Spartans Were Losers
foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com
Americans often did this before by making heroic-warrior myths out of American Indian tribes that were on the losing side of historical conflicts just like the Spartans. Just think of all the American Indian imagery in the Boy Scouts from its early years, high-school sports teams named after such tribes, etc. Of course now, use of Native American motifs is seen as cultural appropriation, but the Spartans are far removed enough in time – and viewed as the same race as modern privileged classes – that use of Spartan motifs is safe from such accusations.
Very good, but why does it have to be a brutal -- for the standards of the time -- slave state that wasn't even particularly good at war?
The current situation in Ukraine should be proof enough that the myth of manly men doing manly things does not produce armies that are actually effective. Almost everything Sparta fanfiction does is actively counterproductive.
It was also a polis with rudimentary constitutional checks on its dyadic monarchy and a public ekklesia that notionally approved legislation.
> a disgruntled Athenian aristocrat who resented his social class' loss of power when Athens became a democracy
This is true. He also had prescient complaints about direct democracy as Athens practiced it. Of course, at that time we didn't know direct democracy doesn't work--it careens towards partisan overdrive and ricocheting majoritarianism.
The Spartans left no written record and hardly any archeology.
Which also suggests they kind of sucked.
It's not some political statement, all that was meant was that their whole society participated in the war effort and their education centered on fighting and survival rather than writing things down.
Right, and this is untrue of Sparta.
The Spartans were paranoid and insular. More likely than their being illiterates is that they destroyed their own records.
Which also suggests they kind of sucked.
Thucydides.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/22/sparta-popular-culture-...
- "noble lies" and propaganda as the basis of the state
- strict separation of the population into castes
- taking children away from their parents and brainwashing them
- killing of political dissidents
Even in Orwell's 1984 parents kept their children, even if they were indoctrinated into squealing on their parents. If anything, it looks more like John Boorman's Zardoz.
It's weird how we forget Athenian brutality in the whole Athens/Sparta dichotomy. There Melian dialogue is literally them shaking down their neighbors and then brutally murdering them drug cartel style, and Sparta won the Peloponnesian war by being more diplomatic. We uncritically buy into both of their propaganda about themselves
But yeah, reading Thucydides (also an out-of-sorts Athenian) leaves you with a lingering doubt about the inherent goodness of political regimes - "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
"The strong do as they will. The weak submit."
https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/
Audio format
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcIwe3bxds8ZvX9wL0Vf2hz...
"To put it bluntly, these guys are all snobs. Thucydides and Xenophon were both aristocratic Athenians (they got to be generals, rather than common soldiers), frustrated that democracy – in their view – let the fickle, uneducated and poor ‘masses’ make decisions that ought to have been left to their ‘betters.’... For these authors, Sparta is a mirror to hold up to the politics of Athens – speaking well of Sparta is a way of criticizing what they dislike about Athens (which is the democracy)... These men conclude that Sparta is fantastic because Sparta seems fantastic for men like them – rich, educated, adult citizen men."
https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2021/2021.03.44/
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/1/the-spartan-way-of-wa...
> One of the many Spartan enigmas—the reluctance to deploy an otherwise superior military—was not really an enigma at all.
> Sparta’s original paramilitary force, with time and sustenance to train and drill constantly against internal enemies, eventually evolved, by the early fifth century, into a crack expeditionary army, one even deadlier against Greek rivals than against Sparta’s restive serfs.
> Its unmatched hoplite army was often put to Panhellenic use, most famously by the three hundred at Thermopylae and as the “Dorian Spear” that crushed the Persians at Plataea.
> In this regard, Rahe shows that purportedly blinkered Spartan foreign policies gradually proved more astute than those of sophisticated Athens.
This shows a misunderstanding of how military power and war works, particularly in the ancient world. It's not a football game, where the best team will dominate everyone else. It's about fear and intimidation as much as fighting. If you have a force that is capable of creating 50/50 odds against any given opponent, that is a very formidable enemy.
Why does this always get brought up in articles where it's not relevant? Is my takeaway supposed to be that anybody who names anything after the Spartans is associated with a bunch of idiotic boomers who were way too butthurt over losing that election?
Also TFA's cited proof for this is a link to a Twitter thread about something questionable Joe Biden said regarding gun control? I cannot even speculate why OP would tell such an really verifiable lie, did he think nobody would click on his links?
The link supports the claim is that 'Molṑn Labé' is used as a "political rallying cry", in this case by Rep. Jeff Duncan making a political rally cry in support of access to guns.
That is indeed a Spartan saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe .
It was also used "by members of the extreme right who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021." For example, from 'SPARTANS ON THE CAPITOL: Recent Far-Right Appropriations of Spartan Militarism in the USA and their Historical Roots' (found via Google Scholar, but the URL doesn't seem to work stand-alone from HN):
] The display of ‘Spartan’ symbols during the insurrection of 6 January 2021 represented the culmination of an increasing recent trend whereby the U.S. Far-Right has appropriated martial images of the Spartans (linked especially to the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC) to support their causes. Three strands of appropriation have been prominent: Three strands of appropriation have been prominent: first, exploitation of the phrase MOLON LABE, supposedly uttered at Thermopylae by Sparta’s king Leonidas, by the firearms industry and gun-rights activists as a selling-point and a rallying cry against restrictions on gun ownership; secondly, use of imagery from Zack Snyder’s film 300 (2006) by supporters of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign; thirdly, invocations of ‘Spartan’ military symbols and Sparta’s martial reputation to mobilise violence against the leftist movement labelled ‘Antifa’.
> Is my takeaway supposed to be that anybody who names anything after the Spartans is associated with a bunch of idiotic boomers who were way too butthurt over losing that election?
... No? I think it's supposed to be that perhaps your understanding is incomplete and there is context you aren't aware of? Perhaps a newer context than one used to, for example, choose the name "Spartans" for the Michigan State University mascot back in 1925?
This describes just about all current political events, so take your pick of any of them - it's gonna be dumb.
The Spartans get way too much hype but they also had a fairly respectable run for a while. They beat Persia and then Athens. Were the athenians even bigger losers?
I hope you're not counting Thermopylae as them 'beating Persia'. Thermopylae was a disastrous defeat. Marathon and Salamis seem to be more important than Thermopylae (and are victories), and those were led by Athens as far as I can make out. You may be referring to Plataea, which was led by Sparta, but included forces from the whole Greek alliance, including nearly as many troops from Athens as Sparta.
As to them beating Athens, that was only after taking an enormous amount of Persian money to do so, and would most likely have been impossible otherwise.
- first invasion where persian were defeated by athens, and sparta was not involved much because persian didn't come to sparta close
- second, much larger invasion, where persians again attacked athens first, essentially defeated athens (athenians left the city), then athenians asked sparta to join the war or otherwise they will surrender to persians. Sparta assembled army, and defeated persians in the battle of plataea.
It looks like spartans defeated persians, and athenians would surrender if no sparta's involvement
Most 'right wingers' only fetishize Sparta based on what they learned from the movie 300. Kind of like a lot of 'right wingers' say they are Christian, but have never read the bible and have no idea what they believe in. (for example, Jesus didn't actually support killing neighbors with guns).
Like from the Movie 300, it is made out like Athens are 'gay', 'boy lovers'.
When it is pretty clearly documented that Spartans were very homosexual. Since the movie changed this, 'right wingers' feel ok fetishizing them. (and, I do like how you used the word "fetish" here, it almost makes me think this was a long con reverse troll post).
Sparta was basically matriarchal society with very low fertility. At time of Alexander the Great, they could only field 1000 soldiers. He did not even bothered to conquer them.
Compare it to US. How many soldiers could they put on field? UK can realistically deploy only 10k soldiers.
All in all, this FP just reeks of a leftist hit-piece, Sparta is so associated with right-wing toxic masculinity and so must be pilloried. After all, they’ve already torn down beautiful statues venerating heroes, now own to the intangible idols.
They've also always been a very useful shibboleth for people trying to make the "Effete Athenians vs Manly Spartans" comparison.
Can you point out any factual errors in it?
>After all, they’ve already torn down beautiful statues venerating heroes, now own to the intangible idols.
Which statues specifically are you talking about?
And he turned it down? Who does that? Who else in history did that?
When he became President, he turned down titles like "your Excellency" and other trappings of power. He voluntarily left after two terms, establishing a precedent that lasted until FDR.
How do you get more heroic than that?
As for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, terrible fates awaited nearly all of them.
https://michaelwsmith.com/the-sacrifices-made-by-the-declara...
Do the same things without owning people.
The French Revolutionaries, Washington's contemporaries, didn't own anybody. How'd that work out? I'll help. Millions dead, and they arrived right back where they started with Napoleon declaring himself hereditary monarch of France.
How about all the other revolutions in the Americas?
Maybe choosing not to be a dictator was simply the safest course of action. Least path of resistance.
It's not consistent with him being afraid of assassination.
> in exchange for
Washington didn't do it in exchange for anything.
> any formal rule
Washington wasn't offered a "role". He was offered absolute power.
How do you know that? Wielding absolute power makes enemies and Washington could have eventually lost everything, just like any number of historical tyrants that his circle, so keen about Greek and Roman history, were aware of. Turning down absolute power while keeping one’s immense wealth and influence can be an attractive choice, and this is the same calculus that has guided other warlords involved in revolutions up to the present day.
He was quite ill during his final term, which put him at a severe disadvantage in negotiating with Stalin. This was hidden from the public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Democratic_National_Conve...
Given that Americans tend to reelect presidents during wartime, that makes the claim that FDR was somehow unpopularly "just ok" to be even more dubious.
How many people have led armies fighting British, let alone beat them?
I'm not impressed. He took a dictatorship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France-Albert_Ren%C3%A9
> Jerry Rawlings
Not impressed with him,either. He took it back: "After handing power over to a civilian government, he took back control of the country on 31 December 1981 as the chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC)."
They claimed to do so. Most revolutions have some kind of noble ideology that is proclaimed over what is actually a complex mixture of self-interest and enmities.
> Without their heroic example the French Revolution would never have happened and the world would still be ruled by hereditary monarchies
The French Revolution is widely regarded as a disaster of sorts: any noble aims were downed in the blood of innocent people during the Terror that immediately ensued. Moreover, even the French reversed its achievements multiple times over the 19th century.
That the world would still be ruled by hereditary monarchies is a stretch considering that even the state that the American Colonies rebelled against had reduced the power of the monarch in favour of Parliament many decades before.
Please explain to me how the states which dissolved their bonds with the United States and declared their independence from it (many of which had done so during the Revolution and had ratified both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution while slavery was legal, and several of which did not secede until after the U.S. fired on Ft. Sumpter) were different in exercising the right to dissolve political bonds?
Bonus points if you can do it without saying but but muh racist. If you don't accept the first sentence of the Declaration the rest of it is null and void.
(While you're at the explain how the three-fifths compromise actually strengthened slave states (who wanted to count each slave as 1 person) because it actually weakened them and also, most importantly, enshrined slaves as persons and not property in the Constitution with the consentand ratification of those states where slavery was still legal.)
Non American here. Honestly, I'm perplexed by the question? Are you being genuine?
The difference is that they're the traitors from your perspective. You're American. They seceded from America. Thus they're traitors.
The same way that Americans are traitors from the perspective of an Englishman.
How is this even a question? There is no absolute right or wrong. There's not even an absolute right. Nothing says you can or cannot secede. It all depends on your perspective. If you're American than the South were the traitors.
GP's entire point was that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence establishes the basic right to secede. Here it is:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..."
His point is that Americans are broadly wrong when we condemn secessionists as traitors. According to our own founding document.
The south secedes. Then a few states don't dig the confederacy and secede from that, to form "The States of Northern Florida". Then some counties secede, then some cities secede, then a few individuals secede.
This actually happened, (not the Florida part). Once seceding was an option on the table, individual states started considering it and individual counties. And the whole thing was going to break apart.
Once you start down the path of anybody can 'dissolve the political bands' then the whole enterprise dissolves into anarchy.
You can interpret the Declaration of Independence literally all you want. But I'm pretty sure it was just a big middle finger to England. Once the US consolidated, those in power did what all people in power did, and it was more 'Can't have anymore of that'.
And he'd be wrong. They betrayed their nation, the United States of America. What's more, the Declaration of Independence didn't found anything.
It was a declaration of rebellion with broad, well understood at the time, political arguments designed to rile folks up against George III.
The U.S.'s first "founding document" was the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union[0], approved by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 and ratified by all 13 colonies (cum states) by 1781, followed by its replacement in 1789 by the US Constitution.
While the Declaration does lay out political arguments for secession, it has no legal force. Rather, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land[1]. What clause in that document grants the several states the right to secede? I'll save you the effort. It ain't there.
You can absolutely make the philosophical argument that a society can, and in some cases, should, create a separate political entity. As was elucidated in Robert Heinlein's lunar retelling of the American Revolution in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress[2].
But that's a philosophical argument, not a legal one. That said, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from advocating/organizing secession from the Unites States (or the relevant political entity wherever you might be), but governments tend to frown on that sort of thing.
As such, no matter the malicious motives and/or provocations of said government, if you attempt to overthrow its authority, you are a traitor (or a 'freedom fighter', I'm not picky about labels). But you are perfectly able to do so. But things might not end so well. Governments tend to be less pleasant to those who take up arms against them than they might be.
As the Confederacy[3] found out, during the American Civil War.
Relatedly, Kermit Roosevelt[4] persuasively argues[5] that the members of the Confederacy were the true inheritors of the political arguments embodied by the Declaration of Independence, not the Union. His point being that our nation as it exists is the product of the evolution of our constitutional order, and not simply the natural rights arguments laid out in the Declaration.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
[1] https://constitutionus.com/constitution/the-supreme-law-of-t...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt_III
[5] https://www.c-span.org/video/?469938-1/rethinking-americas-f...
Not that it matters much. Even if it is democratic, there's no moral right to self-determination if that self-determination is explicitly for the purposes of brutal oppression of some minority.
Someone said a few years ago:
"On the one hand, we had people who fought with gun and sword to murder, rape, and otherwise exploit my people. On the other hand we had people who fought with pen and parchment to murder, rape, and otherwise exploit my people."
Not that this bad. Most of our romanticized notions are incorrect. I also loved the movie 300 and if that is the romantic ideal for manly fighting, then so be it. That is fine. Call this some kind of 'Spartan Fighting Spirit'. Just don't take it as fact. Kind of like the Arthurian Ideal of Knighthood and Chivalry. It is a very powerful symbol, even if not very 'accurate'.
When that happens, they will realize that the low merit ideas of authors such as this guy are useless.
The decline of Sparta was due to the greed of the elite, who became self-serving at the expense of the rest. Not because of the merit of Spartan soldiers.
All models are wrong, some are useful; humanity will be dead long before that changes.
The only person that doesn't fail is the person that never tries anything. Being successful is not about never failing.
This article completely ignores the Battle of Thermopylae which is probably one of the things Spartans are the most known for. In that sense, the author himself failed to portray Spartans fairly, making him a failed historian.
In 100 years this historian will be completely forgotten.
And his aspirations would be to have a society less like Sparta. Meaning less fit, respected people that get mobilized to protect their territory and more of the opposite perhaps?
The semantic opposite is flaccid, laughable people that get invaded all the time. Perhaps that would be more aligned with the author's preferences.
Which ideas are you specifically talking about?
>The decline of Sparta was due to the greed of the elite, who became self-serving at the expense of the rest. Not because of the merit of Spartan soldiers.
Did you even read the article? Spartan soldiers were the elite. One major reason why Sparta declined was that this severely limited the size of armies they could field. And, as the article argues (supported with lots of hard historical facts), their military merit was, overall, rather mediocre.
Agreed. That is a scalability problem, it does not mean they were a failure at large in every aspect.
Rolls Royce, Ferrari and Lamborghini products also don't scale as much as Toyota products but many people aspire to have them.
> their military merit was, overall, rather mediocre.
Their merit is studied in military academies around the world. Those are the types of studies that actually matter and can be tested in real situations of life and death.
No, but the fact that they weren't actually winning most of their battles means they were not exactly a success in the military aspect, which was kind of the only thing they had going for them, seeing as their society was otherwise pretty shit (admittedly, their upperclass women had a few more freedoms than those in other Greek states).
> Their merit is studied in military academies around the world. Those are the types of studies that actually matter and can be tested in real situations of life and death.
Excuse me, which military academies these days are fighting battles using spears and shields?
Please tell me you're not talking about Steve Pressfield "Warrior Ethos" bullshit.
I'm not seeing a wide enough divergence in what you are saying compared to the author to justify that the author has 'low merit ideas'.
Unless you are thinking the ruling class elites and the soldiers were very distinct groups? But that wasn't really the case was it? It was a military society right? So Soldiers and rulers were the same group. So why are you stating the decline was because of 'elite's but not the 'soldiers' thus the article was 'low merit', when those were same group?
Ephor's were Neither Elites nor Soldiers exclusively. Or probably in the middle. History is lot more messy than the movie.
The wiki does agree that they were pretty corrupt, but also makes point that Ephor's came from the general population.
"The ephors were elected by the popular assembly, and all citizens were eligible."
Think this comes back around to making same point as article. That Ephors weren't some exclusive class of elites, but more that the general population were kind of corrupt and fought to get these plumb corrupt positions.
"According to Aristotle, the ephors frequently came from poverty because any Spartan citizen could hold the position, and it was not exclusive to the upper-class. Aristotle stated that because of this they were often liable to corruption.[19]"
If you want to watch anything watch this
So I'm not really following your argument.
I thought you were arguing that the submitted article was wrong. It was really the corrupt Elites that were the problem, not soldiers.
I posted something about elites and soldiers being in the same class.
You replied with link to Ephors, I thought to argue that Ephors were the 'elite's that were corrupt and lead to the downfall of Sparta.
I quoted about Ephors being generally elected and frequently from the poor, and soldiers. And also agreeing that they were corrupt, but not purely a class of 'elite's.
Then you sent video that seems to praise the 'ephor's. Not only were they not elites, they were actually trying to do the right thing, fighting for the people. (so I thought opposite of your original post, original post implied Ephors were bad, but this video makes them out as good). But, the video does point out who the elites were. They "Gerousia" which was a council of elders that were actually the more typical 'elites'. Old, entrenched, not elected, and had power over the Ephors. So the "Gerousia" are the 'elites' to blame, not the honest fighting soldiers.
But generally, the Video makes clear that we don't know much about this time period, and that by the time Rome was moving in, Sparta was a small village that couldn't form an army. So was it 'corruption' of the elites? Or stagnation? Still, nothing really contradicts the posted article.
My initial comment was about the "deep state" (non-electable de-facto powers with vast influence) in Sparta, which were the rich families run by the πατρούχοι that had an immense influence over the diarchy and Sparta at large. They used their wealth to influence most of the Spartan institutions, resulting in more wealth which ultimately tipped the balance of power to their side.
You are just incredibly confused, thinking that I am talking about the movie/visual novel 300, and then turning this into some kind of movie review.
Let me save you the public shame and let's cut this exchange short. Have a good life and enjoy learning about history.
Your original post did not provide any details as you did later, it was simply :
>"When that happens, they will realize that the low merit ideas of authors such as this guy are useless. "
But then, you later did provide more detail. And your views seem to align with the article. So, movie aside, not really sure what you find wrong with the article, except maybe you think it disrespects soldiers in general.
I agree power corrupts, money corrupts, and most human institution tend to become corrupted by money. Money seems to continue to accrue to a few and they buy everyone. The article seems to agree with this.
Public Shame. Who cares? (Lol, maybe the deep state is watching us)
No - they came from the citizen population, which in Sparta's case was a tiny percentage of the entire population, with most of the rest being helots, who were basically especially badly treated slaves.