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The incessant celebration of Sparta in the culture of the West is truly abhorrent. What of Sparta was worth celebrating? Their child soldiers, mass enslavement,

The incessant celebration of Sparta in the culture of the West is truly abhorrent. What of Sparta was worth celebrating? Their child soldiers, mass enslavement, hunting of other men, mindless wars, ...... They produced no literature, goods, art or bequeathed anything to posterity other than their notoriety as a brutal martial society even that is being questioned. The messy Romans were far better and interesting through their start as a monarchy, transitioning through republic and empire to end as a theological autocracy. The nearest thing to Spart might be Genghis Khan's Mongols. They Mongols were true nomads whose capital was a tent city. They left no trace of Empire but were secular and bequeathed many important technologies to the world - none of which were their invention. They neither created anything on their own nor built any civilizations but their fame for conquest and administration. What did the Spartans accomplish? Edit: Quite a few folks downthread are chiding me for being unaware of the Mongol's contribution to our present society. First, I am comparing them favorably to the Spartans. Second, I have actually been to Ulan Bataar and worked in their cultural institutions preserving Mongol "artefacts" . I have also studied with Mongol teachers and count Mongols as friends. I counsel those counselling me based on books they have read or secondary/tertiary source material on the internet to reconsider their assumptions. Your advice might be well intentioned but off the mark. The Mongols were tremendous administrators. They were also ruthless nomads who loathed cities, civilization and all its trappings. There is no sign of Genghis' Khan's empire anywhere on this planet. Why? His court was a tent just like his city was a tent city. He also sacked Baghdad and almost every city they came upon including killing the men and raping millions of women and burning their libraries. Yes, they imported postal systems, bureaucracy, paper and whatever else to the world but they also killed 50-100MM people and burned down cities across the middle east for no reason because they did not like them. The descendants of Genghis Khan like Taimur Lame single handedly destroyed vast swaths of Persia, Georgia, Iraq and laid waste to Northern India raising mountains of skulls along the way. You can keep your postal systems and secular courts, I would like to get some of the cities they sacked and their libraries back.

ldbooth 6y ago
Generally what we read in Durant was ... Not a lot on balance. Their 3 branches of government and the position and treatment of women in spartan society was notable at the time.
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
>> What did the Spartans accomplish? That is a question to ask the Spartans and perhaps their contemporaries. Not people from 2,000 years in the future. I think the article and your comment both make a mistake, the same mistake: complaining that an ancient civilisation did not hold itself up to our modern morals.
IgorPartola 6y ago
I highly recommend you check out a biography of Genghis Khan. I think you will find that you hold a few misconceptions about the Mongol Empire, as I did when I read more about him abs what he did. For example, the Mongol empire hosted the very first theological debate and was itself run as a sort of modern corporation. The Soviet Union did quite a bit to mar it all up.
- Amezarak 6y ago
  "Theological debate" must require a lot of qualifiers, because there certainly were an abundance of theological debates prior to the Mongols, some of them historically famous.
- gostsamo 6y ago
  What do you mean with "theological debate"? I'm asking because this is rather broad term which could be disputed.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empir...
    - gostsamo 6y ago
      So, debate as a performance? This makes it much less innovative than it sounds. It was customary for big religions to stage such debates when trying to convert a pagan society. Check the history of Cyril and Methodius and their khazar mission which is 4-5 hundreds years prier.
      - keiferski 6y ago
        Except the Mongols weren’t trying to convert anyone, nor was it purely a performance.
        6y ago
neolog 6y ago
Wikipedia says > Spartan women also enjoyed considerably more rights and equality with men than elsewhere in classical antiquity.
- Clewza313 6y ago
  Part III of the linked blog demolishes that pretty effectively: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/29/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-iii-spartan-women/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/29/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p... TL;DR: Spartan elite women were slightly freer than Athenian women, mostly because all their housework was outsourced to an army of slaves. But they were not citizens, could not choose who to marry, and were by and large treated as property, up to and including lending to other men. The 95+% of Spartan women who were not in the elite, on the other hand, led lives that were miserable even by the low standards of antiquity, including random rape and murder during the yearly crypteia purges.
  - railton 6y ago
    He also points out in this post that rape was so common there's an entire, identifiable social class of Spartan bastards (_nothoi_ / _mothakes_). > But we don’t need to guess or rely on comparative evidence, because this rape was happening frequently enough that it produced an identifiable social class. The one secure passage we have to this effect is from Xenophon, who notes that the Spartan army marching to war included a group he calls the nothoi – the bastards (Xen. Hell. 5.3.9). The phrase typically means – and here clearly means – boys born to slave mothers.
    - neolog 6y ago
      Is that suggesting that all "bastards"' mothers were raped?
      - krageon 6y ago
        When you're a slave, you don't have a choice about what happens to you. If you cannot refuse, you cannot consent. That makes it rape, yes.
drak0n1c 6y ago
The respect, if not endorsement, for their uniquely ruthless ethos accomplished a lot over the centuries. Morale might not be quantified in the records, but it certainly had effects in the rise and fall of civilizations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe#Modern_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe#Modern_use
schoen 6y ago
By the way, the same author has written a fair amount about the Mongols https://acoup.blog/?s=mongols https://acoup.blog/?s=mongols mostly but not exclusively pointing out that George R. R. Martin was not really familiar with them in using them as an inspiration for the Dothraki. He says that the Mongols did have their own creativity and art (beyond the "conquest and administration" stuff). You might want to check that out, as it seems like our modern outsider cultural impressions of Mongols can be as limited as our impressions of Spartans!
- amitprayal 6y ago
  who said that the Mongols did not have art? they made excellent cups from the skulls of there dead enemies.
keiferski 6y ago
Your impression of the Mongols is very wrong. They were exceptionally advanced in a number of things, including religious tolerance and syncretism and military strategy. They left immense “traces of empire”, the largest being the exchange of ideas during the peaceful era of Pax Mongolia. Judging a historical civilization by how much it has affected the present is also a bit myopic.
- haltingproblem 6y ago
  Tolerance for religions just not for the people who practiced them. Razing whole cities and murdering every male citizen and raping every woman but leaving the houses of worship standing because they dgaf about whom their victims worshipped is tolerance I guess.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    They were violent conquerors, like essentially every other civilization in history. They just happened to be better at it. The religious tolerance of the Mongols in comparison to their contemporaries is well-established. > As Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and waged war on most of Asia he became known as one of the most ruthless and brutal warlords of all time. However, one hallmark during his military conquest was his tolerance of all religions. He embraced diversity and decreed religious freedom for everyone.[17] Genghis Khan’s tolerance proved to be beneficial for him. Genghis continued to use religious persecution to his benefit. He would use suppressed people as spies in cities such as Baghdad and then take the land, assimilating all those willing.[18] In Amy Chua's book Day of Empire, she claims that “... the Mongols were more religiously open than any other power in the world.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empir... We should also be very aware that most of the writing we have on the Mongols comes from their enemies. It is almost certainly biased and likely over-exaggerates certain things.
  - BelenusMordred 6y ago
    Imposing modern morals on groups of people from 700 years is a bizarre thing to do. Who exactly are you preaching all this righteousness to?
peteretep 6y ago
I suspect that deification of a Warrior archetype is as old as civilization itself, and every society simply tries to find historical examples where the nasty reality of militarism can be conveniently white-washed away. 2,500 years is enough time to have passed that there aren't any inconvenient Helots still around to ask difficult questions.
- danaris 6y ago
  This same blog has a separate (but related) series of posts about pretty much this topic: he calls it The Fremen Mirage. Here's the start of it: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/ https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-... It's pretty fascinating stuff, though it can take a while to get through.
- jabl 6y ago
  Perhaps it's not a coincidence that fascism is on the rise again, now that living memory of WWII is all but gone.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    Fascism is "characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy" [0]. There isn't really much hint of that at the moment, although the spectre always lurks. I suppose China is a fairly strong example of how a 1-party state can achieve success. Even then there is a pretty strong argument that their political organisation is one of the biggest things holding them back. The major strategic strength has been the program of encouraging and engaging with foreign investment and that doesn't require any particular political structure. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
    - egeozcan 6y ago
      > There isn't really much hint of that at the moment You may go the "not a real scotsman" way here, but you don't even see a hint?
azernik 6y ago
Note that the celebration of Sparta goes all the way back to their contemporaries in the rest of Greece. Generally, like today, their image was used as a rhetorical cudgel to beat your opponents with; usually for being too democratic, not "manly" enough, too attached to the civilian economy, &c That celebration is an expression of a long-running thread of similarly abhorrent tendencies in Western intellectual tradition.
IncRnd 6y ago
> They produced no literature, goods, art or bequeathed anything to posterity other than their notoriety as a brutal martial society even that is being questioned. The messy Romans were far better and interesting through their start as a monarchy, transitioning through republic and empire to end as a theological autocracy. I think you picked-up a skewed version of History. Sparta, the first democracy in recorded history, was one of the few Grecian areas where women could go to school, own property, and engage in sports. Throughout the rest of Greece, most women were illiterate. The Spartan constitution is the first known to have an Assembly composed of all citizens. Plutarch said, "devotion to the intellect is more characteristic of Sparta than love of physical exercise." Socrates said, "the most ancient and fertile homes of philosophy among the Greeks are Crete and Sparta, where are found more sophists than anywhere on earth." The oldest recorded heterosexual love poem was the work of a Spartan poet praising Spartan maidens.
- spaced-out 6y ago
  >Throughout the rest of Greece, most women were illiterate. Most women in Sparta were illiterate too.
- andi999 6y ago
  Thanks, I read up on the democracy claim, and I was very surprised. Today I learnt something new.
  - tom_mellior 6y ago
    Namely, you learned that "an Assembly composed of all citizens" is not meaningful democracy if the class of "citizens" is defined so narrowly that this comes out to a tiny ruling class dominating a vast majority of subjugated people.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
      That is a good description of the Athenian democracy where only landed indigenous men were part of the demos, women had no rights, let alone the right to vote, immigrants (metoikoi) also could not vote or own real estate and the economy was supported by relentless slave labour. Note, all this was 2,000 years ago.
selimthegrim 6y ago
Ulugh Beg and Nasiruddin Tusi (sponsored by Hulagu) must be fitting somewhere in your charnel house. (And I too have had Mongolian coworkers, for transparency's sake)
inglor_cz 6y ago
People tend to worship warriors when they themselves feel powerless or threatened by an outside enemy. Contemporary Europe has a lot of unrest in close proximity (Niger, Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine) and mass movements of people. Mr. Erdogan ruling the same Asia Minor where Persian armies once came from* is very clearly not our friend nor good neighbour. At the same time, most European militaries are chronically underinvested. That will lead some to escapism and search for possible heroes, which isn't really history, but mythology. * I know that the bulk of Persian empire was further east, but Asia Minor was still the staging region for invasions into Europe. Logically so, the geography is clear.
rayiner 6y ago
Literature, goods, and art aren’t the only things that define society. Protecting yourself and effectively killing your enemies is a central part of the human experience, just as much as those other things. Selflessness and bravery to that end has always been celebrated throughout human history because it’s necessary to the survival of societies. In modern western society we can generally avoid looking that in the face, for the same reason we can buy packaged meat and separate ourselves from the mass slaughter of animals. But that doesn’t make that fact of life go away and at some level we all understand that.
- watwut 6y ago
  > Protecting yourself and effectively killing your enemies is a central part of the human experience, [...] Selflessness and bravery to that end has always been celebrated A lot of violence that went on in Sparta was fundamentally selfish. And quite often it had nothing to do with protecting yourself. And also, quite a lot of it was not brave at all - the treatment of helots or pretty much anyone who was lower in social standing then you was violent but not brave at all. It was violence simply against people with zero chance to defend themselves intended to keep things that way. There is that odd thing where people kneed jerk assume that violence of the past must have been well reasoned, noble and form of self sacrifice. Pretty often, it is simply not a case.
- cedilla 6y ago
  Killing ist not a part of the human experience. It ist only the distance you mention that even allows you to glorify the ultimate dehumanizing act. That it is even romantice in the context of child soldiers speaks volumes.
  - mcosta 6y ago
    Killing is not a part of your human experience because others do it for you.
    - cedilla 6y ago
      Incredibly rarely police kills for me. Extremely rarely a soldier kills with the mandate of the parliament of my country. Killing is abnormal. Whenever someone is intentionally killed, it is a failure of society and an incredible tragedy.
seer 6y ago
I'm not one to say anything good about Sparta, as I pretty much agree with what acoup has to say in his blog about them. What I think is going on is not that people like what Spartans actually did, people are simply enamoured by their honourable and majestic portrayal in popular culture. What youngster does not fantasise of being that small and determined band of soldiers that holds off the hordes of brutal barbarians, only with their shields, spears, courage and martial prowess? Who doesn't want to be part of that 250 men that defy a whole empire, _and succeed_, immortalised in songs and poems? (I mean they all die by the end, but they do kinda succeed in their mission). The way I think about it is that for me there are two (or more even) Spartas. The historical "Sparta" that were brutal oppressors, like a case study how _not_ to structure a society, lots of lessons to learn from it. And the mythical "SPARTA!" one, full of honourable dudes and courageous women, that we can aspire to be, even if they were not real. No reason why they can't coexist in our minds, we just need to be careful which one we talk about. When people say they "like Sparta" I don't immediately feel that they are silently singling that they will be ok with slavery and secret police, I think they want to be strong people fighting to protect their brethren, and that's generally OK with me.
- azernik 6y ago
  The problem with people's adulation for this mythical Sparta is that it includes ideas about causation (they were strong because they were monomaniacally focused on war!) and morality (military strength is a more important merit for a society than economic success or cultural output!) drawn from the real Sparta. ie people who want to reproduce the mythical Sparta often advocate the social structure of the real Sparta, thinking it will lead to those mythical benefits. And instead it leads to monstrosity.
- goto11 6y ago
  Just a nitpick but the Spartans at Thermopylae did not succeed in their mission at all. They barely slowed the advance of the Persian army.
  - wcarey 6y ago
    That presumes a modern strategic intent, though, which was often absent from ancient warfare. If the mission of the Spartans was to secure kleos -- the only immortality the the Greeks valued -- then they succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings. Almost 2500 years later we are still talking about them. J.E. Lendon presents a compelling argument that this was, in fact how ancient warriors thought in "Song of Wrath".
EdwardDiego 6y ago
I don't know how much stock you put in this, but I always enjoyed the study that found that Genghis' depredations changed the climate. https://carnegiescience.edu/news/war-plague-no-match-deforestation-driving-co2-buildup https://carnegiescience.edu/news/war-plague-no-match-defores...
enriquto 6y ago
> The incessant celebration of Sparta in the culture of the West is truly abhorrent. Socrates was killed for being a Sparta supporter in Athens (also for being a formidable troll). His loving pupil Plato went on to start the whole "Western civilization" thing. Make of that what you want, but for anybody who knows some history, your sentence will sound pretty confusing and contradictory. The celebration of Sparta is not some decadent modern fad; it lies at the very root of our civilization! We are defined by being Sparta supporters.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  > Socrates was killed for being a Sparta supporter in Athens I think Socrates' admiration for Sparta is questioned by some scholars. Since the man himself didn't leave behind any written work, all we know of him we know indirectly, mostly from Plato. Popper for example considers that a lot of the more authoritarian ideas ascribed to Socrates were actually Plato's views [1]. The general problem of figuring out what exactly Socrates thought, how he acted etc. is actually a significant sub-field of scholarship [2]. > His loving pupil Plato went on to start the whole "Western civilization" thing This is silliness. While the tremendous importance of Classical Greece can't be denied, the idea that there is a monolithic thing called 'Western Civilization' that has a clear start is extremely simplistic. Are the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Etruscans, the Minoans, the Hittites etc. not part of 'Western Civilization'? How about the Christians that spent many centuries actually destroying and forgetting the works and achievements of the ancient world [3]? > The celebration of Sparta is not some decadent modern fad; it lies at the very root of our civilization! We are defined by being Sparta supporters. This is even more silliness. By the same token you could say that slavery or infanticide lie at the very root of 'our civilization'. We (who exactly is we in this case? Americans? Europeans? people of the Levant or North Africa?) are defined by our actions and beliefs, not by some supposedly sacred historical heritage that should never be questioned or relinquished lest that leads to the collapse of our current society. [1] 'Contrary to major Plato scholars of his day, Popper divorced Plato's ideas from those of Socrates, claiming that the former in his later years expressed none of the humanitarian and democratic tendencies of his teacher. In particular, Popper accuses Plato of betraying Socrates in the Republic, wherein Plato portrays Socrates sympathizing with totalitarianism' in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_problem [3] See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age
isolli 6y ago
What I read (but I can't remember where) is that Mongols would use the threat of razing as a way to force cities to surrender. If the city surrendered, they were spared, if not, they were razed. Pour encourager les autres, if you will.
- arethuza 6y ago
  Wasn't that fairly common in ancient warfare - cities that surrendered would be treated better than those that chose to put up a fight? e.g. The Siege of Tyre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC) Edit: Mind you the Mongols do seem to have been quite methodical about it: "On the first night while laying siege to a city, the leader of the Mongol forces would lead from a white tent: if the city surrendered, all would be spared. On the second day, he would use a red tent: if the city surrendered, the men would all be killed, but the rest would be spared. On the third day, he would use a black tent: no quarter would be given." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege
neolog 6y ago
> You can keep your postal systems and secular courts, I would like to get some of the cities they sacked and their libraries back. That's a really big tradeoff, how did you arrive at your conclusion?
- neolog 6y ago
  Seems like other people agree with parent. Can someone explain how they trade off between these things?

ldbooth 6y ago

Generally what we read in Durant was ... Not a lot on balance. Their 3 branches of government and the position and treatment of women in spartan society was notable at the time.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

>> What did the Spartans accomplish? That is a question to ask the Spartans and perhaps their contemporaries. Not people from 2,000 years in the future. I think the article and your comment both make a mistake, the same mistake: complaining that an ancient civilisation did not hold itself up to our modern morals.

IgorPartola 6y ago

I highly recommend you check out a biography of Genghis Khan. I think you will find that you hold a few misconceptions about the Mongol Empire, as I did when I read more about him abs what he did. For example, the Mongol empire hosted the very first theological debate and was itself run as a sort of modern corporation. The Soviet Union did quite a bit to mar it all up.

Amezarak 6y ago
"Theological debate" must require a lot of qualifiers, because there certainly were an abundance of theological debates prior to the Mongols, some of them historically famous.
gostsamo 6y ago
What do you mean with "theological debate"? I'm asking because this is rather broad term which could be disputed.
- keiferski 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empir...
  - gostsamo 6y ago
    So, debate as a performance? This makes it much less innovative than it sounds. It was customary for big religions to stage such debates when trying to convert a pagan society. Check the history of Cyril and Methodius and their khazar mission which is 4-5 hundreds years prier.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      Except the Mongols weren’t trying to convert anyone, nor was it purely a performance.
      - 6y ago

neolog 6y ago

Wikipedia says > Spartan women also enjoyed considerably more rights and equality with men than elsewhere in classical antiquity.

Clewza313 6y ago
Part III of the linked blog demolishes that pretty effectively: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/29/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-iii-spartan-women/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/29/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p... TL;DR: Spartan elite women were slightly freer than Athenian women, mostly because all their housework was outsourced to an army of slaves. But they were not citizens, could not choose who to marry, and were by and large treated as property, up to and including lending to other men. The 95+% of Spartan women who were not in the elite, on the other hand, led lives that were miserable even by the low standards of antiquity, including random rape and murder during the yearly crypteia purges.
- railton 6y ago
  He also points out in this post that rape was so common there's an entire, identifiable social class of Spartan bastards (_nothoi_ / _mothakes_). > But we don’t need to guess or rely on comparative evidence, because this rape was happening frequently enough that it produced an identifiable social class. The one secure passage we have to this effect is from Xenophon, who notes that the Spartan army marching to war included a group he calls the nothoi – the bastards (Xen. Hell. 5.3.9). The phrase typically means – and here clearly means – boys born to slave mothers.
  - neolog 6y ago
    Is that suggesting that all "bastards"' mothers were raped?
    - krageon 6y ago
      When you're a slave, you don't have a choice about what happens to you. If you cannot refuse, you cannot consent. That makes it rape, yes.

drak0n1c 6y ago

The respect, if not endorsement, for their uniquely ruthless ethos accomplished a lot over the centuries. Morale might not be quantified in the records, but it certainly had effects in the rise and fall of civilizations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe#Modern_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe#Modern_use

schoen 6y ago

By the way, the same author has written a fair amount about the Mongols https://acoup.blog/?s=mongols https://acoup.blog/?s=mongols mostly but not exclusively pointing out that George R. R. Martin was not really familiar with them in using them as an inspiration for the Dothraki. He says that the Mongols did have their own creativity and art (beyond the "conquest and administration" stuff). You might want to check that out, as it seems like our modern outsider cultural impressions of Mongols can be as limited as our impressions of Spartans!

amitprayal 6y ago
who said that the Mongols did not have art? they made excellent cups from the skulls of there dead enemies.

keiferski 6y ago

Your impression of the Mongols is very wrong. They were exceptionally advanced in a number of things, including religious tolerance and syncretism and military strategy. They left immense “traces of empire”, the largest being the exchange of ideas during the peaceful era of Pax Mongolia. Judging a historical civilization by how much it has affected the present is also a bit myopic.

haltingproblem 6y ago
Tolerance for religions just not for the people who practiced them. Razing whole cities and murdering every male citizen and raping every woman but leaving the houses of worship standing because they dgaf about whom their victims worshipped is tolerance I guess.
- keiferski 6y ago
  They were violent conquerors, like essentially every other civilization in history. They just happened to be better at it. The religious tolerance of the Mongols in comparison to their contemporaries is well-established. > As Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and waged war on most of Asia he became known as one of the most ruthless and brutal warlords of all time. However, one hallmark during his military conquest was his tolerance of all religions. He embraced diversity and decreed religious freedom for everyone.[17] Genghis Khan’s tolerance proved to be beneficial for him. Genghis continued to use religious persecution to his benefit. He would use suppressed people as spies in cities such as Baghdad and then take the land, assimilating all those willing.[18] In Amy Chua's book Day of Empire, she claims that “... the Mongols were more religiously open than any other power in the world.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Mongol_Empir... We should also be very aware that most of the writing we have on the Mongols comes from their enemies. It is almost certainly biased and likely over-exaggerates certain things.
- BelenusMordred 6y ago
  Imposing modern morals on groups of people from 700 years is a bizarre thing to do. Who exactly are you preaching all this righteousness to?

peteretep 6y ago

I suspect that deification of a Warrior archetype is as old as civilization itself, and every society simply tries to find historical examples where the nasty reality of militarism can be conveniently white-washed away. 2,500 years is enough time to have passed that there aren't any inconvenient Helots still around to ask difficult questions.

danaris 6y ago
This same blog has a separate (but related) series of posts about pretty much this topic: he calls it The Fremen Mirage. Here's the start of it: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/ https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-... It's pretty fascinating stuff, though it can take a while to get through.
jabl 6y ago
Perhaps it's not a coincidence that fascism is on the rise again, now that living memory of WWII is all but gone.
- roenxi 6y ago
  Fascism is "characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy" [0]. There isn't really much hint of that at the moment, although the spectre always lurks. I suppose China is a fairly strong example of how a 1-party state can achieve success. Even then there is a pretty strong argument that their political organisation is one of the biggest things holding them back. The major strategic strength has been the program of encouraging and engaging with foreign investment and that doesn't require any particular political structure. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
  - egeozcan 6y ago
    > There isn't really much hint of that at the moment You may go the "not a real scotsman" way here, but you don't even see a hint?

azernik 6y ago

Note that the celebration of Sparta goes all the way back to their contemporaries in the rest of Greece. Generally, like today, their image was used as a rhetorical cudgel to beat your opponents with; usually for being too democratic, not "manly" enough, too attached to the civilian economy, &c That celebration is an expression of a long-running thread of similarly abhorrent tendencies in Western intellectual tradition.

IncRnd 6y ago

> They produced no literature, goods, art or bequeathed anything to posterity other than their notoriety as a brutal martial society even that is being questioned. The messy Romans were far better and interesting through their start as a monarchy, transitioning through republic and empire to end as a theological autocracy. I think you picked-up a skewed version of History. Sparta, the first democracy in recorded history, was one of the few Grecian areas where women could go to school, own property, and engage in sports. Throughout the rest of Greece, most women were illiterate. The Spartan constitution is the first known to have an Assembly composed of all citizens. Plutarch said, "devotion to the intellect is more characteristic of Sparta than love of physical exercise." Socrates said, "the most ancient and fertile homes of philosophy among the Greeks are Crete and Sparta, where are found more sophists than anywhere on earth." The oldest recorded heterosexual love poem was the work of a Spartan poet praising Spartan maidens.

spaced-out 6y ago
>Throughout the rest of Greece, most women were illiterate. Most women in Sparta were illiterate too.
andi999 6y ago
Thanks, I read up on the democracy claim, and I was very surprised. Today I learnt something new.
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  Namely, you learned that "an Assembly composed of all citizens" is not meaningful democracy if the class of "citizens" is defined so narrowly that this comes out to a tiny ruling class dominating a vast majority of subjugated people.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
    That is a good description of the Athenian democracy where only landed indigenous men were part of the demos, women had no rights, let alone the right to vote, immigrants (metoikoi) also could not vote or own real estate and the economy was supported by relentless slave labour. Note, all this was 2,000 years ago.

selimthegrim 6y ago

Ulugh Beg and Nasiruddin Tusi (sponsored by Hulagu) must be fitting somewhere in your charnel house. (And I too have had Mongolian coworkers, for transparency's sake)

inglor_cz 6y ago

People tend to worship warriors when they themselves feel powerless or threatened by an outside enemy. Contemporary Europe has a lot of unrest in close proximity (Niger, Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine) and mass movements of people. Mr. Erdogan ruling the same Asia Minor where Persian armies once came from* is very clearly not our friend nor good neighbour. At the same time, most European militaries are chronically underinvested. That will lead some to escapism and search for possible heroes, which isn't really history, but mythology. * I know that the bulk of Persian empire was further east, but Asia Minor was still the staging region for invasions into Europe. Logically so, the geography is clear.

rayiner 6y ago

Literature, goods, and art aren’t the only things that define society. Protecting yourself and effectively killing your enemies is a central part of the human experience, just as much as those other things. Selflessness and bravery to that end has always been celebrated throughout human history because it’s necessary to the survival of societies. In modern western society we can generally avoid looking that in the face, for the same reason we can buy packaged meat and separate ourselves from the mass slaughter of animals. But that doesn’t make that fact of life go away and at some level we all understand that.

watwut 6y ago
> Protecting yourself and effectively killing your enemies is a central part of the human experience, [...] Selflessness and bravery to that end has always been celebrated A lot of violence that went on in Sparta was fundamentally selfish. And quite often it had nothing to do with protecting yourself. And also, quite a lot of it was not brave at all - the treatment of helots or pretty much anyone who was lower in social standing then you was violent but not brave at all. It was violence simply against people with zero chance to defend themselves intended to keep things that way. There is that odd thing where people kneed jerk assume that violence of the past must have been well reasoned, noble and form of self sacrifice. Pretty often, it is simply not a case.
cedilla 6y ago
Killing ist not a part of the human experience. It ist only the distance you mention that even allows you to glorify the ultimate dehumanizing act. That it is even romantice in the context of child soldiers speaks volumes.
- mcosta 6y ago
  Killing is not a part of your human experience because others do it for you.
  - cedilla 6y ago
    Incredibly rarely police kills for me. Extremely rarely a soldier kills with the mandate of the parliament of my country. Killing is abnormal. Whenever someone is intentionally killed, it is a failure of society and an incredible tragedy.

seer 6y ago

I'm not one to say anything good about Sparta, as I pretty much agree with what acoup has to say in his blog about them. What I think is going on is not that people like what Spartans actually did, people are simply enamoured by their honourable and majestic portrayal in popular culture. What youngster does not fantasise of being that small and determined band of soldiers that holds off the hordes of brutal barbarians, only with their shields, spears, courage and martial prowess? Who doesn't want to be part of that 250 men that defy a whole empire, _and succeed_, immortalised in songs and poems? (I mean they all die by the end, but they do kinda succeed in their mission). The way I think about it is that for me there are two (or more even) Spartas. The historical "Sparta" that were brutal oppressors, like a case study how _not_ to structure a society, lots of lessons to learn from it. And the mythical "SPARTA!" one, full of honourable dudes and courageous women, that we can aspire to be, even if they were not real. No reason why they can't coexist in our minds, we just need to be careful which one we talk about. When people say they "like Sparta" I don't immediately feel that they are silently singling that they will be ok with slavery and secret police, I think they want to be strong people fighting to protect their brethren, and that's generally OK with me.

azernik 6y ago
The problem with people's adulation for this mythical Sparta is that it includes ideas about causation (they were strong because they were monomaniacally focused on war!) and morality (military strength is a more important merit for a society than economic success or cultural output!) drawn from the real Sparta. ie people who want to reproduce the mythical Sparta often advocate the social structure of the real Sparta, thinking it will lead to those mythical benefits. And instead it leads to monstrosity.
goto11 6y ago
Just a nitpick but the Spartans at Thermopylae did not succeed in their mission at all. They barely slowed the advance of the Persian army.
- wcarey 6y ago
  That presumes a modern strategic intent, though, which was often absent from ancient warfare. If the mission of the Spartans was to secure kleos -- the only immortality the the Greeks valued -- then they succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings. Almost 2500 years later we are still talking about them. J.E. Lendon presents a compelling argument that this was, in fact how ancient warriors thought in "Song of Wrath".

EdwardDiego 6y ago

I don't know how much stock you put in this, but I always enjoyed the study that found that Genghis' depredations changed the climate. https://carnegiescience.edu/news/war-plague-no-match-deforestation-driving-co2-buildup https://carnegiescience.edu/news/war-plague-no-match-defores...

enriquto 6y ago

> The incessant celebration of Sparta in the culture of the West is truly abhorrent. Socrates was killed for being a Sparta supporter in Athens (also for being a formidable troll). His loving pupil Plato went on to start the whole "Western civilization" thing. Make of that what you want, but for anybody who knows some history, your sentence will sound pretty confusing and contradictory. The celebration of Sparta is not some decadent modern fad; it lies at the very root of our civilization! We are defined by being Sparta supporters.

leto_ii 6y ago
> Socrates was killed for being a Sparta supporter in Athens I think Socrates' admiration for Sparta is questioned by some scholars. Since the man himself didn't leave behind any written work, all we know of him we know indirectly, mostly from Plato. Popper for example considers that a lot of the more authoritarian ideas ascribed to Socrates were actually Plato's views [1]. The general problem of figuring out what exactly Socrates thought, how he acted etc. is actually a significant sub-field of scholarship [2]. > His loving pupil Plato went on to start the whole "Western civilization" thing This is silliness. While the tremendous importance of Classical Greece can't be denied, the idea that there is a monolithic thing called 'Western Civilization' that has a clear start is extremely simplistic. Are the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Etruscans, the Minoans, the Hittites etc. not part of 'Western Civilization'? How about the Christians that spent many centuries actually destroying and forgetting the works and achievements of the ancient world [3]? > The celebration of Sparta is not some decadent modern fad; it lies at the very root of our civilization! We are defined by being Sparta supporters. This is even more silliness. By the same token you could say that slavery or infanticide lie at the very root of 'our civilization'. We (who exactly is we in this case? Americans? Europeans? people of the Levant or North Africa?) are defined by our actions and beliefs, not by some supposedly sacred historical heritage that should never be questioned or relinquished lest that leads to the collapse of our current society. [1] 'Contrary to major Plato scholars of his day, Popper divorced Plato's ideas from those of Socrates, claiming that the former in his later years expressed none of the humanitarian and democratic tendencies of his teacher. In particular, Popper accuses Plato of betraying Socrates in the Republic, wherein Plato portrays Socrates sympathizing with totalitarianism' in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_problem [3] See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age

isolli 6y ago

What I read (but I can't remember where) is that Mongols would use the threat of razing as a way to force cities to surrender. If the city surrendered, they were spared, if not, they were razed. Pour encourager les autres, if you will.

arethuza 6y ago
Wasn't that fairly common in ancient warfare - cities that surrendered would be treated better than those that chose to put up a fight? e.g. The Siege of Tyre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC) Edit: Mind you the Mongols do seem to have been quite methodical about it: "On the first night while laying siege to a city, the leader of the Mongol forces would lead from a white tent: if the city surrendered, all would be spared. On the second day, he would use a red tent: if the city surrendered, the men would all be killed, but the rest would be spared. On the third day, he would use a black tent: no quarter would be given." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege

neolog 6y ago

> You can keep your postal systems and secular courts, I would like to get some of the cities they sacked and their libraries back. That's a really big tradeoff, how did you arrive at your conclusion?

neolog 6y ago
Seems like other people agree with parent. Can someone explain how they trade off between these things?