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You also get the indirect evidence of, even the dudes who no doubt owned a bunch of slaves and thought that was swell thought that the Spartans were going overboard.
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Jan 31, 2020 04:22
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Spartiates were basically the antebellum Southern planter class except in Ancient Greece. It's astounding so many people want to stan for them.
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Jan 31, 2020 04:57
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Spartiates were basically the antebellum Southern planter class except in Ancient Greece. It's astounding so many people want to stan for them. who do you think is stanning for them? or are you referring to some drama on twitter or reddit or something? 
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Jan 31, 2020 05:17
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Squalid posted:who do you think is stanning for them? or are you referring to some drama on twitter or reddit or something? I think he is referring just in the general cultural sphere, I've met a ton of people who take 300 for fact.
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Jan 31, 2020 05:39
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Don Gato posted:I think he is referring just in the general cultural sphere, I've met a ton of people who take 300 for fact. ah yeah its dumb. Basically every Greek citizen in the classical era in all the cities were the equivalent of southern plantation owners, and also pedophiles on top of that.
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Jan 31, 2020 05:46
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Don Gato posted:I think he is referring just in the general cultural sphere, I've met a ton of people who take 300 for fact. Yeah, it's this.
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Jan 31, 2020 06:14
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I mean turns out there's a lot of southern antebellum planter types in the general cultural sphere. Or at least people who want to have that kind of power dynamic.
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Jan 31, 2020 06:37
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Crosspost
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Jan 31, 2020 13:49
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Don Gato posted:I think he is referring just in the general cultural sphere, I've met a ton of people who take 300 for fact. Since 99% of 300 is a story told by the Spartan Dilios to other greeks, I like to believe that 300 is an accurate representation of Spartan propaganda. That when the Spartans went around building their reputation, the stories they told were ancient versions of 300.
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Jan 31, 2020 16:06
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It's amusing reading the posted sparta links that debunks claims made by posters later in this thread. Even if the blog posts are incorrect, they at least provide some semblance of evidence. Stanning for sparta indeed.
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Jan 31, 2020 16:22
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downout posted:It's amusing reading the posted sparta links that debunks claims made by posters later in this thread. Anything specific?
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Jan 31, 2020 18:21
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the JJ posted:Anything specific? There's a few things the blog post attempts to debunk regarding claims that the author thinks are more pop-culture than academic. Off the top of my head sparta was poor hence no just going and paying for mercenaries, they weren't particularly militarily successful, and they should be judged by their entire population of which citizens were an very small subset. I think the author might have missed not account for Athenian bias in his sources but still makes good cases. It was a good read.
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Jan 31, 2020 21:34
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I think comparing Sparta to the antebellum South is a pretty flawed analogy. The South was a cash crop economy where slaves were used to harvest crops (cotton, tobacco) for export. It was an utterly reprehensible system that nevertheless had a sort of twisted logic to it. Sparta was not a major exporter of anything, nor did it do much trade. They structured their society the way they did for seemingly no practical purpose, but instead out of a quasi-religious reverence for Lycurgus. I'm not defending, promoting, or 'stanning' either of them, just saying Sparta was even more hosed up than the South.
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Jan 31, 2020 21:45
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downout posted:There's a few things the blog post attempts to debunk regarding claims that the author thinks are more pop-culture than academic. Off the top of my head sparta was poor hence no just going and paying for mercenaries, they weren't particularly militarily successful, and they should be judged by their entire population of which citizens were an very small subset. I think the author might have missed not account for Athenian bias in his sources but still makes good cases. but Sparta did actually really pay for mercenaries. If it says it didn't it's just wrong. I can't help but feel this post is directed at me, so if you take issue with something i said, why don't you point it out specifically so I can engage with you, rather than making oblique references? Compared to literally every other Greek city state, they were so obviously militarily significant and successful throughout the classical period that trying to argue otherwise is just bizarre. Maybe if you are exclusively talking about the period from 371-338 when Thebes successfully challenged Spartan hegemony, but even then it's not like Sparta was actually subjugated. Shortly thereafterThebes is destroyed by Alexander the Great and ceases to have any relevance to Greek politics, while Sparta continues to be very relevant. Remember it was following a disastrously failed attempt to seize Sparta that Pyrrhus of Epirus was killed, because unlike so many of their former peers, Sparta was still geopolitically relevant and independent in the late Hellenic period. I mean really. Sparta, not particularly militarily successful. They just somehow by accident ended up completely dominating the entire Peloponnese for multiple generations and achieved hegemony over all Hellas after defeating the largest and wealthiest of all the Greek cities, I guess by accident? Still trying to wrap my head around this one.
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Jan 31, 2020 22:47
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The antebellum South was also, and it's amazing, given the antebellum South, that I can say this, a lot less hierarchical and more meritocratic than Sparta. There were a bunch of antebellum Southerners born in poverty and obscurity who went on to become important leaders; Andrew Hackson, Davy Crockett, and Judah Benjamin come first to mind. As for the Spartains, the only one I can think of might have been Gylippus, who may have been a mothox
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Jan 31, 2020 22:51
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Epicurius posted:The antebellum South was also, and it's amazing, given the antebellum South, that I can say this, a lot less hierarchical and more meritocratic than Sparta. There were a bunch of antebellum Southerners born in poverty and obscurity who went on to become important leaders; Andrew Hackson, Davy Crockett, and Judah Benjamin come first to mind. Lysander was probably born to a spartiate father and helot mother
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Jan 31, 2020 22:55
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cheetah7071 posted:Lysander was probably born to a spartiate father and helot mother Oh, ok. I thought all we knew about his ancestry is that he claimed to be a Heraclid.
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Jan 31, 2020 22:58
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Squalid posted:but Sparta did actually really pay for mercenaries. If it says it didn't it's just wrong. I can't help but feel this post is directed at me, so if you take issue with something i said, why don't you point it out specifically so I can engage with you, rather than making oblique references? My basic read on the situation is that Sparta has a basically-neutral overall record against other large poleis. Like they were obviously significant and at least somewhat successful, but no more than any other polis with the same level of resources. Their period of hegemony was bankrolled by Persia and ended practically the instant the Persians decided a Spartan hegemony was no longer in their favor. Later on, they got beaten by the Macedonians just as badly as the rest of the Greeks and seem to keep their independence mostly because Alexander wasn't interested in expanding in Greece the way his father was, and just wanted to wrap things up quickly and go to Persia.
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Jan 31, 2020 23:08
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wins/losses is possibly not the best measure by which to judge military status. I mean again, not to belabor this point, but Sparta wasn't beat as badly as all the other Greeks. Compared to Thebes for example, Sparta came out much, much better, in that it wasn't completely destroyed, nor were its inhabitants carted off as slaves to die in distant lands. This is one of the key points I've been trying to make: Sparta lost a lot of wars yes, but it lost them all gracefully, even in the Hellenic period. Contrast this with say Athens, who experienced disaster in the aftermath of their defeat at the hands of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, or all the states Sparta subjugated and whose citizens were reduced to Helots in the 7th and sixth centuries. One other rhetorical point I see that I think could cloud this issue is the slight of hand where instead of comparing Sparta to ALL Greek cities, you limit your comparison to the other "large poleis." Yes, in a sense, if you only compare Sparta to the other remarkably powerful and militarily successful Greek states, they don't stand out as much. I think it should be obvious however how this skews your sample. During the Hellenic period Macedon is obviously the primary military power in Greece, but its still remarkable how much politics in the Peloponnese seemed to hinge around Sparta. Every other city seems to decide their political affiliation based on their relationship with Sparta. Even when Sparta was quiet as under Alexander the Great, they still pissed him off enough enough that when he was sending spoils back to Greece from Persia, he was quoted as saying this: ""Alexander, son of Philip, and all the Greeks except the Spartans, give these offerings taken from the foreigners who live in Asia". Althernatively we can take the macro perspective, and remember that no greek polis was individually of any geopolitical significance at any point. From the perspective of the Persians they were all basically weird barbarian hillbillies easily kept squabbling amongst themselves with a few coins. Macedon was the only Greek state of any real regional importance.
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Jan 31, 2020 23:46
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Do you have an answer for the event that gets described in the blogger where some Spartans picked up shields from one of their allies, which did not have the sick Spartan branding on it, and got their asses kicked? I mean, anecdote isn't the singular of data, but that's kind of suggestive that the Spartans were in large part actually "somewhat above-average, with good branding" rather than being super-soldier badasses. And they sure did take a real nasty branch of development to get there!
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Feb 1, 2020 00:14
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nvz72 A good episode featuring everyone favorite Angie Hobbs and Edith Hall
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Feb 1, 2020 00:23
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That guy's essay is great but the problem with a win/loss calc is that all the losses are gonna cluster at the end.
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Feb 1, 2020 01:29
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SlothfulCobra posted:I mean turns out there's a lot of southern antebellum planter types in the general cultural sphere. Or at least people who want to have that kind of power dynamic. I blame Bush and the Great War of Terror where Hollywood wanted to make a movie about elite white people murdering a ton of muslamics.
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Feb 1, 2020 02:29
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Nessus posted:Do you have an answer for the event that gets described in the blogger where some Spartans picked up shields from one of their allies, which did not have the sick Spartan branding on it, and got their asses kicked? i saw that. But again, and I'm beginning to feel like a broken record, I have not argued the Spartans were above-average soldiers. Instead I am trying to argue that the Spartan state was remarkably politically and strategically adept. They were obviously the preeminent military power in Greece for several generations, covering the lives of Herodotus and Thucydides. Their individual prowess doesn't matter if the soldiers are used better, and even if there's space to debate why Sparta succeeded militarily, it's just bizarre to me to deny outright that they did, which is just obvious. Then when their power began to wane it was a long and slow process. This was possible because the Spartan government was able to much more consistently make good decisions compared to their peer rivals, and maintained an internally stable government far longer than any other city. Sparta never had to have a King or Democracy or oligarchy imposed on them by Thebes or any other Greek city, but Thebes could not say same about Sparta. I think Sparta had one king, in all of its record history imposed on it, and it took a giant league and it happened right before Rome swept up the whole region into the empire. Notably the primary foreign policy objective of the Greek city states in the classical period was not to conquer all of Greece, but to maintain their freedom and independence and physical security. Sparta was successful enough in this endeavor that lacedaemonia didn't even need walls until hundreds of years after all the other major cities had built them.
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Feb 1, 2020 02:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:That guy's essay is great but the problem with a win/loss calc is that all the losses are gonna cluster at the end. That's a good point, and I didn't review his choices of battles so there might be a point there.
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Feb 1, 2020 06:34
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Squalid posted:but Sparta did actually really pay for mercenaries. If it says it didn't it's just wrong. I can't help but feel this post is directed at me, so if you take issue with something i said, why don't you point it out specifically so I can engage with you, rather than making oblique references? I don't mean to directly target your comments personally, but you've made statements which mostly contrast with what I claimed was amusing. There are several implicit conclusions based on the reading from https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/ I'll try to repeat mostly what was stated there but maybe relevant to this discussion. So the two claims made are that it is possible to debunk the "Spartan equality" and "Spartan military excellence". Starting with spartan equality - there are two distinctions of spartan society that are important. There are the Spartiates (citizens) and everyone else who are not citizens (~94% of the populace). A majority (~85%) of the population live in a state of slavery that is so brutal that it makes slave owners of the time blush in it's brutality (https://acoup.blog/2019/08/23/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-ii-spartan-equality/). I think that is sufficient. There are more details that compare spartan society for citizens (and small minority at their height that only concern at most 6% of the population) that further erode the claim of equality. Spartan military excellence is harder to debunk but the author works through the various pieces needed for military success; tactical, operational, strategic. (https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-vi-spartan-battle/). He ultimately concludes that while the Sparta was tactically successful they were substandard at the operation and strategic levels. So those are my brief summaries of the authors posts. But an additional part of his analysis is the description of Spartan agoge and helots. His analysis compares it to modern "systems for indoctrinating and conditioning child soldiers and terrorists". He describes the Spartan helot system in terms of "the helots were treated poorly by the standards of ancient chattel slavery". A systemic terror for a "super majority" of the people of Sparta that was worse than the US antebellum South. Later throughout the text he describes a state that controls fertile land yet is economically poor and unable to project military power much farther than it's borders. And given the research that I'm familiar with suggests that a slave society as described would fulfill many of descriptions; it would have a rigid, inefficient system that is unable to evolve that would slowly wither and die.
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Feb 1, 2020 07:43
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Family Values posted:I think comparing Sparta to the antebellum South is a pretty flawed analogy. The South was a cash crop economy where slaves were used to harvest crops (cotton, tobacco) for export. It was an utterly reprehensible system that nevertheless had a sort of twisted logic to it. All of Spartan society functioned and everything produced there was because of the helots. The niceties of what was being produced and whether it was for export of not isn't relevant. The Spartiates were absolutely a broad equivalent of the antebellum planter class.
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Feb 1, 2020 09:44
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:All of Spartan society functioned and everything produced there was because of the helots. The niceties of what was being produced and whether it was for export of not isn't relevant. The Spartiates were absolutely a broad equivalent of the antebellum planter class. Sparta sounds like some poo poo out of Metal Gear, except with slaves... many, many slaves.
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Feb 1, 2020 10:09
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I mean I'm not saying it's a perfect 1:1 comparison but as a way of conceptualizing the shittiness of Spartan society it's an excellent point of reference.
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Feb 1, 2020 12:15
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"Rich and own slaves" probably describes 90% of the ruling classes in human history. I don't really see the parallels between the South and Sparta other than those two things. Plantation owners didn't eat in a communal mess hall, there wasn't a monarchy, the vast majority of citizens didn't own slaves, you didn't lose your citizenship if you didn't have enough property/slaves, if you were born poor you could get rich and buy slaves to join the planter class, slaves could be freed, slaves were a much smaller percentage of the population, there were large scale helot uprisings. Haiti seems closer to me but really I don't see much of a point in drawing the parallels between events thousands of years and miles apart rather than just studying each institution as it was.
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Feb 1, 2020 19:13
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I'd anything a closer, but still pretty farfetched, comparison would be to the medieval nobility under feudalism. You've got the nobility/bellatores who are trained from early childhood in combat and strategy and are only able to do so because there's a massive underclass (peasants/laboratores) doing all the actual work. And even that's a bit of a stretch.
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Feb 1, 2020 19:29
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:All of Spartan society functioned and everything produced there was because of the helots. The niceties of what was being produced and whether it was for export of not isn't relevant. The Spartiates were absolutely a broad equivalent of the antebellum planter class. Well, them and the Períoikoi. who provided almost all of the manufactured and trade goods. Calling the Spartiates an broad equivalent of the antebellum planter class is maybe not the best analogy. I mean, it works in the sense that they both have a bunch of political and economic power and own slaves, I guess, but there are also fundamental differences. To be an antebellum southern planter is basically a function of wealth and race in terms of barrier to entry. If I'm a rich white person from New York, or Germany, or wherever, I could move to Mississippi, buy a plantation and a bunch of slaves, and become part of that class. (It wasn't even always race. Chang and Eng Bunker, the famous "Siamese twins", bought a plantation in North Carolina, and became prominent.) Likewise, the son of a planter could, without much in the way of lowering his social status, move to the city and become a lawyer or businessman without worrying about losing his status or getting disowned. Also, unlike with the Spartans, you didn't have to be a planter to vote or hold office. in other words, you can use it as an analogy but not as a 1 on 1 correspondence, and if I'm using Rawls' veil of ignorance here, i'd still rather choose to be born in the 1850s South than the 350 BC Sparta.
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Feb 1, 2020 19:59
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Yeah the comparisons between Sparta and 19th-century chattel slavery seem rather generic to me. They're obviously both slave economies but there's a lot of important differences. The helots were a conquered people and certainly were subjected to a variety of abuses, but they could also own property, maintain their own community, purchase their freedom, and even enroll in military service at times. In many ways they had more freedom than other slaves of the era, which were treated as personal property. Helots weren't property, and they were publicly-owned. If anything, I'd compare them to medieval serfs.
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Feb 1, 2020 20:03
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Epicurius posted:Well, them and the Períoikoi. who provided almost all of the manufactured and trade goods. Calling the Spartiates an broad equivalent of the antebellum planter class is maybe not the best analogy. I mean, it works in the sense that they both have a bunch of political and economic power and own slaves, I guess, but there are also fundamental differences. Vincent Van Goatse posted:I mean I'm not saying it's a perfect 1:1 comparison but as a way of conceptualizing the shittiness of Spartan society it's an excellent point of reference. This. You're not going to get a perfect 1:1 correspondence comparing any two places and points throughout history, but it's a useful point of comparison. Especially because you see some of the same trends running through both periods - peer societies saying "jfc that seems a little brutal?" and the slaveowners doubling down over time that "IT'S NECESSARY YOU JUST WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND!", the motivating fear of a slave uprising, etc. Another point of comparison would be Rome. They started off with a very brutal slave system (albeit not as brutal), but dialed it back over the centuries, until finally, killing a slave was murder and they were entitled to at least some rights. AFAICT the Spartans never engaged in the same reforms, probably because their slaves:enforcers ratio increased over time, instead of decreasing.
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Feb 1, 2020 20:08
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The only other historical "nobility can just kill a peasant" practice I'm aware of is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsujigiri and that was a historical aberration in a lawless chaotic interregnum that was abolished as soon as central authority was restored. There was also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiri-sute_gomen but that had legal boundaries and limits. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Feb 1, 2020 |
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Feb 1, 2020 21:14
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How come there is no specific name for the ancient greek/roman religion? Also, whats the deal with ancient greek, or roman copies of greek original statues being painted or not? Seems like historians now believe some were painted and some were not. It seems odd. It seems like they should have all been painted, or almost none painted. I think if they were painted that there should have been dozens found that still had most or half of their paint remaining. Especially ones found in the hellenized eastern countries with dry climate.
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Feb 2, 2020 04:12
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It’s amazing we talk so much about a city (more like a collection of towns) of what ... 30,000 people plus who knows how many slaves? From 2000 years ago
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Feb 2, 2020 04:25
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ChocNitty posted:How come there is no specific name for the ancient greek/roman religion? There’s not exactly one ancient Greco-Roman religion, it’s a whole mess of overlapping cults and local beliefs. Someone in the thread recommended a book about this Pagans by James O’Donnell. Its main idea is that the idea of there being one “pagan religion” is basically a (Judeo-)Christian notion and that pre-Christian Romans didn’t really think of their religious practice that way.
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Feb 2, 2020 04:36
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"Religion" as you think of it is a concept that is not as old as you'd expect. The idea of "I have my beliefs, which are right, and people who believe otherwise are wrong and should be converted" is surprisingly rare in the ancient world. You don't have a strong impetus for naming it when it's just, your local culture's set of traditions, habits, and beliefs, and there's nobody worrying a bunch about how they're different from other people's.
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Feb 2, 2020 04:50
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ChocNitty posted:Also, whats the deal with ancient greek, or roman copies of greek original statues being painted or not? Ask most miniature wargamers about going to the trouble of painting their figures. It can cost more for someone to paint the figures for you, and there was no way I can see that anyone rich enough to have a stature would be painting it themselves. I bet a lot of the unpainted ones were left like that because it was an optional extra cost.
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Feb 2, 2020 05:07
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