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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

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!

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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.

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.

That's a nice throwback. Totally different subject matter but Matt Levine of Money Stuff on Bloomberg also continues to do that.

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!)

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.

Not having read his takedown, IMO Game of Thrones has more "realism" in the behaviors of people vis-à-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.

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.

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 Lothlórien works economically.

But I'll look at the article, I've read other ACOUP stuff and enjoyed.

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.

You really should read his articles.

> IMO Game of Thrones has more "realism" in the behaviors of people vis-à-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"!

I must be looking at the wrong articles because the two I started reading were all about logistics. (For both universes.)

My memory of Lord of the Rings is that the Shire mostly makes sense, but outside of the Shire, the world doesn't totally add up. The Roharim seem like romanticized Ango-Saxon eorls, but basically on grass plains and without obvious agriculture, the elves kind of just magically subsist, Orthanc is populated with orcs going through a secret industrial revolution without a food supply, large stretches of the world are basically empty... Once out of the Shire I don't really remember there being serfs or peasants or churches or much agriculture. It's possible my memory is betraying me, though.

That said my view on why there's a perception of Game of Thrones as more realistic than "most fantasy" is that in the 1200s through 1600s there really was a ton of plotting and power seeking, and a ton of violence, and social status really was a huge determinant of who could do what and how much would be overlooked. And lots of fantasy pre GoTs had various kinds of chosen one narratives, with side of light overcoming obvious evil, with middle ages trappings being little more than window dressing on permutations of Luke Skywalker or just sort of pre modern alternative societies. While GoTs goes hard on the violence, corruption, actual class differences, and power struggle plotting, and mostly does so without basing those things on magical or spiritual alignments. So IMO it's got flaws and is not a fantasy retelling of the real middle ages, but just clears a low bar of not really romanticizing feudalism and having power struggles that are more people-driven.

I do think Tolkien is much more influenced by and matches way more pre-1200s stuff. And particularly things like the Hobbit, his outside LoTR writings, fit super well into what I'd label kind of the "Beowulf to Egil" sort of era/time period.

I do agree that the relationship of religion and behavior in the middle ages is very hard to understand from a modern perspective - and I don't think it's some GoTs even tries at. (Though obviously we did eventually get the reformation because the divide between the Bible and the Church grew too large and too obvious, but it's also not very likely the case that those precipitating the reformation disbelieved.)

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…

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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-...

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

>>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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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?

I think the description I gave is consistent with the one used when Democrats get the "majority" of the vote. You can sealion the definition as much as you like, but it won't make you right.

The result feels as much the will of the people as any other US election result.

I think you've dreamed that but feel free to showcase some examples to prove me wrong.

Also ironic to nit pick about Trump not having a majority and then quote a poll that queried only 2800 people.

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.

It's not hysterical, it's very well reasoned and actually persuaded me, someone who's decidedly centrist.

Then you need to check some of his sources better.

You need to provide better arguments than telling your interlocutor to check sources. This is just FUD unless you have concrete facts to share that make him wrong.

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).

What is the equivalent of Spartans in the modern world? The Soviet Union also produced nukes and bombers.

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).

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).

Things are different now.

The US can destroy anyone by one guy pressing a button.

On the other hand, to win a non-nuclear war in the modern age, you need clever political positioning and a realistic end goal as well as battlefield results. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq 2.0 were all unwinnable no matter how well you fought.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Some of the discussion is exactly about which sources are even available, and what their background bias is.

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.

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