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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

#81

Post by PeterisP »

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

Roman laws (Twelve tables from 449 BC) explicitly granted the right to infanticide - as the link states, it was banned only in 4th century (at the split of the Rome, and near the end of Western Roman Empire) but was allowed throughout all the 800+ years of the iconic "Ancient Rome".

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

#82

Post by Brakenshire »

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?

We don’t really know anything about Sparta which wasn’t written by outside observers.

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

#83

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

bivargen wrote: post #71
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sparta" is commonly understood to mean the city of Sparta as a political entity and "Spartans" its free inhabitants. Only in the blog you quote is the term "Sparta" used to refer to the wider city-state of Sparta that encompassed subjugated settlements outside of Sparta. Historical sources, ancient as well as modern, do not consider the helots to be "Spartan" (or even "Spartiate", a term made up by the author of the…

Σπᾰρτῐᾱ́της is a perfectly fine greek noun and was used in antiquity to denote the ”homoioi” of spartan society, it is not a made up word by Bret Devereaux. Historical sources do consider helots to be spartans, just not citizens or ”homoioi”. I would suggest reading the posted blog-post. The author do know what he is talking about and–in my opinion—quiet an engaging writer.

In turn, I would suggest not assuming that I haven't read the blog post.

"Σπαρτιάτης" is used in Greek (modern and ancient) to mean a (male) inhabitant of a place called "Sparta". What the blog author claims is that there are _two_ words, one of which means free citizens of Sparta and the other, helots. He says that one of those words is "Spartiate" and that the other is "Spartan".

This is a distinction that is impossible to make with a single word in Greek. The words he uses, "Spartan" and "Spartiate" are two Latin transliterations of the single Greek word "Σπαρτιάτης", that has one single meaning, as I explain it above.

Furthermore, the distinction between free and enslaved inhabitans of Sparta is, in all historical sources, made clear by using two words with different roots: "Spartan" for the free citizens of the city, "helot" for the enslaved people of the surrounding territories of the city-state. Nobody else than the author calls one "Spartan" and the other "Spartiate". That's entirely the blog author's made-up terminology.

So what I'm saying the blog author has made up is the distinct meaning of "Spartan" and "Spartiate". I do not claim that he has made up the word "Spartiate", as you seem to assume in your comment. Please correct me if I misunderstood your comment, and not you mine.

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

#84

Post by technothrasher »

krisoft wrote: post #68
colordrops wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> A weak counterclaim does not imply the claim to be truth. Yes. So? The options are not just that we accept whatever fact is presented, or accept whatever is the oposite of it. We can just say: “looks like we don’t know” and that is perfectly fine. A claim or a counterclaim (is there even a distinction?) warrants the same amount of proof.

The abstract of the paper sounds like this isn't actually a counterclaim, it is only a questioning of the claim being made. The author isn't saying that the Spartans didn't systematically "kill weak babies." She is saying there doesn't appear to be much evidence that they did, and given evidence that it wasn't common in general in ancient Greece, the claim is suspect.

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

#85

Post by okl »

rendall wrote: post #78
torstenvl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this form of argument a lot lately. It's epistemologically unsound. Both the claim "Spartans did this" and "Spartans did not do this" are affirmative claims that require evidence. Insufficient evidence leads solely to the conclusion "We do not know with any confidence whether Spartans did this or not." You cannot just assume that one of the affirmative positions is true because the other one lacks sufficien…

> Both the claim "Spartans did this" and "Spartans did not do this" are affirmative claims that require evidence. Hmm. That is an interesting perspective, but I do not agree. Isn't "Spartans did not do this" actually a negative claim? And aren't negative claims notoriously difficult to prove? What if this were consorted with extraterrestrials or some other random claim? Then it's easy to dismiss lack of evidence with…

Null hypothesis should be: we don't know!

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

#86

Post by everybodyknows »

Ansil849 wrote: post #28
CoastalCoder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The preceding post did not claim otherwise.

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

#87

Post by gpm »

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?

The onus is on the people making claims in general. In this case someone (the journalist?) made a claim that "spartans didn't kill `weak' babies", so the onus is on them.

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

#88

Post by asimpletune »

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…

Did you see the part about the lame guy who was king pf Sparta?

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

bivargen wrote: post #71
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sparta" is commonly understood to mean the city of Sparta as a political entity and "Spartans" its free inhabitants. Only in the blog you quote is the term "Sparta" used to refer to the wider city-state of Sparta that encompassed subjugated settlements outside of Sparta. Historical sources, ancient as well as modern, do not consider the helots to be "Spartan" (or even "Spartiate", a term made up by the author of the…

Σπᾰρτῐᾱ́της is a perfectly fine greek noun and was used in antiquity to denote the ”homoioi” of spartan society, it is not a made up word by Bret Devereaux. Historical sources do consider helots to be spartans, just not citizens or ”homoioi”. I would suggest reading the posted blog-post. The author do know what he is talking about and–in my opinion—quiet an engaging writer.

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by bivargen »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #83
bivargen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Σπᾰρτῐᾱ́της is a perfectly fine greek noun and was used in antiquity to denote the ”homoioi” of spartan society, it is not a made up word by Bret Devereaux. Historical sources do consider helots to be spartans, just not citizens or ”homoioi”. I would suggest reading the posted blog-post. The author do know what he is talking about and–in my opinion—quiet an engaging writer.

In turn, I would suggest not assuming that I haven't read the blog post. "Σπαρτιάτης" is used in Greek (modern and ancient) to mean a (male) inhabitant of a place called "Sparta". What the blog author claims is that there are _two_ words, one of which means free citizens of Sparta and the other, helots. He says that one of those words is "Spartiate" and that the other is "Spartan". This is a distinction that is impos…

Apologies for seemingly misunderstanding your post and in turn not making my point very clear! But, surely “spartiate” (or rather Σπαρτιάτης) isn't a made up word? Also, as I understand your reply the classical sources exclusively use that word for the “homoioi”? If so I understand your original point and have learned something new today.

And a small edit: It was your last parenthesis that confused me, I would have written it as:

“or even "Spartiate", a term distinguished by the author of the blog as distinct from "Spartan"…”

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