This is Part I of a seven part series (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII) comparing the popular legacy of Sparta (embodied in films like 300) with the historical ancient state. Today, we’re going to…

first of a seven part historical series on the falsity of the myth of Sparta

UPDATE: okay I just finished the whole thing and it's great, except for his need at the end to underscore how bad Sparta is by comparing it to ... North Korea. engaging history but a shitlib nonetheless

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I like this bit from part III, Spartan Women:

    The primary economic occupation of helot women was probably in food preparation and textile production. And if I know my students, I know that the moment I start talking about the economic role of women in ancient households, a very specific half of the class dozes off. Wake Up. There is an awful tendency to see this ‘women’s work’ as somehow lesser or optional. These tasks I just listed are not economically marginal, they are not unimportant. Yes, our ancient sources devalue them, but we should not.

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    part II is even better. highlight:

    And in sheer numerical terms, the helots were Sparta. If we want to talk about drawing boxes, the box we ought to draw is not around the spartitates, but around the helots. The helots so decisively outnumber the spartiates that any assessment of this society has to be about the quality of helot life (which is terrible). To draw boxes as Burns wants would be like putting a box around Jeff Bezos and declaring that America was the first all-billionaire society. In actual fact, American millionaires represent roughly the same percentage of America as the spartiates represent of Sparta, roughly six percent.

    This is a fundamental flaw in how we teach Sparta – in high schools and in college. We teach Sparta like it was a free citizen society with a regrettable slave population that, while horrific, was typical for its time – something more like Rome. But it wasn’t: Sparta was a society that consisted almost entirely of slaves, with a tiny elite aristocracy. The spartiates were not the common citizens of Sparta, but rather the hereditary nobility – the knights, counts and dukes, as it were. We should as soon judge 17th century France by the first two estates as judge Sparta only by the spartiates.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Also mentions Purge night, except it's a week and just makes it legal to murder slaves.

      Weird to see people venerating Spartans, though I consider it a fairly innocuous dog whistle that aspirants don't realise is a dog whistle.

      • The_Walkening [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Also mentions Purge night, except it’s a week and just makes it legal to murder slaves.

        They'd literally declare war on the helots every autumn as a justification to murder them.

  • PlantsRstillCool [des/pair]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I read this a month or so ago and it was really good.

    I live the part where the Spartans actually kinda suck at fighting

    Oh and the part where they are super dismissive of the idea of every training

  • CA0311 [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    https://youtu.be/hMQmU0epVr4

    https://youtu.be/aP-ipqWEAAE

    This Q&A with a researcher about Sparta is very interesting. Including a link to the original video too, but I learned a lot about both the history of the history as it were from this Q&A.