Spartan

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Spartan women had a reputation for being independent-minded, and enjoyed more freedoms and power than their counterparts throughout ancient Greece. While they played no role in the military, female Spartans often received a formal education, although separate from boys and not at boarding schools. These days, the standard line of thought in Spartan scholarship is that if something is only in one of the later sources, we worry about its reliability” When someone said "After your frequent victories over the Argives in their wars against you, why haven't you wiped them out?" King Cleomenes replied "We wouldn't wish to wipe them out, because we want sparring partners for our young men." There were 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. Would they have been accompanied by a multiple of that number of Helots, or was it just the 300?

Xenophon’s Spartan Society is a fine look at the city-state (if indeed Xenophon wrote it; translator Richard J.A. Talbert of the University of North Carolina has his doubts). But readers of On Sparta may derive more enjoyment from the collection of “Sayings of Spartans” and “Sayings of Spartan Women” that Plutarch collected. The word “laconic,” after all – referring as it does to a pithy saying that conveys a great deal in a few words – comes from “Laconia,” the name of the Peloponnesian region of which Sparta was the capital; and these statements, from both famous and otherwise unknown Laconians, unquestionably have that laconic quality. There’s a strong emphasis on their visual appeal to men. There’s lots of mention in the primary sources of men ogling the Spartan girls when they’re out. There is a culture of fat-shaming. It cuts both ways, because the girls get to sing songs teasing the boys who aren’t brave or manly enough. So, the girls are very visible and audible.

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If you're looking for a book that has passed the Lindy test, I recommend reading this one. (You should read about Solon too).

For women, some of our sources suggest their lifestyle was much more constrained. They weren’t allowed to wear jewellery or their hair long. Some sources suggest that when they were married their hair was shaved off. They were veiled, like their Athenian counterparts. There are recorded sayings about Spartan women being veiled and girls unveiled. And the response to the question why this was the case was that girls need to find a husband, but wives need to keep one. The suggestion is that Spartan women were not necessarily as free and liberated as the behaviour of the girls might suggest.

There’s a long collapse. The reason I said at the beginning that Spartan greatness ends in the 370s BC is that Thebes invaded Spartan territory and liberated the Messenians. So they cut Spartan territory in half and deprived them of much of their estates and their labour force. There were still Helots working on estates in Lakonia, but they basically shattered the wealth of the Spartan citizens. That reduced Spartan power quite significantly and then it declined more and more over the ensuing generations until the Roman conquest.

The book finishes with sayings of Spartans and typical examples of laconism: brief witticisms used to justify the uniqueness of Sparta and its citizens. While they are most likely invented or retconned to explain past, they embody the image of Sparta that other Greeks had and that ended up forming our image of the Spartans: one that emphasizes courage, austere living, martial excellence and devotion of its citizens and families to the state. On Sparta’s behalf, it must be said that the Spartans really knew how to fight. In condemnation of Sparta, it must be said that the Spartans really knew how to fight. Such are the paradoxes involved in studying the warrior nation that, for a time, dominated the city-states of ancient Greece; and for the student of classical culture who wants to get to know Sparta better, the biographies, sayings, and historical work brought together in this Plutarch volume under the title On Sparta provide a fine place to start. When a Spartan woman heard her son had escaped from the enemy, she wrote to him: "You've been tainted by a bad reputation. Either wipe this out now or cease to exist." The reason I’ve chosen him for Sparta and the Spartans is because he’s the first surviving author who describes the Spartans for us. He doesn’t just talk about them in the Persian Wars, he actually introduces us to the Spartans and tells us about their practices, the different ways their society works and its historical origins. He travelled to Sparta, as well, probably around 450 BC, which makes him quite special for us as a primary source. That’s a generation after the Battle of Thermopylae, but he talked to people who were around at the time and, obviously, when it comes to the Spartans, the first thing anyone really thinks of is the Battle of Thermopylae. Herodotus is our first proper narrative account of the Battle of Thermopylae. All Greek history starts with Herodotus and more than that, all history starts with Herodotus. He’s the first extant, intact historian of any kind and our word ‘history’ comes from his word for ‘inquiry’— historia. Herodotus is the beginning of history and he set out to record what he called the ‘great achievements’ of Greeks and non-Greeks. He decided he would describe the Persian Wars, from the conquest of the Greeks of Asia Minor by the Persians in about 540 BC through to the Greek victory over Xerxes in 479 BC.

post-factum легенда, също като " законите на хан Крум") остават в историята и дават храна на много мъдрости, притчи и вдъхновение за самоусъвършенстване на хората за хилядолетия напред. Francois says that Livingstone taught him a valuable lesson during the campaign, which is that an MP is only the employee of his constituents: his job is to represent their views, nothing more and nothing less. Is he the founder of the story of Sparta as this tremendously austere martial race, or does he have a slightly more nuanced view of them? The first of the four eminent Spartans whose life stories are shared in On Sparta is Lycurgus, the lawgiver whose stern code of laws “accustomed citizens to have no desire for a private life, nor knowledge of one, but rather to be like bees, always attached to the community, swarming together around their leader, and almost ecstatic with fervent ambition to devote themselves entirely to their country” (p. 30). And were the Helots a conquered people who were enslaved, so they weren’t part of the Spartan ‘race’?