Oh fuck. I didn't know it was somehow worse than 7:1. At that point I'm honestly shocked that you could somehow have a functioning society that looked like that
It's worse than even that, not only were at least 7 out of 10 people in the Spartan territories Slaves who were literally killed for fun and ritual (though arguably only during a 50 year period at the end of Spartan dominance), A majority of the rest were citizens of occupied client city states who acted as their proletariat and Merchant class under threat of being enslaved. There were probably never more than 10,000 "True" Spartans, and possibly never more than 3000.
On the other hand, Athens had fuck tons of slaves, treated its client states pretty much as slaves ("the weak suffer what they must" is an Athenian phrase) and treated their women, even upper class in a nightmare fuel way.
The only class that seemed to really enjoy being Spartan was the Upper Class Women, who due to the high male death rate and the free inheritance laws ended up ruling most of the land and openly defying the Kings and male nobility.
As an aside, there are only two Spartan poets of note, both from centuries before the Persian Wars when Sparta was more chill. One is terrible and full of chud imagery. The other, Alcman, is rumoured to be a freed slave, some scholars even say they were a woman, mostly due to fragments like this one, about a girl in a chorus at a festival being very, very horny about two of her associates.
And I sing
40 the radiance of Agido, seeing
her as the sun, which for us
is shown by Agido—she is the eyewitness
to shine [phainein] with its sunlight. But for me to praise [ep-aineîn] her
or to blame [mōmēsthai] her is not allowed by the glorious [kleenna] leader of the chorus [khorēgos = Hagesikhora]
45 No, she does not allow me. For that one [Hagesikhora] appears radiantly to be
outstanding, as when someone
sets among grazing cattle a horse,
well-built, a prize-winner, with thundering hooves,
something from out of those dreams that happen underneath a rock.
50 Don’t you see? One is a racehorse
from Paphlagonia. But the mane
of the other one, my kinswoman
Hagesikhora, blossoms on her head
like imperishable gold.
55 And the silver look of her face—
what can I tell you openly?
She is Hagesikhora.
But whoever is second to Agido in beauty,
let her be a Scythian horse running against a Lydian one.
Oh fuck. I didn't know it was somehow worse than 7:1. At that point I'm honestly shocked that you could somehow have a functioning society that looked like that
I'm just going by my memory of what the acoup blog says, I might be misremembering
It's worse than even that, not only were at least 7 out of 10 people in the Spartan territories Slaves who were literally killed for fun and ritual (though arguably only during a 50 year period at the end of Spartan dominance), A majority of the rest were citizens of occupied client city states who acted as their proletariat and Merchant class under threat of being enslaved. There were probably never more than 10,000 "True" Spartans, and possibly never more than 3000.
On the other hand, Athens had fuck tons of slaves, treated its client states pretty much as slaves ("the weak suffer what they must" is an Athenian phrase) and treated their women, even upper class in a nightmare fuel way.
The only class that seemed to really enjoy being Spartan was the Upper Class Women, who due to the high male death rate and the free inheritance laws ended up ruling most of the land and openly defying the Kings and male nobility.
As an aside, there are only two Spartan poets of note, both from centuries before the Persian Wars when Sparta was more chill. One is terrible and full of chud imagery. The other, Alcman, is rumoured to be a freed slave, some scholars even say they were a woman, mostly due to fragments like this one, about a girl in a chorus at a festival being very, very horny about two of her associates.
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