I did read the article. The archeologist claims that evidence across the Aegean and Athens particularly shows weak babies were cared for until death. That’s fine. However we’re not discussing Athenian nor general Aegean baby care. We’re discussing Spartan care. Nothing in the article (and I could have missed it) proved evidence, from digs, against the idea of infanticide by the…

> Nothing in the article (and I could have missed it) proved evidence, from digs, against the idea of infanticide by the Spartans. Isn't the onus on the ones claiming that Spartans practiced systemic infanticide to provide the evidence that they did so?

I'm not sure the concept of "onus" really applies here.

Each reader can decide for himself how much evidence he needs to be persuaded.

Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#26

Post by sebow »

I really doubt spartans or other groups of people from ancient times in southern europe behaved like this.And for me the reason is simple: it would have been seen barbaric.For example circumcision was seen barbaric, everything that imposed the idea of man-made modifications to the innocence of a baby also skews more with this idea compared to what (at the time,and even compared to now) were very humanistic societies: greeks, romans, etc.

Obviously that doesn't account for proof, but when you take into account the fact that "history is written by the victors" and simple examples like salem trials, or any other group who was been later found to be relatively innocent of their actions by their accusers, it makes you wonder if these "rumors" were spread just to make spartans less popular.From what i recall spartans were also composed from largely slaves,gladiators,foreign people, and usually those people are not keen towards tyranny.

Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#27

Post by wisty »

kiba wrote: post #6
wisty wrote: post #3

As far as I can tell, infanticide was accepted in ancient Greece and Rome at a lot of points. Ancient historians did have a habit of making assumptions that previous societies, they might have assumed that infanticide was common in Sparta because to a later ancient Greek that would have been how they would think weeding out weakness would be done (and Spartans liked to give the impression that they have always been t…

When we're talking about Spartans, we're talking about the Spartan aristocracy, no? Halo's Spartans make sense if you think about them as a traumatized and brutalized society.

Yeah Spartans were the aristocracy, then there were peasants (free but not citizens, Perioikoi) and serfs (Helots) below them. IIRC the Spartan aristocracy were originally Doric invaders who most likely created the rigid rules because they wanted to stay seperate and in charge of the conquered Helots (in kind of a caste system).

Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#28

Post by Ansil849 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #25
Ansil849 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing in the article (and I could have missed it) proved evidence, from digs, against the idea of infanticide by the Spartans. Isn't the onus on the ones claiming that Spartans practiced systemic infanticide to provide the evidence that they did so?

I'm not sure the concept of "onus" really applies here. Each reader can decide for himself how much evidence he needs to be persuaded.

The "concept of 'onus'" applies to the writer or whoever is making a claim, not to the reader.

Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#29

Post by hsod »

colordrops wrote: post #20
gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #2

I haven’t read the archeologist’s work. I did read the article. The archeologist claims that evidence across the Aegean and Athens particularly shows weak babies were cared for until death. That’s fine. However we’re not discussing Athenian nor general Aegean baby care. We’re discussing Spartan care. Nothing in the article (and I could have missed it) proved evidence, from digs, against the idea of infanticide by the…

Is there a name for being arbitrarily biased against a counterclaim? The simple fact that this is posed as a counterclaim itself seems to invoke skepticism, even when the original belief itself isn't even presented or has a poor basis itself. A weak counterclaim does not imply the claim to be truth.

I agree. Lately it seems that people who lay their ideas out and accept criticism are being destroyed by those who refuse to admit fault a priori

Re: Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

#30

Post by Someone »

frozenport wrote: post #15
wisty wrote: post #3

As far as I can tell, infanticide was accepted in ancient Greece and Rome at a lot of points. Ancient historians did have a habit of making assumptions that previous societies, they might have assumed that infanticide was common in Sparta because to a later ancient Greek that would have been how they would think weeding out weakness would be done (and Spartans liked to give the impression that they have always been t…

Well Roman laws contained fairly severe penalties for infanticide [1], while the practice was common it was certainly frowned up. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide

From that page:

- “The practice was prevalent in ancient Rome, as well”

- “Infanticide became a capital offense in Roman law in 374, but offenders were rarely if ever prosecuted”

374 is fairly close to the fall of Rome, which Wikipedia sets at 395-476 AD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi...), so from that page, it doesn’t seem it was that severely punished during most of th years the Roman Empire existed.

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