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How does that square with "The agōgē was prestigious throughout the Greek world, and many aristocratic families from other cities vied to send their sons to Spa

How does that square with "The agōgē was prestigious throughout the Greek world, and many aristocratic families from other cities vied to send their sons to Sparta to participate in the agōgē for varying periods of time."? As far as I can tell, this blog goes against expert consensus on Sparta [1], so I'm wary of trusting its conclusions, for fear it's cherry-picking evidence, and making arguments only persuasive to a layman, akin to [2]. [1] Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars, in rivalry with the rising naval power of Athens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learn...

genghizkhan 6y ago
To be very frank, if you go through the Sparta series, you'll see why he says what he does. Sparta's win/loss ratio is fairly average, and a detailed review of their battle strategies does show that they had but one strategy for everything. Their fearsome military reputation. If it didn't work, the Spartans were screwed. Secondly, the agoge and the Spartan social system was responsible for the population of the Spartiates going down through the ages: there was no way of replenishing it. If you have a system which sowed the seeds for its own destruction extremely conclusively, then by definition it's a shit system. You're right, Sparta was recognised as a pre-eminient military power. Even the blog doesn't argue against that. However, do keep in mind that the primary bunch of people the Spartans are compared to in that blog are the Romans, who were exponentially more successful by any metric you choose. In addition, the blog breaks down reasons why that might not be as true as the popular conception of Sparta today. Yes, Sparta was feared. But Sparta didn't really do much. In fact, the most successful Spartans (and no, I'm not counting Leonidas among them: he lost Thermopylae which was an absolute tactical disaster with no upsides for the war the Greeks were fighting) were ones who did not go through the agoge (I am thinking of Lysander as well as the hereditary Spartan kings, none of whom went through the agoge). In short, try going through that series on Sparta and make your own mind up. The author is a trained historian and gives fantastic sources. You can also search up Sparta on AskHistorians and see what scholarly consensus has to say there. In particular, it would be wise to go through the third link I share below: - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=agoge&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=agoge&restri... - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4oxut/what_caused_the_fall_of_sparta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4oxut/what_... - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rvusy/is_the_military_worship_of_the_spartans_really/dl8ns8q/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rvusy/is_th...
- rbecker 6y ago
  I'll look through those sources, thanks. But I have to take issue with "Sparta's win/loss ratio is fairly average" (especially since another comment points out "Sparta was independent for over 500 years") I would honestly expect this of any non-expansionist state (and on longer timescales, expansionist as well), no matter how excellent their military. An army will attack only if they think they have a (good) chance of winning, meaning battles are likely to be at least somewhat even, or at the attacker's advantage.
  - genghizkhan 6y ago
    Sparta was an expansionist state. And it was fairly bad at being expansionist: there's a lovely description of Sparta's abysmal supply line management as opposed to Athens's at the same time. You should really go through that acoup blog: you're falling prey to something known to professional historians as the "Spartan Mirage". Going through the acoup blog as well as the AskHistorians sources, Sparta's win/loss ratio is just around 0.5. They won as often as they lost battles. Indeed, some of their major victories required Persian/Macedonian help or were actually accomplished by people from outside the agoge. And you forget that while they were the largest power on their patch of Greece, they were only hegemonic over Messania, no other area. Again, as the AskHistorians link points out, Sparta was much larger than the other city-states of its time at the point from where we have evidence. That Sparta was unable to do much from this position is fairly telling about their lack of skill in much other than hoplite fighting. In addition, go through the series to understand the makeup of Spartan society. It's easy to have strong, well-fed warriors when more than 80% of your population is chattel slavery (read helots) who were thought to be badly treated even by the standards of the Ancient Greeks (which, as you can very well imagine, were not very high. Slaves weren't treated well by those societies at all). It's easy to lionise Sparta when you become acquainted with the Theme Park version of it. It's hard to stomach the actual reality of what we do know about Sparta.

genghizkhan 6y ago

To be very frank, if you go through the Sparta series, you'll see why he says what he does. Sparta's win/loss ratio is fairly average, and a detailed review of their battle strategies does show that they had but one strategy for everything. Their fearsome military reputation. If it didn't work, the Spartans were screwed. Secondly, the agoge and the Spartan social system was responsible for the population of the Spartiates going down through the ages: there was no way of replenishing it. If you have a system which sowed the seeds for its own destruction extremely conclusively, then by definition it's a shit system. You're right, Sparta was recognised as a pre-eminient military power. Even the blog doesn't argue against that. However, do keep in mind that the primary bunch of people the Spartans are compared to in that blog are the Romans, who were exponentially more successful by any metric you choose. In addition, the blog breaks down reasons why that might not be as true as the popular conception of Sparta today. Yes, Sparta was feared. But Sparta didn't really do much. In fact, the most successful Spartans (and no, I'm not counting Leonidas among them: he lost Thermopylae which was an absolute tactical disaster with no upsides for the war the Greeks were fighting) were ones who did not go through the agoge (I am thinking of Lysander as well as the hereditary Spartan kings, none of whom went through the agoge). In short, try going through that series on Sparta and make your own mind up. The author is a trained historian and gives fantastic sources. You can also search up Sparta on AskHistorians and see what scholarly consensus has to say there. In particular, it would be wise to go through the third link I share below: - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=agoge&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=agoge&restri... - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4oxut/what_caused_the_fall_of_sparta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4oxut/what_... - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rvusy/is_the_military_worship_of_the_spartans_really/dl8ns8q/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6rvusy/is_th...

rbecker 6y ago
I'll look through those sources, thanks. But I have to take issue with "Sparta's win/loss ratio is fairly average" (especially since another comment points out "Sparta was independent for over 500 years") I would honestly expect this of any non-expansionist state (and on longer timescales, expansionist as well), no matter how excellent their military. An army will attack only if they think they have a (good) chance of winning, meaning battles are likely to be at least somewhat even, or at the attacker's advantage.
- genghizkhan 6y ago
  Sparta was an expansionist state. And it was fairly bad at being expansionist: there's a lovely description of Sparta's abysmal supply line management as opposed to Athens's at the same time. You should really go through that acoup blog: you're falling prey to something known to professional historians as the "Spartan Mirage". Going through the acoup blog as well as the AskHistorians sources, Sparta's win/loss ratio is just around 0.5. They won as often as they lost battles. Indeed, some of their major victories required Persian/Macedonian help or were actually accomplished by people from outside the agoge. And you forget that while they were the largest power on their patch of Greece, they were only hegemonic over Messania, no other area. Again, as the AskHistorians link points out, Sparta was much larger than the other city-states of its time at the point from where we have evidence. That Sparta was unable to do much from this position is fairly telling about their lack of skill in much other than hoplite fighting. In addition, go through the series to understand the makeup of Spartan society. It's easy to have strong, well-fed warriors when more than 80% of your population is chattel slavery (read helots) who were thought to be badly treated even by the standards of the Ancient Greeks (which, as you can very well imagine, were not very high. Slaves weren't treated well by those societies at all). It's easy to lionise Sparta when you become acquainted with the Theme Park version of it. It's hard to stomach the actual reality of what we do know about Sparta.