[HN Gopher] This Isn't Sparta
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       This Isn't Sparta
        
       Author : cercatrova
       Score  : 8 points
       Date   : 2022-08-19 20:33 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
 (TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
        
       | bell-cot wrote:
       | It's a "retrospective" on articles from 2019. Older submissions
       | with substantial discussion:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26499528
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21398893
       | 
       | Edits:
       | 
       | Link to the retrospective (which seems pretty good to me, as a
       | summary of the original 7+-part series) -
       | https://acoup.blog/2022/08/19/collections-this-isnt-sparta-r...
       | 
       | Bottom line, for those not as fond of rather-long, scholarly
       | history as I as...
       | 
       | > And so I reiterate my [prior] closing judgement:
       | 
       | > Sparta was - if you will permit the comparison - an ancient
       | North Korea. An over-militarized, paranoid state which was able
       | only to protect its own systems of internal brutality and which
       | added only oppression to the sum of the human experience. Little
       | more than an extraordinarily effective prison, metastasized to
       | the level of a state. There is nothing of redeeming value here.
       | 
       | > Sparta is not something to be emulated. It is a cautionary
       | tale.
        
       | kurupt213 wrote:
       | what a waste of time reading this was. you cannot view ancient
       | cultures through a contemporary lens. their values are not our
       | values. This article dismisses the Spartans of the classical
       | period because they were slave owning chauvinists.
       | 
       | The Spartiates lived in constant fear of invasion and revolt,
       | which caused them to build their society in a way that could not
       | persist over time. But their military inspired fear well beyond
       | the Peloponnese during the later part of the archaic age and
       | through the classical period. They were staunch supporters of
       | Oligarchy or Democracy, and that is one of the primary sources of
       | modern disdain.
       | 
       | They lost their relevance because their way of life wasn't
       | sustainable and they ran out of spartiates...finally suffering
       | humiliating defeat shortly before the Hellenic period.
       | 
       | And the agoge of the classical period impressed Athenian leaders
       | so much that some of them sent their children to participate.
        
       | cercatrova wrote:
       | The link released today is a retrospective [0], however I linked
       | the first one in the series since that makes more sense for new
       | readers.
       | 
       | [0] https://acoup.blog/2022/08/19/collections-this-isnt-
       | sparta-r...
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-19 23:02 UTC)