16 ms·

Ancient Spartans didn’t kill ‘weak’ babies, new study argues

jetsetgo 5y ago
Archeologists are not scientists. They are like kids who get to grade their own homework. Everything is a legend and myth. All buildings are temples or tombs.
gadflyinyoureye 5y ago
I haven’t read the archeologist’s work. I did read the article. The archeologist claims that evidence across the Aegean and Athens particularly shows weak babies were cared for until death. That’s fine. However we’re not discussing Athenian nor general Aegean baby care. We’re discussing Spartan care. Nothing in the article (and I could have missed it) proved evidence, from digs, against the idea of infanticide by the Spartans.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
 Indeed, except for the comment about the spartan king with weak legs, none of that was Sparta specific evidence.
- Talanes 5y ago
 Even within Sparta, proper Spartans didn't make up the majority of the population, so you'd still have to distinguish between Spartan infants and helot infants.
 - scndrycntct 5y ago
 Pretty pedantic. I think we can agree that since the title and parent comment mention "Spartans", they are talking about the Spartans and not other residents.
 - akkartik 5y ago
 Helots were 85% of the population[1]. GP is pointing out that random skeletons don't come with residency papers describing which kind of residents they belong to. [1] Source: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
 - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
 "Sparta" is commonly understood to mean the city of Sparta as a political entity and "Spartans" its free inhabitants. Only in the blog you quote is the term "Sparta" used to refer to the wider city-state of Sparta that encompassed subjugated settlements outside of Sparta. Historical sources, ancient as well as modern, do not consider the helots to be "Spartan" (or even "Spartiate", a term made up by the author of the blog as distinct from "Spartan", a distinction grammatically impossible in the Greek language).
 bivargen 5y ago
 Σπᾰρτῐᾱ́της is a perfectly fine greek noun and was used in antiquity to denote the ”homoioi” of spartan society, it is not a made up word by Bret Devereaux. Historical sources do consider helots to be spartans, just not citizens or ”homoioi”. I would suggest reading the posted blog-post. The author do know what he is talking about and–in my opinion—quiet an engaging writer.
 YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
 In turn, I would suggest not assuming that I haven't read the blog post. "Σπαρτιάτης" is used in Greek (modern and ancient) to mean a (male) inhabitant of a place called "Sparta". What the blog author claims is that there are _two_ words, one of which means free citizens of Sparta and the other, helots. He says that one of those words is "Spartiate" and that the other is "Spartan". This is a distinction that is impossible to make with a single word in Greek. The words he uses, "Spartan" and "Spartiate" are two Latin transliterations of the single Greek word "Σπαρτιάτης", that has one single meaning, as I explain it above. Furthermore, the distinction between free and enslaved inhabitans of Sparta is, in all historical sources, made clear by using two words with different roots: "Spartan" for the free citizens of the city, "helot" for the enslaved people of the surrounding territories of the city-state. Nobody else than the author calls one "Spartan" and the other "Spartiate". That's entirely the blog author's made-up terminology. So what I'm saying the blog author has made up is the distinct meaning of "Spartan" and "Spartiate". I do not claim that he has made up the word "Spartiate", as you seem to assume in your comment. Please correct me if I misunderstood your comment, and not you mine.
- Ansil849 5y ago
 > Nothing in the article (and I could have missed it) proved evidence, from digs, against the idea of infanticide by the Spartans. Isn't the onus on the ones claiming that Spartans practiced systemic infanticide to provide the evidence that they did so?
 - CoastalCoder 5y ago
 I'm not sure the concept of "onus" really applies here. Each reader can decide for himself how much evidence he needs to be persuaded.
 - Ansil849 5y ago
 The "concept of 'onus'" applies to the writer or whoever is making a claim, not to the reader.
 - everybodyknows 5y ago
 The preceding post did not claim otherwise.
 - watwut 5y ago
 Either way, Sparta is not Athens. They were different political and cultural systems.
 - xwolfi 5y ago
 Where did the claim come from originally ? Could google but...
 - Brakenshire 5y ago
 We don’t really know anything about Sparta which wasn’t written by outside observers.
 - gpm 5y ago
 The onus is on the people making claims in general. In this case someone (the journalist?) made a claim that "spartans didn't kill `weak' babies", so the onus is on them.
- colordrops 5y ago
 Is there a name for being arbitrarily biased against a counterclaim? The simple fact that this is posed as a counterclaim itself seems to invoke skepticism, even when the original belief itself isn't even presented or has a poor basis itself. A weak counterclaim does not imply the claim to be truth.
 - hsod 5y ago
 I agree. Lately it seems that people who lay their ideas out and accept criticism are being destroyed by those who refuse to admit fault a priori
 - deleted 5y ago
 [deleted]
 - 0des 5y ago
 Just a head's up, it appears your account may be shadow banned, most of your comments cannot be seen unless someone vouches for them. To respond to your comment, I think sometimes that the skills of debate are fading from society. Often it is not the subject matter of what is being disputed, but the manner in which it is presented, or the person/ideology espousing it.
 - dang 5y ago
 Not shadowbanned—we told them we were banning them and why: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118062 - as we usually do, when an account has some history on HN. Please don't take threads off topic like that. If you think an account shouldn't be banned, you're welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. Edit: you've been doing this repeatedly. That's not cool. Please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528043
 hsod 5y ago
 Hey Dan Pretty surprising and sad that you would ban me for a comment like that. Reading it back three years later I’m not wildly proud about it but I don’t think it’s ban worthy. But I want to push back against the idea that this is not a shadow ban. I see now that you replied to my comment to let me know. But there’s no notification mechanism on HN for comment replies! So I didn’t see it until just now. A ban mechanism that eventuates in the banned user logging on and participating for 3 years before realizing no one can see their comments is a shadow ban! If you wanted it to be clear there should be some messaging besides a comment reply. Just my two cents
- Lhiw 5y ago
 Did you even read the article? Or even its title? Did anyone in this thread? This is about ancient Greeks [not] abandoning deformed babies. Spartans aside.
- asimpletune 5y ago
 Did you see the part about the lame guy who was king pf Sparta?
wisty 5y ago
As far as I can tell, infanticide was accepted in ancient Greece and Rome at a lot of points. Ancient historians did have a habit of making assumptions that previous societies, they might have assumed that infanticide was common in Sparta because to a later ancient Greek that would have been how they would think weeding out weakness would be done (and Spartans liked to give the impression that they have always been the toughest society ever), and the stories go that Spartans made a lot of decisions communally, so it would make sense for a council to inspect babies. The article doesn't prove exposure never happened, just that it didn't always happen. I'm guessing that it would be most likely to occur in times of famine.
- kiba 5y ago
  When we're talking about Spartans, we're talking about the Spartan aristocracy, no? Halo's Spartans make sense if you think about them as a traumatized and brutalized society.
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    > When we're talking about Spartans, we're talking about the Spartan aristocracy, no? I am pretty sure you are right. To the ancient writers, slaves were all but invisible, except perhaps as a measure of a slave-holder's wealth, or when, like Spartacus, they upturned the 'natural order' of society, and lesser nominally-free persons were not much more thought of. A slave's child was a return on a slave-holder's investment (Thomas Jefferson wrote about his own slaves in these terms), and if they weren't useful for anything better, they could be used as beasts of burden until they died. I don't know how the Spartans are portrayed in Halo, but Brett Devereaux make an interesting case (at least AFAIK, which is not much) that the Spartan aristocracy operated like a modern-day cult [1] (and he seems to accept that infanticide was part of that cult, though he does not have much to say about it.) [1] https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
    - tartoran 5y ago
      I enjoyed reading this, thanks for posting
rkk3 5y ago
I recently read the Lycurgus chapter of Plutarch's "Lives" and I guess I missed the baby killing part? Very little emphasis compared to there being no such thing as adultery in Sparta, or effectively getting rid of Money.
- mantaraygun 5y ago
  You missed it, or maybe your translation left it out? Search for 'Apothetae': > Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the child as he thought fit; he was obliged to carry it before certain triers at a place called Lesche; these were some of the elders of the tribe to which the child belonged; their business it was carefully to view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing, and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above mentioned for its maintenance, but, if they found it puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous. http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/lycurgus.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/lycurgus.html
  - rkk3 5y ago
    Thanks. I just remembered the emphasis of Children belonging/being raised by the community. Still don't necessarily think it's right to interpret those few sentences as evidence there was rampant child sacrifice like Carthage.
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago
Infants with defects would suffer considerably more early mortality, even with the best care parents could give in ancient times.
dj_mc_merlin 5y ago
> And the ancient historian’s own account mentions another Spartan king who was unusually short and “impaired in his legs” but still a good leader. The Spartan kings (supposedly) come from two lines of descendants of Heracles, Eurysthenes and Procles, who are said to have come to and conquered Sparta (the Spartans did not think they were native to the land). To kill one at birth would probably be a laughable idea to a Spartan.
rendall 5y ago
> ...Christian Laes, a classicist at the University of Manchester. “But absence of evidence does not mean the phenomenon itself was absent.” I also see at least one comment here making this same argument. The article covers the evidence against, including, that disabled ancient Greeks lived to adulthood. The evidence cited in favor is Plutarch's assertion, and that "other societies" do it. That last is particularly weak. Plutarch's assertion wasn't that parents who couldn't afford children would leave them exposed, but that the Ancients would by policy submit the babies to an examining council who would order that disabled babies be exposed. So all we have in favor, really, is Plutarch's say-so. Given that he wrote this 700 years later, this evidence is pretty weak, too.
- nverno 5y ago
  Table four from the Twelve Tables [1]: > A father has the right to kill his deformed child. These were laws in ancient Rome, not Greece, but the societies shared many beliefs and customs. Not that this is proof one way or the other about what was common practice, but people thought it was important enough to lay down in law. [[the father also had the right to kill any of his kids, so it's interesting they spell this case out explicitly]] [1] https://historycooperative.org/the-twelve-tables/ https://historycooperative.org/the-twelve-tables/
  - adriancr 5y ago
    In the Roman empire you had Pater Familias, doesn't mean those 'rights' were exercised. > In theory at least, he held powers of life and death over every member of his extended familia through ancient right. In practice, the extreme form of this right was seldom exercised. It was eventually limited by law.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias
- okl 5y ago
  > “But absence of evidence does not mean the phenomenon itself was absent.” If you believe things for which you have no evidence, you're liable to believe everything.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Most of the modern average life expectancy gains come from drastically improving infant survival. I doubt many 'weak' babies were around that nature did not kill first.
kaminar 5y ago
72% of all human deaths each year are due to abortion...approx 30 million. Our governments subsidize (pay for) most of them. We are a cruel and unusual society. Spartans had nothing on us.
- 0des 5y ago
  Hello, it appears your account is shadow banned. Just wanted to let you know because your comment didn't seem particularly inflammatory to deserve being removed. As a response to your comment, I am curious if the numbers of abortions scale with the size of the population we are aborting from (if that makes sense) in comparison to the proportion of Spartans.
  - watwut 5y ago
    We don't enslave majority of population, we don't kill Helots with impunity or as a rite of passage either. We are not totalitarian dictatorship either, Sparta was. So, the dwindling right of women to abort and not carry the unwanted pregnancy, that is being currently under heavy attack is fine by me. Women now have more rights then in Sparta or Grecks in general. Women can vote and arw citizens. I am fine keeping it that way. Also, people likely downvote due to using "killing humans" in context that includes aborting in first trimester or aborting when the foetus is not expected to live or endangers the adult woman. It is manipulative way to frame it and I suspect you are well aware if it.
    - 0des 5y ago
      I don't think these are organic downvotes taking down the majority of this person's comments, I think it is because they end most comments with a reference to openvaers.com and it tripped some type of spam filter.
  - ciphol 5y ago
    How is his account shadow banned? You saw the comment. I saw the comment.
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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clavicat 5y ago
I’m reminded of a similar archeological controversy, that of child sacrifice in ancient Carthage. It was interesting because it demonstrated the way that the political concerns of our time shape our understanding of the ancient past. Beginning in the seventies, scholars were motivated to revise the allegations of Carthaginian child sacrifice, claiming that it was racist Roman propaganda designed to abuse the memory of an enemy power (even though the same claims can be found in Greek sources from the time of Alexander the Great). It’s not hard to detect the influence of black emancipation and the Vietnam War in these efforts. For decades, this interpretation held sway until recently, when archeologists revisited the question and found that no, in fact the Carthaginians really had been sacrificing children all along. This article informs us that Spartan eugenics inspired the Nazis, quoting a scholar who says that “It’s gotten used for some pretty nefarious ends”. One can easily see how our revulsion towards such atrocities could motivate our search for reasons to discredit the precedents that have been used to justify them.
sebow 5y ago
I really doubt spartans or other groups of people from ancient times in southern europe behaved like this.And for me the reason is simple: it would have been seen barbaric.For example circumcision was seen barbaric, everything that imposed the idea of man-made modifications to the innocence of a baby also skews more with this idea compared to what (at the time,and even compared to now) were very humanistic societies: greeks, romans, etc. Obviously that doesn't account for proof, but when you take into account the fact that "history is written by the victors" and simple examples like salem trials, or any other group who was been later found to be relatively innocent of their actions by their accusers, it makes you wonder if these "rumors" were spread just to make spartans less popular.From what i recall spartans were also composed from largely slaves,gladiators,foreign people, and usually those people are not keen towards tyranny.
- 0des 5y ago
  Hello, it appears your account is shadow banned. I vouched for your comment so that it can be seen and commented on, because it seems like an otherwise normal comment. As a response to your comment, I would agree, but also I'd modify that history isn't written by the victors, but the survivors and observers.
- watwut 5y ago
  Sparta was violent totalitarian regime. To use modern example, German nazi had not done circumcision either, but did sterilized or killed the disabled. > rom what i recall spartans were also composed from largely slaves,gladiators,foreign people, and usually those people are not keen towards tyranny Slaves are living in tyranny by definition. There is no slavery if there is no tyrant. The majority of Sparta were slaves, the minority was keeping them slaves via violence. The decisions were made by slaveholders. Sparta was not a place where escaped slaves would seek refuge nor a place where they would made decisions.
ajuc 5y ago
In 3000 years archeologists will think we practiced Purge and Hunger Games. But Cold War was obviously a religious metaphor for climate warming.
- ReptileMan 5y ago
  Dude get your facts right - the USSR and USA leaders were trying to bring global nuclear winter to thwart the global warming. They were willing to put humanity through suffering to save it. But their efforts were cut short by the deep state. Which lead to the events in the documentary mad max.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    Mad Max only tells part of the story, they left out the hybrid human-kangaroo soldiers, as documented in Tank Girl.
suction 5y ago
Let's be honest, 99% of the average American's knowledge about Spartan society is from the movie "300". But it never stops being amusing when Americans have their "wait, those Hollywood movies are not even 1% historically correct??" moments.
- okl 5y ago
  I wish you to feel the same joy when you consider your own failings.
  - atoav 5y ago
    Why do you assume to know whether they would?
    - okl 5y ago
      Did I? Where?
- jterrys 5y ago
  Give it 20 years, people will think World War Two was fought by women of color with space age technology. Historical fiction is a very loosely respected genre of entertainment. We pick and prod what we want and let fantasy live out in historical dressing. We inundate media with it, and create an ethos to summarize complex ideas into puerile, milquetoast thoughts. Civilizations get washed down, historical figures rewritten, and modern sensibilities injected where appropriate. And we don't really think much about it. Because after all, it's entertainment. Entertainment has no responsibility to inform or educate. But through it all, children will grow up and absorb it. And suddenly a whole generation starts believing that Ancient Greece was a multi-ethnic civilization (by today's standards) and that Spanish Moors were Sub-Saharan Africans.
  - d0mine 5y ago
    Hollywood is the propaganda machine first i.e., a movie may be not especially entertaining but it must conform.
eric4smith 5y ago
Well, if we were to look at this with different eyes, the Spartans, while having to deal with the urgencies of Battle would probably do it. But really, do we do any differently??? Think about it -- "weak" children are set aside from society into a room upstairs, or a care home, or some kind of environment where they are not exposed to the harshness of the real world. The same goes for adults too. Even if the spartans never did it, they probably put the weaker children and adults into a situation where they would never come into contact with battle or even slow a community for doing normal everyday duties. Which is exactly the same as we do. We put slower children into special classes. Put them on special buses, send them to special psychological and physical practitioners. For adults we put them into care homes. Or keep them at home and the government generally cares for them with special provisions. And we accept that. Putting infanticide aside -- are we any different from ancient cultures??
- zdragnar 5y ago
  Rich countries, predominantly western Europe, especially I.e. Denmark and Iceland, abort nearly 100% of babies when a prenatal screening tests positive for Down's syndrom. I don't think we are any different at all. Sadly, the worlds countries that are best able to provide a good life for such people are the quickest to prevent them from existing.
akerl_ 5y ago
Did the title of the article change after this was posted? Or was the title modified by the poster? Article title says “Greeks”, not “Spartans”, which would make a lot more sense (and avoid the need for half of the arguing in the comments).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
Sparta was at its peak for a few centuries - aren't customs likely to have changed significantly over that time. The baby killing period could have been during a particular leader, or a bad couple of winters or under some other crisis.
verisimi 5y ago
"Although infanticide happens occasionally in most societies—including in modern times—many cultures shun or disparage it. Sneed says there’s little to show the Greeks were any different." Erm... infanticide is an epidemic in our society! There's nothing occasional about it.
- ajuc 5y ago
  Abortion is not infanticide even if you happen to think it's exactly as evil. It's useful to have specific words mean specific things, otherwise you'd still need to invent a new word for non-abortion infanticide and what's the point of that?
  - verisimi 5y ago
    My body, my choice. Over an unborn baby's body. Right?

Archeologists are not scientists. They are like kids who get to grade their own homework. Everything is a legend and myth. All buildings are temples or tombs.

gadflyinyoureye 5y ago

I haven’t read the archeologist’s work. I did read the article. The archeologist claims that evidence across the Aegean and Athens particularly shows weak babies were cared for until death. That’s fine. However we’re not discussing Athenian nor general Aegean baby care. We’re discussing Spartan care. Nothing in the article (and I could have missed it) proved evidence, from digs, against the idea of infanticide by the Spartans.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Indeed, except for the comment about the spartan king with weak legs, none of that was Sparta specific evidence.
Talanes 5y ago
Even within Sparta, proper Spartans didn't make up the majority of the population, so you'd still have to distinguish between Spartan infants and helot infants.
- scndrycntct 5y ago
 Pretty pedantic. I think we can agree that since the title and parent comment mention "Spartans", they are talking about the Spartans and not other residents.
 - akkartik 5y ago
 Helots were 85% of the population[1]. GP is pointing out that random skeletons don't come with residency papers describing which kind of residents they belong to. [1] Source: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
 - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
 "Sparta" is commonly understood to mean the city of Sparta as a political entity and "Spartans" its free inhabitants. Only in the blog you quote is the term "Sparta" used to refer to the wider city-state of Sparta that encompassed subjugated settlements outside of Sparta. Historical sources, ancient as well as modern, do not consider the helots to be "Spartan" (or even "Spartiate", a term made up by the author of the blog as distinct from "Spartan", a distinction grammatically impossible in the Greek language).
 - bivargen 5y ago
 Σπᾰρτῐᾱ́της is a perfectly fine greek noun and was used in antiquity to denote the ”homoioi” of spartan society, it is not a made up word by Bret Devereaux. Historical sources do consider helots to be spartans, just not citizens or ”homoioi”. I would suggest reading the posted blog-post. The author do know what he is talking about and–in my opinion—quiet an engaging writer.
 YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
 In turn, I would suggest not assuming that I haven't read the blog post. "Σπαρτιάτης" is used in Greek (modern and ancient) to mean a (male) inhabitant of a place called "Sparta". What the blog author claims is that there are _two_ words, one of which means free citizens of Sparta and the other, helots. He says that one of those words is "Spartiate" and that the other is "Spartan". This is a distinction that is impossible to make with a single word in Greek. The words he uses, "Spartan" and "Spartiate" are two Latin transliterations of the single Greek word "Σπαρτιάτης", that has one single meaning, as I explain it above. Furthermore, the distinction between free and enslaved inhabitans of Sparta is, in all historical sources, made clear by using two words with different roots: "Spartan" for the free citizens of the city, "helot" for the enslaved people of the surrounding territories of the city-state. Nobody else than the author calls one "Spartan" and the other "Spartiate". That's entirely the blog author's made-up terminology. So what I'm saying the blog author has made up is the distinct meaning of "Spartan" and "Spartiate". I do not claim that he has made up the word "Spartiate", as you seem to assume in your comment. Please correct me if I misunderstood your comment, and not you mine.
Ansil849 5y ago
> Nothing in the article (and I could have missed it) proved evidence, from digs, against the idea of infanticide by the Spartans. Isn't the onus on the ones claiming that Spartans practiced systemic infanticide to provide the evidence that they did so?
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  I'm not sure the concept of "onus" really applies here. Each reader can decide for himself how much evidence he needs to be persuaded.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    The "concept of 'onus'" applies to the writer or whoever is making a claim, not to the reader.
    - everybodyknows 5y ago
      The preceding post did not claim otherwise.
- watwut 5y ago
  Either way, Sparta is not Athens. They were different political and cultural systems.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  Where did the claim come from originally ? Could google but...
- Brakenshire 5y ago
  We don’t really know anything about Sparta which wasn’t written by outside observers.
- gpm 5y ago
  The onus is on the people making claims in general. In this case someone (the journalist?) made a claim that "spartans didn't kill `weak' babies", so the onus is on them.
colordrops 5y ago
Is there a name for being arbitrarily biased against a counterclaim? The simple fact that this is posed as a counterclaim itself seems to invoke skepticism, even when the original belief itself isn't even presented or has a poor basis itself. A weak counterclaim does not imply the claim to be truth.
- hsod 5y ago
  I agree. Lately it seems that people who lay their ideas out and accept criticism are being destroyed by those who refuse to admit fault a priori
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 0des 5y ago
    Just a head's up, it appears your account may be shadow banned, most of your comments cannot be seen unless someone vouches for them. To respond to your comment, I think sometimes that the skills of debate are fading from society. Often it is not the subject matter of what is being disputed, but the manner in which it is presented, or the person/ideology espousing it.
    - dang 5y ago
      Not shadowbanned—we told them we were banning them and why: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118062 - as we usually do, when an account has some history on HN. Please don't take threads off topic like that. If you think an account shouldn't be banned, you're welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. Edit: you've been doing this repeatedly. That's not cool. Please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29528043
      - hsod 5y ago
        Hey Dan Pretty surprising and sad that you would ban me for a comment like that. Reading it back three years later I’m not wildly proud about it but I don’t think it’s ban worthy. But I want to push back against the idea that this is not a shadow ban. I see now that you replied to my comment to let me know. But there’s no notification mechanism on HN for comment replies! So I didn’t see it until just now. A ban mechanism that eventuates in the banned user logging on and participating for 3 years before realizing no one can see their comments is a shadow ban! If you wanted it to be clear there should be some messaging besides a comment reply. Just my two cents
Lhiw 5y ago
Did you even read the article? Or even its title? Did anyone in this thread? This is about ancient Greeks [not] abandoning deformed babies. Spartans aside.
asimpletune 5y ago
Did you see the part about the lame guy who was king pf Sparta?

wisty 5y ago

As far as I can tell, infanticide was accepted in ancient Greece and Rome at a lot of points. Ancient historians did have a habit of making assumptions that previous societies, they might have assumed that infanticide was common in Sparta because to a later ancient Greek that would have been how they would think weeding out weakness would be done (and Spartans liked to give the impression that they have always been the toughest society ever), and the stories go that Spartans made a lot of decisions communally, so it would make sense for a council to inspect babies. The article doesn't prove exposure never happened, just that it didn't always happen. I'm guessing that it would be most likely to occur in times of famine.

kiba 5y ago
When we're talking about Spartans, we're talking about the Spartan aristocracy, no? Halo's Spartans make sense if you think about them as a traumatized and brutalized society.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  > When we're talking about Spartans, we're talking about the Spartan aristocracy, no? I am pretty sure you are right. To the ancient writers, slaves were all but invisible, except perhaps as a measure of a slave-holder's wealth, or when, like Spartacus, they upturned the 'natural order' of society, and lesser nominally-free persons were not much more thought of. A slave's child was a return on a slave-holder's investment (Thomas Jefferson wrote about his own slaves in these terms), and if they weren't useful for anything better, they could be used as beasts of burden until they died. I don't know how the Spartans are portrayed in Halo, but Brett Devereaux make an interesting case (at least AFAIK, which is not much) that the Spartan aristocracy operated like a modern-day cult [1] (and he seems to accept that infanticide was part of that cult, though he does not have much to say about it.) [1] https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
  - tartoran 5y ago
    I enjoyed reading this, thanks for posting

rkk3 5y ago

I recently read the Lycurgus chapter of Plutarch's "Lives" and I guess I missed the baby killing part? Very little emphasis compared to there being no such thing as adultery in Sparta, or effectively getting rid of Money.

mantaraygun 5y ago
You missed it, or maybe your translation left it out? Search for 'Apothetae': > Nor was it in the power of the father to dispose of the child as he thought fit; he was obliged to carry it before certain triers at a place called Lesche; these were some of the elders of the tribe to which the child belonged; their business it was carefully to view the infant, and, if they found it stout and well made, they gave order for its rearing, and allotted to it one of the nine thousand shares of land above mentioned for its maintenance, but, if they found it puny and ill-shaped, ordered it to be taken to what was called the Apothetae, a sort of chasm under Taygetus; as thinking it neither for the good of the child itself, nor for the public interest, that it should be brought up, if it did not, from the very outset, appear made to be healthy and vigorous. http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/lycurgus.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/lycurgus.html
- rkk3 5y ago
  Thanks. I just remembered the emphasis of Children belonging/being raised by the community. Still don't necessarily think it's right to interpret those few sentences as evidence there was rampant child sacrifice like Carthage.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago

Infants with defects would suffer considerably more early mortality, even with the best care parents could give in ancient times.

dj_mc_merlin 5y ago

> And the ancient historian’s own account mentions another Spartan king who was unusually short and “impaired in his legs” but still a good leader. The Spartan kings (supposedly) come from two lines of descendants of Heracles, Eurysthenes and Procles, who are said to have come to and conquered Sparta (the Spartans did not think they were native to the land). To kill one at birth would probably be a laughable idea to a Spartan.

rendall 5y ago

> ...Christian Laes, a classicist at the University of Manchester. “But absence of evidence does not mean the phenomenon itself was absent.” I also see at least one comment here making this same argument. The article covers the evidence against, including, that disabled ancient Greeks lived to adulthood. The evidence cited in favor is Plutarch's assertion, and that "other societies" do it. That last is particularly weak. Plutarch's assertion wasn't that parents who couldn't afford children would leave them exposed, but that the Ancients would by policy submit the babies to an examining council who would order that disabled babies be exposed. So all we have in favor, really, is Plutarch's say-so. Given that he wrote this 700 years later, this evidence is pretty weak, too.

nverno 5y ago
Table four from the Twelve Tables [1]: > A father has the right to kill his deformed child. These were laws in ancient Rome, not Greece, but the societies shared many beliefs and customs. Not that this is proof one way or the other about what was common practice, but people thought it was important enough to lay down in law. [[the father also had the right to kill any of his kids, so it's interesting they spell this case out explicitly]] [1] https://historycooperative.org/the-twelve-tables/ https://historycooperative.org/the-twelve-tables/
- adriancr 5y ago
  In the Roman empire you had Pater Familias, doesn't mean those 'rights' were exercised. > In theory at least, he held powers of life and death over every member of his extended familia through ancient right. In practice, the extreme form of this right was seldom exercised. It was eventually limited by law.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias
okl 5y ago
> “But absence of evidence does not mean the phenomenon itself was absent.” If you believe things for which you have no evidence, you're liable to believe everything.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Most of the modern average life expectancy gains come from drastically improving infant survival. I doubt many 'weak' babies were around that nature did not kill first.

kaminar 5y ago

72% of all human deaths each year are due to abortion...approx 30 million. Our governments subsidize (pay for) most of them. We are a cruel and unusual society. Spartans had nothing on us.

0des 5y ago
Hello, it appears your account is shadow banned. Just wanted to let you know because your comment didn't seem particularly inflammatory to deserve being removed. As a response to your comment, I am curious if the numbers of abortions scale with the size of the population we are aborting from (if that makes sense) in comparison to the proportion of Spartans.
- watwut 5y ago
  We don't enslave majority of population, we don't kill Helots with impunity or as a rite of passage either. We are not totalitarian dictatorship either, Sparta was. So, the dwindling right of women to abort and not carry the unwanted pregnancy, that is being currently under heavy attack is fine by me. Women now have more rights then in Sparta or Grecks in general. Women can vote and arw citizens. I am fine keeping it that way. Also, people likely downvote due to using "killing humans" in context that includes aborting in first trimester or aborting when the foetus is not expected to live or endangers the adult woman. It is manipulative way to frame it and I suspect you are well aware if it.
  - 0des 5y ago
    I don't think these are organic downvotes taking down the majority of this person's comments, I think it is because they end most comments with a reference to openvaers.com and it tripped some type of spam filter.
- ciphol 5y ago
  How is his account shadow banned? You saw the comment. I saw the comment.
  - 5y ago

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clavicat 5y ago

I’m reminded of a similar archeological controversy, that of child sacrifice in ancient Carthage. It was interesting because it demonstrated the way that the political concerns of our time shape our understanding of the ancient past. Beginning in the seventies, scholars were motivated to revise the allegations of Carthaginian child sacrifice, claiming that it was racist Roman propaganda designed to abuse the memory of an enemy power (even though the same claims can be found in Greek sources from the time of Alexander the Great). It’s not hard to detect the influence of black emancipation and the Vietnam War in these efforts. For decades, this interpretation held sway until recently, when archeologists revisited the question and found that no, in fact the Carthaginians really had been sacrificing children all along. This article informs us that Spartan eugenics inspired the Nazis, quoting a scholar who says that “It’s gotten used for some pretty nefarious ends”. One can easily see how our revulsion towards such atrocities could motivate our search for reasons to discredit the precedents that have been used to justify them.

sebow 5y ago

I really doubt spartans or other groups of people from ancient times in southern europe behaved like this.And for me the reason is simple: it would have been seen barbaric.For example circumcision was seen barbaric, everything that imposed the idea of man-made modifications to the innocence of a baby also skews more with this idea compared to what (at the time,and even compared to now) were very humanistic societies: greeks, romans, etc. Obviously that doesn't account for proof, but when you take into account the fact that "history is written by the victors" and simple examples like salem trials, or any other group who was been later found to be relatively innocent of their actions by their accusers, it makes you wonder if these "rumors" were spread just to make spartans less popular.From what i recall spartans were also composed from largely slaves,gladiators,foreign people, and usually those people are not keen towards tyranny.

0des 5y ago
Hello, it appears your account is shadow banned. I vouched for your comment so that it can be seen and commented on, because it seems like an otherwise normal comment. As a response to your comment, I would agree, but also I'd modify that history isn't written by the victors, but the survivors and observers.
watwut 5y ago
Sparta was violent totalitarian regime. To use modern example, German nazi had not done circumcision either, but did sterilized or killed the disabled. > rom what i recall spartans were also composed from largely slaves,gladiators,foreign people, and usually those people are not keen towards tyranny Slaves are living in tyranny by definition. There is no slavery if there is no tyrant. The majority of Sparta were slaves, the minority was keeping them slaves via violence. The decisions were made by slaveholders. Sparta was not a place where escaped slaves would seek refuge nor a place where they would made decisions.

ajuc 5y ago

In 3000 years archeologists will think we practiced Purge and Hunger Games. But Cold War was obviously a religious metaphor for climate warming.

ReptileMan 5y ago
Dude get your facts right - the USSR and USA leaders were trying to bring global nuclear winter to thwart the global warming. They were willing to put humanity through suffering to save it. But their efforts were cut short by the deep state. Which lead to the events in the documentary mad max.
- deleted 5y ago
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- snovv_crash 5y ago
  Mad Max only tells part of the story, they left out the hybrid human-kangaroo soldiers, as documented in Tank Girl.

suction 5y ago

Let's be honest, 99% of the average American's knowledge about Spartan society is from the movie "300". But it never stops being amusing when Americans have their "wait, those Hollywood movies are not even 1% historically correct??" moments.

okl 5y ago
I wish you to feel the same joy when you consider your own failings.
- atoav 5y ago
  Why do you assume to know whether they would?
  - okl 5y ago
    Did I? Where?
jterrys 5y ago
Give it 20 years, people will think World War Two was fought by women of color with space age technology. Historical fiction is a very loosely respected genre of entertainment. We pick and prod what we want and let fantasy live out in historical dressing. We inundate media with it, and create an ethos to summarize complex ideas into puerile, milquetoast thoughts. Civilizations get washed down, historical figures rewritten, and modern sensibilities injected where appropriate. And we don't really think much about it. Because after all, it's entertainment. Entertainment has no responsibility to inform or educate. But through it all, children will grow up and absorb it. And suddenly a whole generation starts believing that Ancient Greece was a multi-ethnic civilization (by today's standards) and that Spanish Moors were Sub-Saharan Africans.
- d0mine 5y ago
  Hollywood is the propaganda machine first i.e., a movie may be not especially entertaining but it must conform.

eric4smith 5y ago

Well, if we were to look at this with different eyes, the Spartans, while having to deal with the urgencies of Battle would probably do it. But really, do we do any differently??? Think about it -- "weak" children are set aside from society into a room upstairs, or a care home, or some kind of environment where they are not exposed to the harshness of the real world. The same goes for adults too. Even if the spartans never did it, they probably put the weaker children and adults into a situation where they would never come into contact with battle or even slow a community for doing normal everyday duties. Which is exactly the same as we do. We put slower children into special classes. Put them on special buses, send them to special psychological and physical practitioners. For adults we put them into care homes. Or keep them at home and the government generally cares for them with special provisions. And we accept that. Putting infanticide aside -- are we any different from ancient cultures??

zdragnar 5y ago
Rich countries, predominantly western Europe, especially I.e. Denmark and Iceland, abort nearly 100% of babies when a prenatal screening tests positive for Down's syndrom. I don't think we are any different at all. Sadly, the worlds countries that are best able to provide a good life for such people are the quickest to prevent them from existing.

akerl_ 5y ago

Did the title of the article change after this was posted? Or was the title modified by the poster? Article title says “Greeks”, not “Spartans”, which would make a lot more sense (and avoid the need for half of the arguing in the comments).

deleted 5y ago

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helsinkiandrew 5y ago

Sparta was at its peak for a few centuries - aren't customs likely to have changed significantly over that time. The baby killing period could have been during a particular leader, or a bad couple of winters or under some other crisis.

verisimi 5y ago

"Although infanticide happens occasionally in most societies—including in modern times—many cultures shun or disparage it. Sneed says there’s little to show the Greeks were any different." Erm... infanticide is an epidemic in our society! There's nothing occasional about it.

ajuc 5y ago
Abortion is not infanticide even if you happen to think it's exactly as evil. It's useful to have specific words mean specific things, otherwise you'd still need to invent a new word for non-abortion infanticide and what's the point of that?
- verisimi 5y ago
  My body, my choice. Over an unborn baby's body. Right?