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Sayings of Spartan women
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoI don’t think Sparta was as cruel and callous as portrayed. I think our view of Sparta is influenced by two main things: 1. Spartan propaganda. It was in Sparta’s interest to portray themselves as crazy, devoted warriors who relished the thought of dying for their country. How would you feel going up against a bunch of guys who would rather die on the field of battle than go home in defeat and have their own mothers kill them. 2. We actually don’t have surviving first person Spartan accounts. Most of what we know about the Spartans comes from others- mainly the Athenians. Now the Athenians as bitter rivals to the Spartans also found it in their interest to portray the Spartans as crazy warrior psychopaths. We know from history that the Spartans actually lost battles. Also in those battles, there were a lot of Spartan survivors who actually surrendered. In addition, we actually have no historical record of any mass killings of losing soldiers by their mothers. So take what you read about Spartan warriors with a huge grain of salt.
- dustintrex 5y agoSparta was, if anything, more cruel and callous than portrayed, it's just that it was mostly the underclasses that were at the receiving end. You are right in that they weren't particularly good at fighting though.
- baud147258 5y ago> Spartan propaganda Sparta milked the Thermopylae battle a lot, presenting themselves as defender of Greek independence against foreign invaders, sometime even as they were taking money from them to pay for their wars against other Greek cities
- chalst 5y agoXenophon was an Athenian, but he was positively disposed towards Sparta and had seen military service under Spartan commanders. He's probably our best source. https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/sparta-a.html https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/sparta-a.html
- slibhb 5y agoDitto for Thucydides, another Athenian who had a positive view of Sparta.
- p1mrx 5y agoSo we're basically reading ancient Chuck Norris facts?
- kwere 5y ago*Steven Seagall
- pacman2 5y agoI have read a comparison about the structure of the Spartan society, basically consisting mostly of slaves like no other culture that used slave labor. Today we know what early experience of violence may do to a person and as far as I now, Spartans hat to kill one helot to be finally admitted into adult Society. So we get two things. 1. A worrier based elite society, consisting basically of psychopaths 2. A society structure that seem more to resemble a concentration camp with guards.
- int_19h 5y agoWe do have plenty of evidence wrt their treatment of helots (crypteia etc). Which is honestly all one needs to make a judgment on cruelty.
- kleiba 5y ago...and then there's Schopenhauer: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/483552-the-cheapest-sort-of-pride-is-national-pride-for-if https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/483552-the-cheapest-sort-of...
- platz 5y ago> a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen seems like an overstep
- Miraste 5y agoSchopenhauer is one of history's biggest assholes, it's like his whole thing. No one liked him even when he was alive.
- new_guy 5y agoYou'd be an asshole too if no-one liked you.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoAnd if you were an asshole, no-one would like you, too.
- cafard 5y agoWell, Nietzche liked Schopenhauer at least until after Untimely Reflections was published. Schopenhauer certainly could bad-mouth anyone or anything. But remembering him for that is like remembering Dijkstra for the put-downs of Basic or Fortran rather than for his constructive work.
- scns 5y agoHave to concur, sadly. I don't take advice on ethics from a man who kicked the woman, who took care of his house, down the stairs.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tokai 5y agoHm, all most all of them are horrible. It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise when it was an awful inhumane culture and society that didn't even last that long.
- mc32 5y agoAside from Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League), Sparta is always portrayed as cruel and inhumane, deservedly so. On the other hand, they were, apparently, good at waging war one way or another. I've not seen it associated with philosophy and civilization as Athens was, among others.
- jacobmischka 5y agoAccording to Deveraux (article series linked in another comment) they weren't even good at that!
- forgetfulness 5y agoThey had a professional officer corps and drills. In fact, that's mostly what the Spartiate class was really. Since other city states had armies comprised of the gentry donning a suit of armor when needed, it made a lot of a difference in that context. Well it turns out that you can have a worthwhile society while also having a professional officer corps and drills, it's just that the Spartans didn't.
- cabalamat 5y agoIndeed. They were good are producing high-quality individual infantrymen. But (1) there weren't very many of them, and (2) there's a lot more to winning wars than how tough your infantry are. I'm reminded of Adolf Hitler and Hideki Tojo who both thought that Americans were only interested in money and sex, decadent, undisciplined and unmilitaristic (all true, to some extent), and that therefore they'd be easy to beat in a war. It didn't quite work out for them!
- clairity 5y ago
- intrepidhero 5y agoAn awful lot of those sayings are extolling "willingness to commit violence" as a virtue. That's not the sort of society I think we should emulate.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- steve76 5y agoDon't you have a store to loot and a city to burn and a murder rate to double and a terrorist nation to build? One criticism I do have is it's all about dying, as in, losing. We lack a clarity. It's easier than most people think. Light those people up. Have skill. Be cagey. But don't kid yourself. You're dealing with animals who lack your compassion. Your past victim-hood means nothing, just blood in the water. The people who do claim it wins popularity and softness works have fooled you and the most malicious ones of them all. They actively seek your destruction. This isn't kindergarten!
- duxup 5y agoThere's very much a cultist / opressive / disturbing aspect from the bits of quotes and history that have been passed on.
- wutbrodo 5y agoThere's a novel twist on this particular selection too. Glorifying violence and being callous about its consequences is even more abhorrent from a position where you're guaranteed not to suffer the direct consequences.
- emadabdulrahim 5y agoDoesn't it depends on the context? Defending an elderly from assault or protecting one's family from a reckless person is violence in the name of virtue.
- xgb84j 5y agoWhile violence is sometimes justified, I think it's still better to build a society that tries to solve its problems without violence or prevents problems that can only be solved with violence. When you have reckless people attacking the elderly you need better psychological healthcare and a better social system to prevent that. I understand your point and in a narrow context it's definitely true, but in a larger context you can prevent most violence by changing society.
- herio 5y agoOn the topic of Spartan societey in general, a really good read is https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/ https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/ by Dr. Bret Deveraux. Long read but well worth it for interested people.
- ianbicking 5y agoGreat series! I came out with the feeling that the Spartans were like the genteel Antebellum plantation owners of Greece: seemingly noble and stoic, but in reality terribly cruel, corrupted, and decadent.
- kybernetikos 5y agoI had been thinking about fantasy stories and what the maximumly evil evil empire you could write in a story and still have it somewhat believable. After reading that, I think Sparta is probably it, if not a little beyond it.
- ianbicking 5y agoHonestly a lot of colonial rule feels pretty awful too, and with a similar flavor. Yet something about Sparta seemed worse. Maybe because they maintained a kind of stability of oppression for so long, or maybe it's my own biases and the fact that oppressed and oppressor were both white and more-or-less of the same culture. Or is it inevitable that this kind of oppression also must be supported by ideologically denigration of the oppressed? But is denigration even enough, do you also need separation, the sense that the oppressed are a different people? That is, did the Spartan ruling class look down on the helots as not just inferior but alien? If so then the class differences may have had all the same attributes as race and racism but without skin color differences.
- naravara 5y ago> Honestly a lot of colonial rule feels pretty awful too, and with a similar flavor. I suspect what makes colonialism feel less shocking is that most of the cruelty happens "out there" and the day-to-day activities that promulgate it were usually done with native man-power in those regions. Like one faction there that was elevated above the others and made to do the dirty work. The primary beneficiaries aren't forced to see and live with it and very few of them ever have to go and get their hands dirty. This is all sustained by a set of narratives and beliefs back home that sanitize these activities and depict the foreign populations as being not sophisticated enough for self-government or appeals to reason. They were either childlike and ignorant or inherently violent martial races. Sparta, in contrast, had a hereditary elite that does its own dirty work up close and didn't seem to be engaged in any self-deception about the moral status and intellectual capabilities of their slaves.
- fouc 5y ago> Being asked by a woman from Attica, "Why is it that you Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men," she said, "Because we are the only women that are mothers of men."
- IncRnd 5y agoI found that one humorous, as well.
- inglor_cz 5y ago> When a foreigner made advances in a mild and leisurely way, she pushed him aside, saying, "Get away from here, you who cannot play a woman's part either!" This, on the other hand, would offend a lot of contemporary sensibilities.
- mordnis 5y agoI wonder if such comments were intended offensive jokes or they really thought they were superior.
- speeder 5y agoExplaining that one: 1. Spartans were proud of their men. 2. Sparta despite being very extreme compared to other Greek cities in a lot of things, was an exception regarding women role in politics, in the sense in Sparta was acceptable to hear women opinion (women still had no formal power, but they were allowed to talk to men about politics, while on Athens for example this was forbidden).
- antattack 5y agoLets keep in mind that quotes that survived someone had deemed as worth repeating to perpetuate certain prestige, status or idea. Plus, it's all filtered by time, people and politics,
- orange_joe 5y agoIt’s worth mentioning that Spartan women held huge amounts of wealth due to the violence within their society (men’s wealth would be inherited by their wives who would then remarry). According to Aristotle (who is very biased) the women lived lives of luxury. The point of this is that the women who extol the violence of men have a material self interest in the deaths of their men (minimally as a class, potentially individually).
- dustintrex 5y agoSome of the 5% of Spartan women who were full citizens, perhaps. However, Sparta was an extremely unequal society, with some 85% either slaves or helots (also slaves, but owned by the state, not individuals).
- marcosdumay 5y agoWell, that goes for every commentary on ancient societies. Unless it's explicitly about slaves and outcasts, it's about the at most 10% of the society that wasn't. At some point the Romans got more people to participate on their society, but that's centuries after any of that.
- TchoBeer 5y agoDo you have a source for this?
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoIt's true. Just read any hisoty source for any historical period before modern times. See how many accounts you can find about the lives of "common people", which usually means slaves, serfs, etc. Even in modern times, you hear about Churchill or Lincoln, but where are the stories of the carpenters, or farmers, the milk maids or the nurses, the midwives or the factory workers? Who remembers their names, what they achieved, what they held dear, who they loved and married, and how they died? Most of hisotry is about the people that hold all the power in their hands and most of the time their great deeds is to crush everyone else underfoot. We learn the dates and placenames of the great battles where king so-and-so defeated king such-and-such, but do we ever hear the names of the hundreds or thousands of their men who left their families and land to go and die a sad, senseless death?
- jezclaremurugan 5y agoObligatory - 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... Not as glorious as it is made out to be..
- rootlocus 5y agoHow can the highest rated and lowest rated comments (at this moment) be the exact same thing?
- AdmiralAsshat 5y agoAnyone noticed the html filename is "sayings_of_spartan_women*.html"? That asterisk in the filename doesn't cause the webserver to explode?
- Taywee 5y agoIt really shouldn't. An asterisk is perfectly legal in a filename and in a URL path. It is a special shell character, but if your webserver is looking up static files via the shell, you need a different webserver pronto.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoThe essential philosophy of Sparta: Survival of the fittest.
- sto_hristo 5y agoI guess they needed more fitness then.
- kamaal 5y agoThere is a limit to just how much you can punch above your weight.
- brazzy 5y ago...as long as he's from the ruling caste, that is.
- goodpoint 5y agoIf by "fittest" you mean "lucky enough to be born into the ruling class".
- wly_cdgr 5y agoThey sound like a fun bunch
- jacknews 5y agoThe Spartan culture perished.
- at_a_remove 5y agoMost did.
- UncleOxidant 5y agoHow many cultures from that era still remain? I'm thinking Jewish culture (though it's not monolithic), that's about the only one I can think of whose customs, traditions, etc. still remain today.
- abhishekjha 5y agoHindu/Vedic culture is still kicking.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- DFHippie 5y agoThe Zoroastrians and Buddhists as well. Perhaps the Yazidis should be counted in that number as well. And certain elements of aboriginal cultures -- I'm thinking of the Rainbow Serpent -- go back tens of thousands of years.
- int_19h 5y agoThe Jewish culture was very different in that era. At the time Spartans conquered the Messenians (establishing the Spartan culture as we know it), Israel and Judea were still in their First Temple period - a Yahwist monolatry. The hardline monotheism that is one of the defining features of Judaism today would not appear until a century later.
- throwdecro 5y agoAnd yet here we are reading their best jokes, many centuries later. > One woman, observing her son coming towards her, inquired, "How fares our country?" And when he said, "All have perished," she took up a tile and, hurling it at him, killed him, saying, "And so they sent you to bear the bad news to us!"
- JasonFruit 5y agoWhy are these Spartans using Scottish dialect?
- rdmond 5y agoSpartans spoke a different dialect of Greek (Doric) than the Athenians (Attic) and it used to be fairly common to translate bits of Doric as if they had been spoken by a Scottish Highlander.
- JasonFruit 5y agoThat's an interesting choice. I wonder if they perceived a cultural similarity... you've given me something to look into.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoThe cruel irony of this was that despite how friendly their society was toward violence (as seen by these quotes)... they weren't particularly awesome at fighting for it.
- some_random 5y agoReminder that Spartan society was nightmarishly abusive to every single member from its slave class to its ruling class in the name of military supremacy, which they failed at. The only thing they were truly successful at was propaganda, which still dominates the way they are looked at today.
- Gibbon1 5y agoI remember something a friend that got a masters in history said. Peoples often define themselves relative historical empires and their own contemporary enemies. As a result they have an incentive to play up both. I've wondered about the Spartans, they conquered and enslaved some of their neighbors. And kept them that was for 200 years or something. Probably meant they weren't able to manage anything more than that.
- gadders 5y agoAs the quotes come via Plutarch, I'd like to recommend Plutarch's Parallel Lives - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Lives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Lives He gives a biography of one famous Roman and one famous Greek and compares them.
- timwaagh 5y agoSounds an awful lot like what I perceived from the media of the Islamic state. I think it's a kind of mentality that, though brave, needs to be stamped out thoroughly.
- greesil 5y agoMyke Cole has written a new book on Spartan society and military, The Bronze Lie: https://www.amazon.com/Bronze-Lie-Shattering-Spartan-Supremacy/dp/1472843754/ https://www.amazon.com/Bronze-Lie-Shattering-Spartan-Suprema... His previous work on the Roman legion vs the Greek phalanx was very interesting and well-researched. https://www.amazon.com/Legion-versus-Phalanx-Struggle-Supremacy/dp/1472828429 https://www.amazon.com/Legion-versus-Phalanx-Struggle-Suprem...
- meheleventyone 5y agoHis fiction books are great as well.
- rgvr 5y agoI don't understand the point of changing words like "many" to "mony" or "man" to "mon". I mean if you're anyway writing the entire thing in modern day English then why do this. Is it just for the effect of it I.e., making it look sophisticated? or is it some kind of attempt at retaining the originality/authenticity?
- retrac 5y agoSome people take the Sapir-Whorf theory too seriously: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
- nerdponx 5y agoI figured those were OCR errors or something. How would this help maintain originality?
- duskwuff 5y agoNo, this is intentional. Here's the original book on the publisher's own web site: https://www.loebclassics.com/view/plutarch-moralia_sayings_spartan_women/1931/pb_LCL245.455.xml https://www.loebclassics.com/view/plutarch-moralia_sayings_s... There's a footnote on that part "Cf. the note on Moralia, 190 B, supra", but I'm not sure what that's referencing.
- thwave 5y agoThis footnote refers to Sayings of Kings and Commanders[0], another text of Plutarch, but is not related to the translation. [0] https://www.loebclassics.com/view/plutarch-moralia_sayings_kings_commanders/1931/pb_LCL245.125.xml https://www.loebclassics.com/view/plutarch-moralia_sayings_k...
- _dain_ 5y agoWhereas Athenian and other Grecian culture was admired and spread across the Roman empire after it was militarily conquered, Sparta's fate was humiliating. They were turned into a kind of human zoo. The old training rituals continued, but mainly as a tourist attraction for wealthy Roman aristocrats to ogle at.
- motohagiography 5y agoGiven the alternative to prevailing militarily was typically slavery or dispersement and homogenization into the conquering society, I can see why these ideas were treated as important. As a proxy for meaning now? Spartan myths and ideals are a fun mythology and aesthetic for some and a straw man for others, so any discussion in the present is going to play out on party lines.
- listless 5y ago> “ "Why is it that you Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men," she said, "Because we are the only women that are mothers of men." Feels like 2021 could maybe use this sentiment.