A remotely instructive thread for one time : ancient Sparta, between myth and reality

[sarahtasher]

Sparta being very popular as a role model for certain users, why not have a civilized thread about, furthermore an informative one ? It will be a change from threads about the main plot device of Othello

Sparta was without any doubt the champion of hoplitic warfare in Classical Greece : it does not mean that it was accurately depicted. Spartans wrote very little about themselves (the only major Greek author from Sparta was Tyrtaeus, whose elegies were supposedly very moving, but there is 11 incomplete poems left from him) and the bulk of what is known about them come from a variety of authors that were not Spartans. Short of minor historians who copied other historians, the major works are ...

Plato, who wrote dialogues describing the Spartan system.
Pausannias, who wrote a criminally underestimated touring guide of Greece, depicting monuments and customs related to them
Aristotle, who wrote on the Spartan constituion

In chronologic order, Herotodus, Thucycdides, Xenophon and Plutarch who wrote in detail about Sparta

Plato and Xenophon and to a lesser degree Plutarch all suffered from varying degrees of laconophilia, which is not, to take an aphorism, having an hard-on for Gerald Butler oily abs, but admiring Sparta and wanting their institutions home (with if possible someone else taking the Helots jobs) (Platon and Xenophon certainly liked a lot Spartans, this said, but let's avoid lenghty discussions about backdoor shenanigans)

Those authors also wrote in the best of cases centuries after largely mythical institutions had been laid out, institutions that presumably changed over centuries. That's why, short of what we call in French the image d'Épinal (example : the spartan boy and the fox) it's pretty hard to have a definitive portrayal of Sparta, short that did not shouted all the time THIS IS SPARTA and were usually more clothed than the Chippendales.

I will make several posts on the matter, if people are interested, but let's start with demography and it's meaning for Sparta.

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Spartan demography

Sparta, of all Greek cities, had the most draconian (ZING) conditions for citizenship. (In addition to the usual be of ''Spartan birth'', they had to participate to traditional education, the agoge and both participate to communal dinners, syssities and especially pay their part to the syssities. Before ill fated reform attempt by Agis, Cléomène and Nabis, they bragged about giving citizenship to maybe three people since the time of Lycurgus (Tyrtaeus, a seer and his borther). While Lycurgus laid out a system that was about maintaining a body of citizen to fairly stable numbers,such stability was a far fetched dream. Sparta, more than any other Greek polis, suffered from acute ''oliganthropy'', decline of citizens

The matter seems very simple at first. Laconia (the core region of Sparta, hence words like ''laconism'' and the name actually used by Spartans to describe themselves, Lacedomonians) and Messania, the very unfortunate neighbours of Laconia, was divided in 9000 parcels of lands, one for each hoplite-each lot, a kleros, was to maintain, him, his family, and provide him foodstuffs for the sissyties as well as the means to buy and maintain his weapons. The kleros concept was quite common in Greece.

9000 lots = 9000 Spartans. It's very doubtful however that they ever reached 9000 citizens. This is common with all civilizations, but rather improbable high numbers are given for almost mythical encounters (such as Platées against the Persians) and much lower ones for more historical encounters. By the time of the Peleponesian War, less than a century after Platées, the Spartans mustered maybe 3500 men. A terrible earthquake is supposed to have killed 20 000 people in Sparta in -464, but it's very doubtful that such a deathtoll occured (IE, there were likely far less than 9000 to start with)

What appears the most obvious way of losing population with a city like Sparta is not always the answer-heroic last stands and ''come back with it or on it'' certainly resulted in lots of deaths, but hoplite warfare was not an especially deadly from a war-Spartans kept losing citizens because of social degradation, sometimes because of cowardice on the battlefield (usually meaning ''surrendering'', like at Pylos) but much more often because they lost their kleros to debts and become sub-citizens.

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Bump ? (Single one)

[Hotmail]

Posting in a sarahtasher thread.

So what are we discussing here?

[sarahtasher]

Ancient Sparta, and the difference between reality and laconophlia 300 style ?

[Puupi]

Okay.

And?

I'm kind of lost here.

[sarahtasher]

A thread not about Trump or ''the denomination of Austria Hungary military units, aka kaiser und koenig Emperor and King (therefore K.U.K) '' would change a bit ?

[Fincayra]

Keep in mind your earthquake total includes helots and perioikoi too. Only the fighting men of sparta were considered to be citizens. It is unknown how many helots that Sparta kept, but the number far exceeded the number of citizens. It's part of what led to their downfall. Less and less "perfect men" were selected to undergo the agoge, which in itself was very punishing and led to deaths. Simply put, the Spartans gene selected their way to extinction.

[sarahtasher]

Yes, that why I put ''people'' instead of ''Spartan'' : the true ''Spartan'' were atop a pyramid supported by a lot of people.

-The Périèques, ''free citizens'', but of vassal cities
-A host of ''non citizens'', including helots freed from servitudes because of military services (neomatodes), Helots brougt up in the agoge as servants of the Spartan boy (mothones), free citizens raised on a aristocrat dime after losing their social status (mothakes...)

(Yes, incidentally : that point was taken for granted in Greece, but Spartan boys at the agoge had with them slaves except during the krypteia)

[Deleted]

I love sarahtasher threads.

You usually have no idea what the hell she's rambling about, but it's always nice to be here anyway.

How you doing Sarah?

[sarahtasher]

Uh, about Spartan social organization, which was a tad more complex than ''show your oiled pecs while screaming THIS IS SPARTA''

[Hotmail]

Is this an historically accurate depiction of a Spartan?

[sarahtasher]

So, you want to mock a thread that attempt to be half serious. All right.

[Kalis]

What is there to discuss? Spartan weren't like they were depicted in 300? I doubt anyone thinks that is an historically accurate representation.

[Lady Dragonheart]

I get that this thread is about Sparta as a historical sense... But what is the specific topic? Is it how different it actually was compared to how the media portrays how they were? How different they were than the rest of the world at the time, including the rest of Greece? Or their society and how it was militaristic, but also highly communal and integrated for its time?

[THE Bigzoman]

What are we discussing here, Sarah?

[sarahtasher]

Mostly about how the Sparta depicted by ancient authors is highly contradictory.

For instance, the famed black broth, the sissyties (communal meal), that was according to ancient authors crude and repulsive. Yet it was presumably not that ''cheap'', since Spartans with a kleros were unable to pay for it in ever increasing number (if a landed man with a farm and slaves to work it-therefore instantly in the higher classes in Greece can't pay for the communal meal, this meal is not exactly ''cheap''-IE, the black broth would have likely been an improvement for most of Greeks)

[bladeXcrasher]

Uh, about Spartan social organization, which was a tad more complex than ''show your oiled pecs while screaming THIS IS SPARTA''

Wow...I don't even...

[sarahtasher]

Wow...I don't even...

What I said wrong ? That Sparta was a much more complex city than shown in 300 (it's a given) and likely more complex than shown in Xenophon ?

[Shadowferal]

The Helots were a slave race subjugated by the Spartans and kept in place; Helots were ritually mistreated, humiliated and even slaughtered: every autumn the Spartans would declare war on the helots so they could be killed by a member of the Crypteia without fear of repercussion. The Crypteia were a secret police force; At night, the chosen kryptes (members of the Krypteia) were sent out into the Laconian countryside armed with knives with the instructions to kill any helot they encountered and to take any food they needed. They were specifically told to kill the strongest and best of the helots. This practice was instigated to prevent the threat of a rebellion by the helots and to keep their population in check.

According to Cartledge, Krypteia members stalked the helot villages and surrounding countryside, spying on the servile population. Their mission was to prevent and suppress unrest and rebellion. Troublesome helots could be summarily executed. Such brutal repression of the helots permitted the Spartan élite to successfully control the servile agrarian population and devote themselves to military practice. It may also have contributed to the Spartans' reputation for stealth since a kryptes who got caught was punished by whipping.

Only Spartans who had served in the Krypteia as young men could expect to achieve the highest ranks in Spartan society and army. It was felt that only those Spartans who showed the willingness and ability to kill for the state at a young age were worthy to join the leadership in later years.
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[Deleted]

Hmpf. If all of greek were on their level they would have lost and there could have been so many corpses. But no... that fox Themistokles ruined everything.

[Kalis]

Mostly about how the Sparta depicted by ancient authors is highly contradictory.

And? Ancient authors wrote from their perspective, they highlighted the bits they wanted to use, often to prove a point and ignored the bits that they didn't. People had agendas just as much then as they do today, with varying shades of obvious bias, e.g. Herodotus shows bias in favour of the Athenians, most likely due to them being his patrons.

Not only that, but some of those authors lived 500+ years apart - Sparta was pretty much a theme park by the time of Pausanias and Plutarch.