Sparta: unbeatable?

[Peter1469]

Sparta: unbeatable?

The modern age knows Sparta for its role in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. Indeed, it changed the course of history in the West. Had the Persians won, there would have been no ingrained feelings for democracy in the West today. We would be more autocratic like Russia, China, and much of the east.

But Sparta was a victim of its successes. It was a serious hard-core bad ass because it had to be to survive. But Sparta grew too big, lost a few battles, lost the respect / fear of its slaves, and was cast down forever. But they gave way to a united Greece and the rise of the modern nation-state.

No one could deny that Spartans were one of the most impressively organized militaristic cultures in history. Their style of warfare, an eight-person-deep unwavering wall of shields and spears, broke nearly anyone who went up against them. Their intense training, starting at eight and officially lasting ten years – and unofficially never stopping – made for an absolute discipline. Their part in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC is rightly acknowledged as one of the turning points of history.

It was the Battle of Sphacteria in 425 BC. Sphacteria was a little island, technically in Sparta's own territory, on which a Spartan force was isolated after a larger battle didn't go their way. The Athenians laid siege to the Spartans, who had sheltered against some cliffside terrain, showering them with arrows and eventually surrounding them. The 120 Spartans gave up their weapons and surrendered.

Even at the time, it was unheard of for a Spartan to surrender. When asked about it, one Spartan blamed the Athenians for attacking them with arrows, which he called "spindles," instead of "masculine weapons." In other words, "They were so wimpy that we had to surrender to them." The entire fiasco proved so crushing that Sparta sued for peace. The Athenians, full of confidence, let the peace talks break down – which they must have regretted when they lost the war in 404 BC. (It's telling that Sparta actually went to Persia for the money to raise the fleet of ships that they needed to defeat Athens.)

[Max Rockatansky]

I love history, the study of understanding how we got from there to here. One lesson I've learned it to be careful about statements like "If X didn't happen, we'd never have had Y". There is a lot to be said about things happening because it's time had come.

To say we'd never have gotten to the Moon if the Nazis hadn't existed and allowed Wernher von Braun to create the V-2. While it's true changes in history may not have allowed us to land on the Moon 20 JULY 1969, but changing history can have all sorts of downstream effects. Example, if WWI had been resolved better, WWII may not have ever happened and the situation with the USSR may have completely changed. Would we have reached the Moon in the 1950s or have had a peaceful, pleasant world and never reached the Moon at all?

With that in mind, I think democracy would have come but a defeat by the Persians may have slowed it down a few decades or even centuries. As we should note from both recent history and ancient, conquerors and winners of wars not only gain the spoils of war but also take the best of the societies they've conquered and/or occupied. Food, culture, music, arts, customs, women, citizens, everything. The Greeks, if conquered by the Persians, would have left as indelible an impression upon Persian society as Alexander the Great not only left on the societies he conquered but the impression those same societies left on Alexander's empire.

[Max Rockatansky]

Sparta's legacy is the warrior culture. Other cultures have had them. The Japanese had Bushido and Samurais. Various Native American tribes had warrior cultures. A favorite of mine was the Sioux/Lakota and Cheyenne. The impact of all these cultures on western civilization has left an indelible mark which has lasted centuries and continues to be remembered.

I was Googling to find the source the common phrase "Come home with your shield or on it", which I recalled as having a Spartan origin, when I came across this:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...hield-or-on-it

.....First let's look at the source of the shield story, which isn't Herodotus but the Roman writer Plutarch. He writes, "Another woman handed her son his shield, and exhorted him: 'Son, either with this or on this.'" This quote is found in Plutarch's Moralia, a collection of morals, tales, and short stories, in a section called Sayings of Spartan Women.

Plutarch was a Greek, born approximately 46 AD in the town of Chaeronea in the region of Boeotia. He isn't a contemporary source of the saying, as the days of Spartan military glory had ended more than three centuries earlier. As a modern commentator observes, he could have been taking poetic license:

At the beginning of his Life of Alexander … Plutarch says, explicitly, that his purpose is not to write political history, but to bring out the subjects' particular virtues and vices and to illustrate his character. This purpose is worth bearing in mind — Plutarch's lives are not necessarily objective historical accounts, but narrative pictures aiming to convey a particular moral point.

In his work Plutarch consistently portrays the Spartans as having a tough, no-nonsense warrior culture, a characterization backed up by other Greek writers, including contemporaries of Sparta in its glory.....

While Plutarch may not be reporting like Walter Cronkite about the Spartans, he's trying his best to convey what they represented among the Greeks.

[Germanicus]

I like a lot about the Spartans. But the way they treated their slave class was awful and needless if you ask me. Treating people that way is weak. Not strong.

Spartans were like Samurai with a sense of humour.

A protector class must treat its underclass with more respect than the Samurai or Spartans did in my opinion. My upcoming manifesto will include instructions for our new Protector Class of the west. (:

[Green Arrow]

I love Sparta almost as much as I love Rome. I'm an odd pacifist, because I'm fascinated by war and warrior cultures.

[Max Rockatansky]

A protector class must treat its underclass with more respect than the Samurai or Spartans did in my opinion. My upcoming manifesto will include instructions for our new Protector Class of the west. (:

I never had any doubt that you were writing a manifesto.

Like those who say Thomas Jefferson was evil or a hypocrite because he held slaves, we should be careful about judging people or societies of an long past era by modern standards. Even though I completely agree that a modern society treats everyone fairly if not equally under the law, to expect that out of a society 2500 years ago is unrealistic.

Consider that in 500 BC China was fragmented into warring states. An advance over the previous warring fiefs: http://www.timemaps.com/history/china-500bc

By now, the many fiefs into which the state had been divided under the early Zhou have, through a process of warfare and annexation, been absorbed into a few larger political units. These can now fairly be called states, only loosely acknowledging the authority of the Zhou kings.

These states have developed well-organized armies, and sophisticated tax systems to pay for them, staffed by officials appointed for their ability and loyalty rather than their noble birth. Technological and economic advances have led to the expansion of commerce, the growth of towns, a flourishing merchant class, the introduction of metal coinage and, centuries before the west, the invention of cast iron. Into this fluctuating environment comes one of the most influential philosophers in world history, Confucius (551-479 BC). In this time of change he calls people back to their ancient duties of honour and obedience.


The organized state pattern of northern China has penetrated the Yangtze Valley. Peoples formally regarded as “barbarian” by the Zhou are being absorbed into Chinese culture. Throughout much of southern China, however, native peoples cling to their former way of life. A major people in southern China at this period are the Tais.

[Germanicus]

I never had any doubt that you were writing a manifesto.

Like those who say Thomas Jefferson was evil or a hypocrite because he held slaves, we should be careful about judging people or societies of an long past era by modern standards. Even though I completely agree that a modern society treats everyone fairly if not equally under the law, to expect that out of a society 2500 years ago is unrealistic.

Consider that in 500 BC China was fragmented into warring states. An advance over the previous warring fiefs:

I agree. I guess i am hard on the Spartans because about their treatment of their slave population because I really like Spartan thinking. They were honourable, minimalist and hard as $#@!. And loyal. Together. And they all belonged. I was kind of shocked when I read how they treated their slaves. And I do believe is evidence of weakness in their culture. if Spartans were so great and as great as they liked to think of themselves then they would have had no need to go out of their way to keep their slaves in such a way.\
I like that they did not retreat. And did not drop their shields.

edit- I will sign your copy of my Manifesto maybe. I will let you know when the time is right to present it to the market. (:

[Mister D]

The Greek notion of democracy was very different than ours.

[Max Rockatansky]

The Greek notion of democracy was very different than ours.

It's was a start.

[Mister D]

It's was a start.

I didn't say it was better or worse. Just different. More appealing in fact to me.