[HN Gopher] Seeing Through the Spartan Mirage
___________________________________________________________________
Seeing Through the Spartan Mirage
Author : crescit_eundo
Score : 96 points
Date : 2025-02-19 13:54 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worldhistory.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldhistory.substack.com)
| tiahura wrote:
| Hmm. I think US-USSR / Athens-Sparta is a poor analogy. They
| spoke the same language, and it's a two day walk. I'm going to
| defer to Athenians on the character of Sparta over modernish
| debunkers.
| ertian wrote:
| I think that's trying to draw the metaphor too far. The point
| is just that people have a tendency to be fascinated with their
| enemies, and exaggerate the differences between them:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_(philosophy)
|
| The best and most recent example of that, for a modern
| American, would be the USSR. You do come across similar
| processes with, say, Chinese or Arabs, but they're not explicit
| enemies, and there's more cultural integration and exchange in
| those cases.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| acoup.blog has a much more in-depth look at ancient sparta.
| https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
|
| (Edit, the author is Bret C. Devereaux)
|
| And a long-running series on the "Fremen myth", which is similar
| to the retro-spective glorification of/mythology around Sparta.
| https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
|
| At any rate, that blog is a must read for any history-myth-
| debunker, especially around military. Also highly recommended is
| their analysis of the LotR battles and campaigns, which fare well
| historicaly, and the GoT, which ... doesn't.
|
| He also does medieval game reviews!
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I also want to give a highlight to the fact that if you
| subscribe to the blog the emails are the ENTIRE ARTICLE.
|
| You never HAVE to visit the site if you subscribe. I still DO,
| but that little fact is highly appreciated.
| lolinder wrote:
| Same is true of the RSS feed! No summaries, just the whole
| thing.
|
| I do prefer to go to the blog because the blog handles
| footnotes better (hover works on desktop to show them in a
| popup, and tapping on them works correctly with the back
| button on mobile), and often the footnotes are _really_ good.
| TheGRS wrote:
| That's a nice throwback. Totally different subject matter but
| Matt Levine of Money Stuff on Bloomberg also continues to do
| that.
| adeeshaek wrote:
| Double thumbs up for acoup.blog - it's what I fall back to
| reading if HN doesn't have anything interesting.
|
| His work is also really well sourced, so it's a great jumping
| off point if you are looking for more work on the subject.
|
| His sparta series, and the fremen series are absolutely
| outstanding.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> His work is also really well sourced, so it 's a great
| jumping off point if you are looking for more work on the
| subject._
|
| That's why I love his blog. His reading recommendations are
| almost all very approachable to non-historians and are always
| fascinating, especially the books that look at the nitty
| gritty details of warfare.
|
| I just read _Waging War_ by Wayne E. Lee based off of his
| recommendation from his logistics /command collections and
| it's been a great read start to finish about innovation in
| warfare (in the broadest sense).
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| I like Devereaux's take on the Spartans, but I see people
| repeating it every time the Spartan's are mentioned. I worry
| that I'm only getting to see two perspectives on the Spartans:
| the naive glorification and Devereaux's takedown. Does anyone
| know of a good third source? Ideally another historian who
| would still be interesting to an amateur.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are lots of sources, the article briefly covers many of
| them. They all share in common the fact that there is very
| little real information and so we can only read behind the
| lines at trying to find the truth. Devereaux is one of the
| few takes that admit to this problem, and for that alone is
| makes him my favored source. It quickly becomes clear if you
| read these that most takes on the Spartans are using the lack
| of information to read some favored angle.
|
| I'd be interested in another historian's take if different.
| I'm reasonably confident that they will be similar to
| Devereaux's take though, so I'm not looking.
| DylanSp wrote:
| Take a look at the links and sources mentioned in his
| retrospective on the Sparta series:
| https://acoup.blog/2022/08/19/collections-this-isnt-
| sparta-r.... Devereaux mentions some different approaches
| that modern historians take towards Sparta, particularly
| Steven Hodkinson's arguments that Sparta was more typical and
| less unusual compared to the other Greek poleis; following up
| on that work would probably be a useful counterpoint.
| gadders wrote:
| If you want a historian that tends right rather than left
| like Devereaux, you could try Victor David Hanson.
|
| https://newcriterion.com/article/the-spartan-way-of-war/
|
| I don't think he is that adrift from Devereaux in his
| assessment of Sparta though.
| lolinder wrote:
| > tends right rather than left like Devereaux
|
| I just feel the need to clarify that Devereaux is _barely_
| left-leaning. He keeps his politics pretty firmly out of
| his blogs for the most part, but when he _does_ break out
| politics he 's pretty clearly very close to the center
| relative to what we think today when we hear "left" and
| "right".
|
| As a historian (and, I believe, a good one), he seems to
| see the complexity of the current partisan dynamic too
| clearly to dogmatically pick a side.
| gadders wrote:
| That is very much not true.
|
| He wrote a hysterical philippic [1] just before the
| election calling Trump a fascist, which was written with
| about the same level of historical rigour as the Paul
| Krugman's rants exhibit for economics.
|
| You may argue that "Trump is a fascist" and you are
| entitled to that view, but that is not a centrist view,
| and is at odds with the majority of the US population,
| which voted for Trump.
|
| [1] https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-
| acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
| swasheck wrote:
| generally speaking he is decidedly centrist in his
| historical perspectives. it is uncritical to paint in
| broad strokes over a post, or two, in which he uses
| historical analysis to communicate a progressive
| perspective that warns against the danger(s) of an
| incoming administration
| gadders wrote:
| >>it is uncritical to paint in broad strokes over a post,
| or two, in which he uses historical analysis to
| communicate a progressive perspective
|
| There have only been a couple of posts where he discusses
| current politics, so that is all I have to go on.
|
| However, from reading his material, I think it would be
| fair to say he is against the "great man of history"
| theory, which tends to be a more left wing
| interpretation.
| cess11 wrote:
| In this poll, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-
| trump-fascist-concern... , so called centrists
| overwhelmingly said he is.
|
| The majority of the US population did not vote for him.
| Only a portion could vote, and only a portion of those
| voted, and out of those 49.9% voted for him.
| gadders wrote:
| Pointless pedantry. I think you know what is meant by a
| majority in an election. He won the popular vote. I'm
| obviously not including toddlers etc in my statement.
| triceratops wrote:
| > I think you know what is meant by a majority in an
| election.
|
| I thought I did. But now I'm learning that 49-something
| percent is a majority, so I'm questioning all my beliefs.
| cess11 wrote:
| Perhaps, but I'm not interested in making a point. I'm
| interested in discovering why it's not important to you
| to describe the election result precisely.
|
| What was the participation? 60% or so? I think so. So
| maybe 30-35% of the people who could have voted for him
| actually did. In the US population large portions are
| unable to vote. You correctly pointed out the very young,
| but also the pre-adolescent young, the disobedient, the
| non-citizen, the precarious worker, the infirm and so on
| should also be included.
|
| So the majority you had in mind is rather small compared
| to what you literally compared it to. I'm guessing the
| result feels like 'the will of the people' to you anyway?
| Do you feel like most usians approved of the current
| regime? Do you also think that 'the will of the people'
| is inherently democratic? Inherently good, even?
| gadders wrote:
| Also ironic to nit pick about Trump not having a majority
| and then quote a poll that queried only 2800 people.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Are you trying to assert that fascism can't be popular?
| He pretty clearly stated the criteria and how he
| considers trump's movement in respect to them. You can
| refute the point1 but you haven't, merely stating you
| disagree with them based on the popular vote.
|
| 1 Not to me, I won't read it. I don't care and I've heard
| enough fascism apologetics on HN in the last few years.
| gadders wrote:
| I'm trying to assert that calling Trump a fascist is a
| left wing opinion, and not one shared by centrists like
| Obama, given how friendly they were at Carter's funeral.
|
| But you won't see this, as you have chosen self
| righteousness over knowledge. And no-one is apologising
| for fascism because he isn't one.
| lolinder wrote:
| It's not hysterical, it's very well reasoned and actually
| persuaded me, someone who's decidedly centrist.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I do sometimes think this about the info I get from his blog.
| He's a fun writer and so I think, like lots of us, I probably
| over-value his takedowns.
|
| But, we should keep in mind the stakes, right? He provides a
| compelling argument that, actually, Sparta was not even that
| great at marshaling up a bunch of guys with big spears.
| That's a nice beachhead in the conversation as to whether
| Spartan values are valuable, if you think they aren't.
|
| But even if he is wrong, what does it mean? Big groups of
| guys with spears don't win wars nowadays anyway so even if we
| think a value system's ability to win wars is very important
| (pretty questionable!) spartan-ism is obviously much worse
| than something like liberal democracy, which produced nukes
| and stealth bombers which could kill, like, endless numbers
| of spear guys (however good they are at lining up).
| goatlover wrote:
| What is the equivalent of Spartans in the modern world? The
| Soviet Union also produced nukes and bombers.
| nradov wrote:
| Maybe it's us? The USA has a reputation as a military
| superpower and yet in most of the conflicts after WWII we
| have actually lost (or at best tied).
| yellowapple wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than that. Militarily, we
| rather consistently win (or at least not lose). The
| trouble is that the new regimes we establish end up
| reliant on us for defense, and unless we're willing to
| _be_ said regimes ' military for decades on end (like we
| were with Japan) or at the very least maintain permanent
| military presences (like we did with West Germany until
| its reunification with East Germany, and like we're still
| doing with South Korea and Japan), those regimes prove
| incapable of defending themselves from the adversaries we
| defeated to establish said regimes in the first place.
|
| That's exactly what happened with South Vietnam, Iraq,
| and Afghanistan: as soon as we pulled out "victorious",
| the newly-established allied regime was unable to defend
| itself against North Vietnam / ISIS / the Taliban
| (respectively).
| bee_rider wrote:
| What does it mean to be "equivalent" anyway? I mean, the
| fact that we'd have to do some funky normalization to the
| standards of the era is itself an indictment of Spartan
| values, right? Every major power of even somewhat recent
| history is very decadent by their standards, including
| the Soviet Union. If somebody thinks Soviet feats were
| impressive, they should just adopt Soviet values instead
| I guess.
| goatlover wrote:
| The claim was that liberal democracy not Sparta created
| nukes and stealth bombers, when Sparta didn't exist in
| the modern age, and couldn't have created such things no
| matter how they organized their society. This isn't a
| promotion of Spartan ideals, rather it's just pointing
| out that the comparison doesn't work for obvious reasons.
| the_af wrote:
| His take down of the "steppe nomadic warriors" nonsense in
| movies and TV shows, and especially of the Dothraki and how
| they don't make any sense, is also very interesting.
|
| To me the most surprising thing is that Deveraux considers Lord
| of the Rings more grounded on history than Game of Thrones,
| when GoT was "sold" to audiences as a grittier, more realistic
| take on medieval fantasy. But very little in GoT makes any
| "medieval" sense, it's almost entirely fantasy with a
| "grimdark" tone instead of a fairy tale/folklore tone.
|
| (Which, like Devereaux points out, would be perfectly
| acceptable as artistic license ... if only GoT hadn't been sold
| to us as "more realistic" by George Martin!)
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| GoT is basically Medieval War of Roses meets LoveCraft
| (especially obvious if you read up on the map the author
| published with cities not visited). The lovecraftian parts
| got pretty much cut to the bone. None of the moongrass, that
| is overgrowing the dothraki steppe. Barely any of the
| insanity that goes with wizzardry.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Not having read his takedown, IMO Game of Thrones has more
| "realism" in the behaviors of people vis-a-vis each other,
| and at least some semblance of feudal castes, at least in
| Westeros. But the more core systems of society and war aren't
| deeply thought through. When people say it's "realistic" it's
| more so in the sense of "yup, nobles and soldiers really
| would rape peasants," not in any tremendously larger sense.
| And they consider LOTR unrealistic not because the battles
| are unrealistic, but because the infrastructure of society is
| mostly invisible, especially outside of the Shire.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You should read his articles. It will fairly quickly
| disabuse you of some preconceptions. In particular, the
| shire is a quite realistic portrayal of peasants and lords
| and such once you realize Bilbo is mostly nobility.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I think I noted that the Shire is different, if not
| wildly different, from most other locales in LOTR. In
| general the Shire is much more realistic than other LOTR
| Locales (IMO). Though there's for sure an element of just
| ignoring things that don't matter too much - like how
| Lothlorien works economically.
|
| But I'll look at the article, I've read other ACOUP stuff
| and enjoyed.
| the_af wrote:
| There's also that Peter Jackson's movies botch
| (intentionally, for dramatic purposes) some things that
| are present in the books.
|
| For example, the city of Gondor seems like a giant
| fortress without any fields or farmers working outside
| its walls to sustain it. This even before any siege. So
| what do they eat?
|
| Tolkien wouldn't have made this mistake, it's likely
| Jackson's. And I understand why: people want to see epic
| battles, farmers doing their thing are a low cinematic
| priority.
| the_af wrote:
| You really should read his articles.
|
| > _IMO Game of Thrones has more "realism" in the behaviors
| of people vis-a-vis each other, and at least some semblance
| of feudal castes, at least in Westeros_
|
| Devereaux argues precisely the contrary, that LotR is more
| realistic than GoT at presenting faux-medieval societies
| and the feudal caste! Perhaps Tolkien simply did his
| research better... or that simply by taking medieval and
| ancient literature as his sources, he got it better.
|
| He has quite a bit to say about the system of vassallage as
| depicted in GoT, as well as the relationship between the
| Church and both the common people and the nobles. Devereaux
| argues that the cynical take in GoT, i.e. that most nobles
| didn't believe in their religion and only cynically used it
| when it suits their purposes (which is the norm, not the
| exception in GoT!) is at odds with the real middle-ages.
|
| Also, none of Deveraux's objections focus on obviously
| fantasy things like zombies or dragons, he's not trying to
| score cheap points, and he explicitly states he's living
| magic & dragons out of the equation. No realistic
| explanation could come out of them, anyway.
|
| Again, none of this would be a problem if we accepted GoT
| as pure fantasy (as I do, by the way -- I'm a fan), but it
| was actually hyped as "more realistic"!
| bee_rider wrote:
| It would be cool to see an interpretation of the Mongol horde
| in the sense that Devereaux uses them; in contrast to the
| silly Dothraki. Dudes riding high-grass-mileage little mares
| and pulling off preposterous feats of logistics...
| swasheck wrote:
| moderately off-topic because we're here discussing
| acoup.blog, but i just finished the fall of civilizations
| podcast episodes on the rise and fall of the mongols. it's
| really fascinating and sheds quite a bit of light on some
| things that have been mythologized about chinggis khan
| the_af wrote:
| I think the same happens with any history of warrior
| cultures. Same with Japanese samurai, etc.
|
| They enter into popular culture, get mythologized, and
| all nuance flies out the window.
| goatlover wrote:
| The Dothraki were united by a woman who controlled 3 dragons
| and had gained a highly disciplined Unsullied army, then was
| gifted with a navy.
| brenainn wrote:
| I read this previously and from memory it relies a lot on what
| Athens wrote about Sparta? I'm no historian but I was wondering
| if there's bias there, because they mostly despised each other
| and Athens kept records whereas Sparta didn't. It seems
| reasonable that you'd write a bunch of stuff about your enemies
| being inhumane and generally shit. Maybe the sometimes nicer
| things written about them coincided with periods of peace and
| alliance? Just spit balling, it's still an interesting and
| informative read.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Some of the discussion is exactly about which sources are
| even available, and what their background bias is.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's also been a while since I read it but he address some of
| those points in the extended series as they come up.
|
| IIRC the two main things are that one of the main athenian
| sources greatly admired sparta and wanted athens to be more
| like it, so was actually biased in the other way than you'd
| expect. And in the other sources it's clear that some degree
| of respect for sparta's history and military tenacity was
| common among at least the athenian elite whose views we have
| access to.
|
| Also in an extended conflict in a complex political
| environment involving other military powers, it can sometimes
| be to your benefit to acknowledge or even inflate the might
| of your enemy. A polity's regional stature is not improved by
| having a hard time defeating a weak opponent. So to some
| extent athenians probably contributed to sparta's enduring
| reputation as a formidable military power.
|
| So yeah the sources are biased but mainly in ways that an
| informed-enough reader can recognize and account for and
| still draw useful information from them, albeit carefully.
| Which, I learned from this blog, is a big part of the actual
| practice of the discipline of history.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I like his spartan review but really don't like the Fremen
| mirage article. With Bret Devereaux he uses the classic ideal
| of - if all you have is a hammer then all your problems are
| nails. In this instance he is using the Roman history "hammer"
| to subdue all issues he disagrees with the Fremen mythology.
|
| I don't think his fremen analogy of tying fremen to
| contemporary Roman era barbarian tribes works well at all. If
| you read Dune and know alot about it(I do) fremen would not be
| a good analogy for alot of the barbarian tribes Rome
| encountered during its empire formation. For one the whole
| timeline on the encounter is quite wrong. With Rome you have a
| very large and technologically superior civilization that
| encounters and conquerors tribes relatively quickly. After the
| tribe is subdued they are now part of the empire and must pay
| tribute through taxes and military service. They do get the
| added benefits of Roman protection and those that defy the
| empire and put down quickly and brutally. Aside from this you
| have religion and technology. The tribes do not have a unified
| religion and after conquest stuck to their beliefs for the most
| part but slowly took on the occupiers beliefs. As for
| technology you have a vastly superior technology(iron age) in
| Rome meeting bronze age technology which was defeated by iron
| age Roman technology.
|
| As for the Fremen they are a society apart from the empire and
| house Atreides and Harkonnen. They live on the world Arrakis in
| great numbers but do not need to pay any tribute or taxes and
| are viewed with suspicion by the leaders of both
| houses(brutally by the Harkonnens). The houses and the empire
| just want the spice melange and do not really care about
| integrating the fremen peoples into the empire and using them
| in other worlds for various jobs. The houses controlled Arrakis
| for at least 1 thousand years(unsure exactly how long) and
| there is a quite distinct culture between the occupiers and
| occupied. With religion you have a unified religion that the
| Fremen adhere too(discretley influenced by the Bene Gesserit),
| and fremen technology it is not all about knives and fists. The
| Fremen control sandworms using hooks and ropes(no other people
| in the universe know or can do this) and also Paul Atreides
| introduces the fighters to the sound weapons his house has
| developed.
|
| I think the more apt comparison of the Fremen is the peoples of
| Afghanistan. Here you have a people that have never really been
| conquered, they all tried: (Alexander the great, Soviets, USA)
| that have a unified religion(Islam) and use contemporary
| technology(ak-47, missile launchers etc) to achieve stunning
| military victories against a much larger more powerful foes and
| occupiers. So the Fremen ideal is not a mirage you are just
| looking at the wrong cultural comparisons.
| rjurney wrote:
| Sparta buried her war dead on the field in mass graves. A hoplon
| shield isn't useful to carry a body in the first place. This is
| the first I've heard that attributed to Plutarch, however...
| icepat wrote:
| Plutarch is well known for just making things up. He was the
| Greek version of the dude in the pub with wild tales about the
| time he went fishing and caught a shark during a wild storm.
| When in reality the story actually boiled down to "he caught a
| fish once".
| quuxplusone wrote:
| It's from Plutarch's "Sayings of Spartan Women":
|
| > [A Spartan mother], as she handed her son his shield,
| exhorted him, saying, "Either this or upon this."
|
| The Loeb editor comments: "[Attributed] to Gorgo by Aristotle
| in his Aphorisms, as quoted by Stobaeus, Florilegium VII.31,
| but it is often spoken of as a regular Spartan custom. Cf., for
| example, the scholium on Thucydides II.39. Ancient writers were
| not agreed whether the second half meant to fall upon the
| shield (dead or wounded) or to be brought home dead upon it. In
| support of the second (traditional) interpretation cf. Moralia
| 235A, and Valerius Maximus II.7 ext. 2."
|
| Valerius Maximus II.7 ext. 2 is "maternarum blanditiarum
| memores, quibus [...] monebantur ut aut vivi cum armis in
| conspectum earum venirent aut mortui in armis referrentur" --
| "remembering their mothers' admonition [...] that they should
| next be seen alive with their armor or reported dead in it."
|
| Plutarch's Moralia 235A, in the Sayings of Spartans, is a verse
| attributed to Dioscurides: "Lifeless to Pitane came, on his
| shield upborne, Thrasybulus..."
|
| Moralia 235B supplies my new favorite laconism:
|
| > When Philip of Macedon sent some orders to the Spartans by
| letter, they wrote thus in reply: "As to what you wrote about:
| No."
| Archelaos wrote:
| For those interested in the topic of Sparta, I can highly
| recommend Bret C. Devereaux's series of blog posts on the subject
| at https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-
| sparta-p... (2019). It corrects many myths about the Spartans on
| the basis of the contemporary state of research.
| connorpeters wrote:
| > we should remember that, in actual history, Sparta was an
| oppressive society that established itself as the enemy of the
| Greek city-states that valued democracy and the arts. We should
| also remember that many of the modern people who have been most
| enthusiastic about the Spartans as historical role models have
| also been really enthusiastic about oppressing and killing their
| fellow human beings.
|
| My interest in Sparta is that it exemplifies how elite a group of
| people can become when they focus on one thing. As mentioned in
| the article, Sparta beat Athens in the Second Peloponnesian War.
| Athens was the naval and intellectual powerhouse of the area at
| the time, yet the unsophisticated specialized warmongers won. It
| illustrates that in life hyperfocusing can yield results. I do
| not forget that Sparta was an oppressive and brutal society that
| I in no way would want to live in. I do not idealize their caste
| culture or slaveholding, but sometimes the bad guys win, and
| Sparta is a colorful example of that.
|
| > Leonidas' 300 men made a brave stand in the mountains, and a
| superior Persian force wiped them out. You can see it like the
| Nazis did and the guys in the MOLON LABE T-shirts do, as a
| glorious battle in which an honorable band of brothers sacrificed
| their lives for their principles. Or you can see it as a tragedy
| in which the leaders of an oligarchical, slave-dependent society
| threw away their finest soldiers' lives, and for what? To briefly
| delay the Persian Army while failing to achieve their goal of
| protecting Athens and the rest of northern Greece from the
| Persian attack?
|
| Interestingly, the Greeks did end up fending off the Persian
| invasion due to the victory at the Battle of Salamis where the
| Athenian navy crushed the Persian navy. The Spartan stand at
| Thermopylae _was_ critical to delay the invasion though, let 's
| not pretend like those deaths were futile.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| > _My interest in Sparta is that it exemplifies how elite a
| group of people can become when they focus on one thing._
|
| Except they weren't particularly elite. As (already mentioned)
| _A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry_ author Bret Devereaux
| points out[1]: "Instead, what we might say is that the
| Spartans phalanx was, in most respects, just like every other
| Greek hoplite phalanx, with the addition that Spartan command
| and coordination was somewhat better, but hardly excellent by
| the broader standards of antiquity."
|
| And, as he also observes, any Spartan superiority didn't
| manifest on the battlefield:
|
| Spartan Victories: 18.5, Spartan Defeats: 18, Draws: 1.5,
| Spartan Batting Average (victories/battles): 0.486
|
| 1. https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-
| sparta-p...
| connorpeters wrote:
| I will give it a read, thanks for the source. I'm definitely
| guilty of indulging in pop culture impressions of the Spartan
| warrior being the most disciplined and elite singular unit in
| history so this will be an interesting read.
|
| Does Thermopylae count as a loss by this definition? As I'm
| sure it does, that doesn't dispel much of the myth of the
| prowess of the individual Spartan warrior, which is really
| what I find intriguing about the whole thing.
| kergonath wrote:
| > I'm definitely guilty of indulging in pop culture
| impressions of the Spartan warrior being the most
| disciplined and elite singular unit in history so this will
| be an interesting read.
|
| There are better examples of forces that were actually
| good, even if they are less flattering in pop culture. For
| example, there is a reason why the Romans ended up
| controlling the Mediterranean and not the Spartans.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Yes, Thermopylae is counted as a defeat in coalition (the
| author gives a full list of every battle and his
| categorization in the linked blog post, you can read it for
| yourself).
|
| One of the Spartan losses is when they decide to pretend to
| not be Spartan so they can surprise their opponents with
| their skill, but they turn out instead to be utterly
| wrecked by their opponents. The Spartans really do seem to
| be mediocre fighters (not good, but not bad either) with a
| _stellar_ PR agency.
| siriaan wrote:
| I'd love to see someone make a kind of response to 300
| based on the Battle of Leuctra where the Spartans got
| their butts handed to them by the Thebans
| rexpop wrote:
| Do you likewise idealize chattel slavers' plantations?
| Eichmann's bureaucracy?
|
| What do you emulate from King Leopold's "colorful" subjugation
| of the Congo? How do you coach subordinates to follow the
| example of the conquistadors who plundered Latin America?
|
| Are we so short of winning "good guys" that we must plumb the
| depths of evil for role models?
|
| > The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by
| the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by
| which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them,
| to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity.
|
| -- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
| thrance wrote:
| The mythos around Sparta appeals to the fascist aesthetic, it
| always had, there's nothing new under the sun. The nazis were
| very found of their ahistorical perception of what Sparta
| supposedly was: the strong treading on the weak, a glorification
| of masculinity, etc.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| One can see that in the nazi building and statues... they fit
| perfectly into the movie aesthetics.
| goatlover wrote:
| Isn't the most popular myth about 300 Spartans facing off
| against the powerful Persian Empire bent on conquering Greek
| lands? Which is based on a historical event, but there were
| several thousand other Greeks helping the Spartan warriors in a
| narrow pass, because fighting in the open would have benefited
| the much larger Persian force.
| hooverd wrote:
| The Battle of Marathon is much cooler. The Athenians were
| winners too.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Sparta is "capturing the modern imagination"? I thought we were
| supposed to think about Rome every day.
| schmichael wrote:
| Don't worry: we're indirectly thinking about Rome by thinking
| about their perception of ancient Sparta. Rome is the Kevin
| Bacon of western historical thought: we're never more than 6
| hops away.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Dick's "the Empire never died" model becomes more useful the
| older I get.
| jerf wrote:
| This post is indulining in the etymological fallacy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy
|
| Molon Labe, as it is used in popular culture today, is not being
| used as a stealth call to go back to the popular understanding of
| Spartan virtues, let alone secretly a call to go back to real
| Spartan organization.
|
| It just means don't take my guns, and a vague threat of violence
| if you try. Nothing more.
| Thomashuet wrote:
| If it just means "don't take my guns", that's what they would
| write on their merch instead of some greek letters most people
| can't read. By using this Spartan phrase they're trying to
| evoke the mythical greatness of Sparta, and that is what this
| article is about.
| jerf wrote:
| Yeah, and everybody in Alabama always says "Go Team, Win Win
| Win" instead of "Roll Tide" because nobody can understand
| what "Roll Tide" means.
|
| Nobody is actually invoking anything beyond the absolutely
| most superficial "Spartanness" and going deep into "Well,
| actually, the Spartans were not nice people if you dig deeply
| into the truth" is not relevant when nobody else is digging
| that deeply. To a first approximation nobody knows anything
| about the Spartans beyond "vaguely Grecian" and "good
| warriors I guess".
|
| Despite all the sensitivity in the university system in the
| past 5-10 years, I've never even heard a whiff of a
| suggestion that Michigan State University needs to change its
| mascot... because nobody, not even the educated and
| politically sensitive, thinks anything about Spartans beyond
| "vaguely Grecian" and "good warriors I guess". If anyone had
| any sort of real knowledge about the situation it would have
| been considered extremely extremely insensitive... but nobody
| thinks about these things. Hard to get much more proof than
| that.
| sixo wrote:
| It sounds like this kind of essay isn't for you!
|
| > "nobody knows anything about the Spartans beyond.."
|
| "Sparta" is a "symbol" in our culture's "language of
| symbols" which stands roughly for "brutal and effective
| masculine warrior ethic, worthy of respect and fear". It is
| probably the single most unambiguous symbol available for
| this kind of thing, and is therefore used constantly--when
| somebody wants to make an argument like "might makes
| right", or "what if we didn't care about other people", or
| "men must be strong, austere, and violent to be worthy of
| respect", a reference to Sparta is never far away. Even
| when they don't make explicit reference to Sparta, it lends
| credibility to these sorts of ethics. It acquires its power
| from the fact that it actually existed in history and was
| seemingly successful, that it lives on with a generally
| admiring connotation, that it stands for the pinnacle of
| achievement in a certain sense.
|
| The point of an attack on the historical accuracy of the
| symbolic Sparta is to weaken the power of the symbol to be
| used for evil. It did _not_ exist as remembered, nor for
| all that long, it was not _particularly effective_ , the
| admiration of Sparta has been concocted after-the-fact by
| commentators trying to fit it into their agendas, it was
| not as brutal as it is imagined to be, nor was it
| particularly important in history. It was just a weird and
| particularly unpleasant culture that existed at one point.
|
| These are attacks on the structural integrity of a whole
| set of ideas which are regularly used to justify cruelty,
| abuse, and violence, and which mislead people--young men
| especially--as to the nature of virtue.
|
| That it is sometimes used harmlessly doesn't have much to
| do with this at all.
| mola wrote:
| Well written!
| sixo wrote:
| Thank you!
| bluGill wrote:
| "Come and take them" has long been a refrain of the gun
| crowd. This greek is a new version of the same thing.
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| This is exactly the conclusion of the article, which I think
| was put very well:
|
| > As a new generation of people adopts the Spartans as
| historical role models, we should understand that they're
| probably telling us more about themselves than the actual
| people who lived in Sparta more than two millennia ago.
| csours wrote:
| For every fallacy there is a fallacy of that fallacy.
|
| Words mean what they mean as intended by the people who use
| them, but they also have history. Also and especially, phrases
| have history. Keeping not only the original language but also
| the original alphabet/script/glyphs/characters strongly call
| back to that history.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I suspect that the gun crowd is just trying to fanceify "come and
| take it" and is more thinking of the Texas revolution than
| thermopoly
| marcusverus wrote:
| > This is not to say that Diodorus Siculus recorded a more
| accurate depiction of these events, but his phrasing does more
| closely mirror the flowery language with which ancient leaders
| probably addressed each other.
|
| Woof. The Spartans were famous for their disdain for flowery
| words. Herodotus discussed it explicitly, and Thucydides
| reflected it when writing Spartan dialogue. They preferred to
| speak plainly and get straight to the point. This common
| understanding of spartan speech is even enshrined in the English
| language, via the word 'laconic', meaning "using few words".
|
| Before sharing your insights with the world, do try to make sure
| you know what you're talking about.
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase
| ta4985732948 wrote:
| Uuuuuff....
|
| I am Spartan. I grew up in Sparta, Greece. I am in my "ancient
| Sparta" reading phase for some months now, I read everything from
| (modern) Greek, Foreign authors and researchers, as well as
| ancient texts with references to Sparta (even books/scrolls about
| "Helen of Troy" or as we call her in Greece/Greek "beautiful
| Helene" - Oraia Elene.
|
| There is SO MUCH to know about (Ancient) Sparta.
| Two Kings? - Check City without Walls? (who would be crazy
| enough to attack?) - Check Simple legislation? (one written
| Law - Lycurgus) - Check (debatable - depends on the book/scroll)
| One prison cell - 4 walls, no ceiling, you stay in until some
| other criminal is convicted and replaced you (not much crime back
| in the day) - Check
|
| There was a big shift in the change of the dominant 'tribe'
| (Dorieis vs Akhaioi) post the financial ruin and loss of many men
| of the Trojan War.
|
| Anyway.. for anyone who hasn't read about Ancient Sparta, it is
| one of the 'things' that reading it will fulfill you.
|
| Fun fact for the movie 300. The producers sent photographers and
| photographed the valley, mountains, made an actual scenery of the
| landscape. I remember watching the movie and understanding where
| EXACTLY they had placed their cameras from the angle of the
| mountains, etc. I later asked around and they verified my
| suspicion. One issue though.. they they started "marching north"
| towards Thermopylae, in reality/in the real landscape they walked
| to the SOUTH, and I remember watching the movie in Athens, and
| apparently it was me and some other Spartan in the audience, so
| we both yelled at that point "hey malakes, you are going the
| wrong way"
|
| One last thing. Perhaps for the foreigners the most famous phrase
| is "molon labe". For Greeks (I bet you!) is "e tan e epi tas"
| which literally translates to "either THE or ON THE", which means
| "I will either walk back CARRYING my/THE shield, or I will be
| brought back dead CARRIED ON my/THE shield" (apologies for the
| caps)
| fdschoeneman wrote:
| There's certainly a place for revisionist history and the Spartan
| legend seemed like a fair target even before Steven Pressfield's
| Gates of Fire, but it seems ironic to be skewering the Frank-
| Miller-300 caricature in service to his own caricature of the
| "second-amendment-sticker-on-my-pickup-truck" guys who are his
| real target.
|
| "I just bet those Spartans would be coal rolling me in their
| diesel Ford F-350's with their lifted tires and MAGA bumpter
| stickers today if they could!"
| yellowapple wrote:
| Ah yes, good ol' "moron rube" fellas, whose entire understanding
| of their role models is based on Hollywood depictions.
|
| I was primed to agree with the article's premises, until...
|
| > Leonidas' 300 men made a brave stand in the mountains, and a
| superior Persian force wiped them out. You can see it like the
| Nazis did and the guys in the MOLON LABE T-shirts do, as a
| glorious battle in which an honorable band of brothers sacrificed
| their lives for their principles. Or you can see it as a tragedy
| in which the leaders of an oligarchical, slave-dependent society
| threw away their finest soldiers' lives, and for what? To briefly
| delay the Persian Army while failing to achieve their goal of
| protecting Athens and the rest of northern Greece from the
| Persian attack?
|
| ...is this really the moral of the story here? That the Spartans
| should've just surrendered? That the proper response to a
| superior force (of _another_ oligarchical, slave-dependent
| society) wanting to subjugate you into said oligarchical, slave-
| dependent society is to... simply roll over and let it happen?
|
| That's the real irony here about the Moron Rubes. They envision
| themselves as Spartans defending Greece from the Persian
| onslaught, but they have much more in common with Ephialtes.
| Animats wrote:
| The group that came closest to achieving the Spartan ideal was
| the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire was the largest empire in
| human history, and it was created by tough, hard-trained horse-
| riding nomads.
|
| It wasn't just about being tough. The Mongols had good
| operational doctrine. Here's a modern evaluation by a U.S. Army
| officer.[1] They used intelligence and mobility to dominate the
| battlefield with smaller forces than their opponents. They had a
| good system for selecting leaders with a track record of winning.
| They were surprisingly good at planning, and at coordinating
| large units. That's how you win wars.
|
| The Mongol Empire collapsed due to internal political problems.
| No external enemy could take them down.
|
| [1] https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-
| Review/Dir...
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