[YeGoblynQueenne]

The article you link is the worst kind of telling of history: overflowing with bias, preaching and pontificating and making moral judgments left and right about things that happenned more than 2000 years ago. It is an internet rant, designed to provoke clicks and outrage, and its only reason of existence is the existence of the film, 300, a fantasy, that presents a fantastical image of Sparta, that the author then proceeds to deconstruct as if it were reality, or as if anyone claimed was reality. It is one gigantic straw man.

Instead of consuming one person's opinion, second-hand, why not read the original historical sources?

For example:

The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians, by Xenophon

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1178

The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7142

History, by Herodotus

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2707 (Volume 1) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2456 (Volume 2)

On Sparta, by Plutarch

https://www.amazon.com/Sparta-Penguin-Classics-Plutarch/dp/0...

And so on. Read history; and make up your own mind.

[distances]

> And so on. Read history; and make up your own mind.

I'm of the opinion that this "do your own research" is generally bad advice. One person can be expert in a very limited number of fields, and one of the main advantages of our modern society is that we can afford to have experts in very niche areas.

It's much better to recognize who are the actual experts in any given subject, and read their output / follow their advice. Even historians have very limited specialties; someone who's expert of the ancient Greece would restrain from commenting authoritatively on renaissance topics.

Everyone can read the source material on history/medicine/astronomy/whatever for their enjoyment. Absolutely nobody should think they understand the topic better than someone who has dedicated their professional career on it. Outside of your slimmest core competence you are just another hobbyist with very flawed understanding.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> I'm of the opinion that this "do your own research" is generally bad advice.

I never used the words "do your own research" and I will very please ask you to not quote me as saying words I didn't actually say.

Further, "do your own research" is what conspiracy theorists say. Are you saying that my advice to read Herodotus and Thucydides is on the same level as spreading anti-vaxx propaganda or 5g-conspiracy theories?

As to expertise, I'm Greek and I grew up reading history. Literally. Not at school, where the teaching of history was a deplorable affair of memorising passages from school books, but at home. Just because I'm that kind of nerd. When other kids got dinosaurs and xboxes for Crhistmas, I got Xenophon in leather-bound tomes, with the ancient and modern text in opposite pages so I could read the original and understand it.

So I'm "expert" enough in what I'm talking about that, if you're interested in the opinion of knolwedgeable others, you should take pause and listen to what I say: the blog posts linked above are full of hot air and peddle a bunch of bullshit misreadings of history, deliberately so to provoke outrage and clicks. You won't learn anything useful by reading them.

Read the sources I link to. You don't need to be an expert in anything to read some English translations of ancient texts. You just need to be curious to know exactly who said what.

Edit: btw, the author of the blog posts is an expert on Rome ("Bret is a historian of the broader ancient Mediterranean in general and of ancient Rome in particular"; from his about page). So when he's talking about Sparta, he's not the expert you think he is. The same goes for many other of his blog posts, e.g. ones on the Middle Ages etc. If we went toe-to-toe on ancient Greek history, he might beat me on points (e.g. off the top of my head I dond't remember the date of the Battle of Salamis), but he's got as much a leg to stand on to write what he did as I have to call bullshit on it.

[distances]

I'm not trying to comment on your expertise or about how Spartans actually were, sorry if my rant came out that way. I obviously don't know a thing about you or the Spartans.

I explicitly quoted you, not trying to put words in your mouth. I do think that "read [sources], and make up your own mind" is exactly the same as "do your own research". I can't see any difference in meaning there.

My commentary was on the trend to dismiss authorities in favor of, literally, "making up your own mind". Reading the sources is not enough. They need putting into context, and understanding the positions of the historical authors. I could read original sources all day and come out with an invalid understanding.

Again, I'm not saying this article is correct. I'm saying a layman should read experts instead of interpreting sources themselves if they want to understand better.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

The problem is that the "expert" who wrote the blog posts is not an expert in the subject of the blog posts and he's talking about subjects that a particular group of people, other Greeks who, like me, grew up reading our ancient history as other kids read Marvel comics, know very well and have their own strong opinions about [1].

I agree with you that we should trust the opinions of experts. However, expertise is not only acquired through professional interestes. The opinion of professional experts cannot automatically trump the opinion of everybody else, regadless of their amount of knowledge.

In any case, it should be noted that a blog post like the one above would never pass muster as an academic text, like a scholarly paper or a textbook chapter. My main beef with the blog posts above is that they express strong personal opinions in a manner meant to cause an emotional response- which should never be what a historian does.

___________

[1] Typically, those are nationalistic opinions that I don't share, btw. But there is something to be said about everybody and their little dog wanting to tell you all about ancient Greek history, but completely ignoring what Greeks themselves think about it.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Commenting on this separately:

>> I explicitly quoted you, not trying to put words in your mouth. I do think that "read [sources], and make up your own mind" is exactly the same as "do your own research". I can't see any difference in meaning there.

This is what you wrote:

begin_quote

> And so on. Read history; and make up your own mind.

I'm of the opinion that this "do your own research" is generally bad advice.

end_quote

So you quoted me, but then you also quoted "do your own research" as if that was what I said, not as if that was your interpretation of what I said. In the future, if you wish to discuss your interpretation of the words that someone acually said, I suggest you make this more clear. For instance, instead of saying 'this "do your own research"' say something like:

"I interpret your suggestion to "Read history" as a prompt to "do your own research" because ..." etc.

Because if you just put words in quotes and then reply to the words in quotes, what am I supposed to do? I didn't say that thing, so should I just ignore it? Are you replying to what I said or to something you just felt like replying to?

[distances]

I quoted you and then equated that quote with the phrase "do your own research". I think it was very explicit that I didn't put words in your mouth, but brought up that they say the same thing. Then I proceeded to rant why I don't think this is good advice.

If you think there's a difference in the meaning of these two phrases, I can clarify that the rest of that comment applies both to "read, and make up your own mind" and "do your own research" separately.

[CRConrad]

>> I'm of the opinion that this "do your own research" is generally bad advice.

> I never used the words "do your own research" and I will very please ask you to not quote me as saying words I didn't actually say.

Here, let me remind you:

>>> Read history; and make up your own mind.

Wow, huuuge difference.

> Further, "do your own research" is what conspiracy theorists say.

Exactly. And if you want to be taken for someone almost exactly like them, don't sound almost exactly like them.

[CRConrad]

Oops. Either add or remove a "don't" there, to make it make sense.

[rsynnott]

> Read history; and make up your own mind.

You actually have to be pretty careful with this, particularly for the ancient world stuff. The 'historians' of the ancient world were not really historians in the modern context; they were generally closer to gossip columnists. If you uncritically read the main sources on late Republic and early Imperial Rome, say, you'd get some very weird (and contradictory) ideas about it.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Of course. So let me make a further suggestion: read modern historians (or read them too).

I don't know who are the authorities on Sparta and ancient Greeece. But don't get your opinions about those subjects from an internet rant aimed at shocking people who only know Sparta from its depiction in 300 and who can legitimately not tell apart the hyperbole and the fantasy from reality.

Read "history", in general. Don't just read some guy's blog post, even if he's a historian. Even if he's an expert. If you're going to trust the opinion of experts, consult proper scholarly work and read more than one expert.

Does all that sound too unreasonable, or, like an other poster said, like I'm suggesting you "do your own research" (like the anti-vaxxers)?

[rsynnott]

The author is an academic historian. And it’s not… saying anything very controversial. It’s pretty much the mainstream view on Sparta.

I mean, obviously reading more is better. But this is a perfectly fine resource and links to lots of further reading. This blog is a far better thing for a normal person to read than the stuff you linked; it basically represents current understanding, whereas some of what you linked, while important sources _because we don't have all that many sources_ (historians have to take what they can get; for an extreme example see the Historia Augusta...) are bordering on fanfiction.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Well, now I don't know why you are being downvoted. Here, have a compensatory uppie. dang says that's part of being a good citizen around here.

Edit: re fanfiction. I honestly have no idea what you mean. Fanfiction? Who else do you think has more accurate and objective accounts of ancient history than ancient historians? Do you think modern historians have some kind of crystal ball that they can look through the mists of time and see with clear eyes the things that happened 2000 years ago?

Ancient historians were not very accurate or even honest, or objective. What better sources are there? You really think that an internet rant is a better source for historical knowledge than ancient authors? I mean, if you really think so I am really going to bang my head on the wall very, very hard in complete despair. This is the internet?

[rsynnott]

> Who else do you think has more accurate and objective accounts of ancient history than ancient historians?

Modern historians who've synthesised the work of ancient historians and figured out, insofar as possible, what actually happened. Like, the sources are generally _contradictory_, and contain things which cannot possibly be true, and often supernatural elements.

> You really think that an internet rant is a better source for historical knowledge than ancient authors?

Unless you're willing to single-handledly reproduce a century or so of analysis, then, yes, reading this blog post (or a modern history text on Sparta) will give you more context on Sparta than reading the ancient sources. A _huge_ amount of work has been put into understanding ancient history, and ignoring it and just going for the ancient sources is nonsensical.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

That blog post is not scholarly work. It's one guy's opinion - rather, one guy's internet rant. Rants are no good sources of information and I wish I didn't have to explain why, but they are primarily aimed at emotions rather than the intellect.

If you want to read modern analysis, then read scholarly works, not blog posts on the internet. And it doesn't matter who the author is, a rant on the internets is a rant on the internets, not a source of knowledge.

[ceejayoz]

These authors and their works are all cited and discussed in the series. Some of the authors you cite even bash each other; Thucydides calls Herodotus a bit of a fabulist.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

I don't care about that. Above, I suggest to read up on the original sources and make up your mind, rather than consuming someon else's opinions, then spreading them across the internets as if they're some kind of holy fact. Do you have any objection to that? Read the origional sources. Do you disagree with that suggestion?

[ceejayoz]

You should care about that, if truth is your goal. The original sources have biases, disagree, make things up outright, etc.

This is the reason we have historians. To help analyze those sources. The end result often winds up as a book… or an article series. Like this one.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Sorry, but are you saying that the blog posts above are an objective analysis of historical sources, without "biases, [disagreement], making things up" etc?

No, seriously, when you read that blog post, did you think "ah, that is an objective analysis of history, without any personal opinions or any attempt to promote an agenda"?

Because that's not at all what I thought!

[eesmith]

Objectivity is impossible, and no one here is making the point that the author of this series had no personal opinions on the topic.

It's a given that the author of this series has a bias, just like everyone does. Part of the academic tradition is to cite references (as this author does) and present the reasoning behind the arguments (as this author does).

That said, if Herodotus does have biases in his Histories, how would you identify them? Do you think it's fundamentally impossible, because you too have biases?

[YeGoblynQueenne]

What Herodotus (and Xenophon, Thucydides, Plutarch, etc) is writing about happened more than 2000 years ago. I don't have any "bias" that relates to what he wrote. I just can't get worked up about how the ancient Spartans murdered their slaves, as I can't get worked up about how every other Greek city did not grant any rights to "free" women, or how the priests of the Aztecs sacrificed POWs and then sold their flesh to the market to be consumed by the ordinary citizens of Tenochtitlan, or about the cannibalism at the siege of Maara [1].

Generally I find it ridiculous to moralise about ancient peoples. The blog posts above are just one big moralising moralisation about ancient Sparta. People who share their link are probably people who really get all their knowledge of history from films like 300, people who sincerely, honest-to-G0d, hand-on-heart, thought the Spartans were noble warriors with huge gnashers and sculpted six-packs, who are utterly shocked to learn about the helots, and about the Agoge, and how the 300 Spartans of Leonidas were not alone in Thermopylae, hence why a blog rant appeals to them as some kind of font of revelatory knowledge.

And hence my advice to such people to read actual history and not continue to take their knowledge of history from shallow, unscientific sources like blog rants. Intellectual laziness is what makes people keep sharing this rubbish, not any kind of desire to know any sort of unbiased, objective truth.

__________

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Ma%27arra#Cannibalism

[robbedpeter]

Ah yes, the infamous Thucydides snap.

[dendriti]

None of those are "history" in the sense of academic historical text looking at primary sources. They were all written with agendas, none of which were "document the historical reality of the Spartans".

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Really? Herodotus, "the father of history" is not history?

Anyway, I suppose I shouldn't be pessimistic and take your one comment as an indication that a random blog post on the internet is treated as a more authoritative source than the original texts from which it -ultimately, though evidently indirectly- draws its information.

Edit:

>> They were all written with agendas, none of which were "document the historical reality of the Spartans".

How do you think we know the "historical reality of Sparta"? And do you think you will find that "documented" in a blog post?

[deathcakes]

Herodotus made a hell of a lot up, relied on oral reports and explicitly states that none of what he writes is intended to be relied on - it is merely what people told him. I think you actually need to read the linked blog that you seem so dismissive of, and come up with some substantive rebuttals to the points he makes rather than just making this rather lame appeal to historical authority.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Yes, I've read the linked blog post, thank you very much for making an ass of u and me.

And btw, that Herodotus, while being "the father of history" was full of shit, is something that any Greek school kid will tell you readily, so bringing this up is just a shallow dismissal of my point: that all we know about ancient times is what ancient authors have written, like Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato, and Plutarch. You will not learn more about ancient times by a blog post that quotes them second- and third-hand, all the while expressing strong personal opinions about what they have written, than if you read the actual first-hand sources, biased as they may be.

Like, you're the second or third person who makes this point: Herodotus confabulated. Sure. And who else didn't? Who else are you going to get your knowledge of what happened 2000 years ago than from the people who wrote about it all around the time it was going on?

I mean, do you think there are some other, magickally objective and accurate sources about ancient Sparta, than the ancient Greek authors I suggest people read?

[deathcakes]

No sure, just you have strongly dismissive opinions of someone you mockingly refer to as a mere blog author, and I felt I had to weigh in. I confess I definitely don't know nearly as much as I'd like about the ancient world, especially not to the extent of having read the primary sources but I feel like you're missing the point of people's reactions.

I think the underlying point is that you actually can learn more about the ancient world despite not necessarily possesing any more primary source knowledge - things can be inferred, close analysis can change perspectives and so on.

I know it isn't the point you're trying to make but you sound like you're trying to dismiss the entire premise of historical research. Like, we don't have any new information (which is patently false by the way, maybe not so relevant to this particular topic but new information comes to light pretty much daily) so therefore we should simply not think about it anymore. I'm not trying to be dismissive of your argument and you clearly feel quite strongly about it.

Do you think all historical research is bunk or just this argument?

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Where did you see all that? "[A]ll historical research is bunk"? I "mockingly refer to [The Pedant] as a mere blog author"? I'm "trying to dismiss the entire premise of historical research"? You found those things in my comments? Are you replying to someone else?

Are you sure you are in conversation with me, and what I wrote, rather than some other opinion that you have confused my comments with?

I mean, what the hell? I have said none of the things you say I said and I don't even believe them! Where the hell did I write "mere blog author" about anyone?

[nemo]

>all we know about ancient times is what ancient authors have written

Contemporary approaches to ancient history do not rely exclusively on literary sources, but build a much fuller picture from epigraphy (inscriptions and graffiti can tell us a lot), archaeology, and numismatics.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

You're right, not all knowledge comes from ancient authors. But I don't agree that there is enough information in epigrams and so on, to figure anything out with the context provided by long-form prose by authors who were sometimes even contemporary with the events they describe. I guess that's opinion though.

[eesmith]

There are many types of history. Herodotus was not writing from any sense of a modern 'academic historical text'.

The evidence is, contrary to what you write, that the author of the series of posts directly comments on Herodotus, and uses Herodotus as a primary source. Eg, in https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

> Which brings us back to Herodotus (remember, way back in the first of these, I said we'd talk about Herodotus?) because he isn't just observing the Spartan reputation, Herodotus is manufacturing the Spartan reputation. Herodotus is our main source for early Greek history (read: pre-480) and for the two Persian invasions of Greece. Herodotus' Histories cover a range of places and topics - Persia, Greece, Scythia, Egypt - and contain a mixture of history, ethnography, mythology and straight up falsehoods. But - as François Hartog famously pointed out in his The Mirror of Herodotus (originally in French as Le Miroir d'Hérodote), Herodotus is writing about Greece, even when he is writing about Persia - those other cultures and places exist to provide contrasts to the things that Herodotus thinks bind all of the fractious and fiercely independent Greek poleis. And he is perfectly willing to manufacture the past to make it fit that vision.

> ... for Herodotus, Sparta is the expression of an ideal form of `Greekness' and in Herodotus' logic, being well-governed (eunomia is the Greek term) results primarily in military excellence. For the story Herodotus is telling to work, Sparta - as one of the leading states resisting Persia - must be well governed and it must be military excellent. That's what will make a good story - and Herodotus never lets the facts get in the way of a good story. ..

> Herodotus ...does show up in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, where he is treated as a famous historian who knows many things. Which is a bit funny, given that the historian of that period, Thucydides, takes a dim view of him.

> And so, Herodotus - the myth-maker - talks up the Spartiates at Thermopylae (you know, the brave 300) and quietly leaves out the other Laconians (who, if you scrutinize his numbers, he knows must be there, to the tune of c. 900 men), downplaying the other Greeks. Spartan leadership is lionized, even when it makes stupid mistakes (Thermopylae, to be clear, was a military disaster and Spartan intransigence nearly loses the battle of Plataea, but Herodotus represents this as boldness in the face of the enemy; even more fantastically inept was the initial Spartan plan to hold on the Isthmus of Corinth as if no one had ever seen a boat before).

> The spin worked. Herodotus' work was well known, even in antiquity, and he set the tone for all subsequent retellings of the Persian wars (despite the frequent complaints by later ancient authors that Herodotus' reliability was - let's say, complicated. I don't want to give the wrong impression: Herodotus is a valuable source, just one that - like all sources - has his own agenda at play).

The blog post series does link to its references, like The Mirror of Herodotus, as well in-line citations like "Hdt. 9.35.2" (one of several explicit Herodotus references), as well as "Thuc. 4.40.2", "Xen. Lac. 4.5, 5.9", "Plat. Lach. 182d-183a.", and many more.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> There are many types of history. Herodotus was not writing from any sense of a modern 'academic historical text'.

Sure. So read modern academic historical texts, if you prefer- but don't take your knowledge of history from a blog rant on the internets.

The passages you quote make it clear that the author of the blog posts is commenting on sources commenting on Herodotus. He cites Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, etc, but there's nothing easier than copying citations one hasn't read.

And how can I know that he hasn't read the citations he cites? I can't, but I can know that he's untrustworthy because he makes things up as he sees fit.

For example, there's the case of the Spartiate/Spartan divide. From memory (because that's a long rant and I don't have the patience to read it again) the author is making a distinction between free "Spartiates" and enslaved "Spartans", as if there were two different words with these two different meanings. That is a complete fabrication: the Greek language, both ancient and modern, has one word for "inhabitant of Sparta", "σπαρτιάτης" (female: "σπαρτιάτισσα"). "Spartiate" and "Spartan" are simply different latinisations of the same Greek word, rather than sub-categories of the concept of "inhabitant of Sparta" with slightly different meanings.

At the very least, the author of the blog posts should have made it clear that the distinction between free "Spartiates" and enslaved "Spartans" is his own, but he fails to do so. A reader who doesn't know the Greek language, or the subject of the blog posts, will come away thinking that this is some kind of standard terminology, not something the author made up for his blog posts.

Again, this should give pause. The author straight up made stuff up to put in his blog rant. What else has he made up? Can you say? Can anyone, who takes their knowledge of Sparta and ancient Greece from sources like that blog post, only?

[deathcakes]

To this particular point, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartiate would seem to suggest (admittedly poorly cited) that there was in fact a distinction made within Spartan society between free and enslaved Spartans.

The only reference it sources is confusingly Xenophon, who you have admonished others for not reading - I confess I haven't myself, so will do some digging!

[YeGoblynQueenne]

A distinction was certainly made between free citizens of Sparta and their slaves! Just to be perfectly clear, I don't disagree with that.

What I point out is that this distinction was not made by using different words that both meant "inhabitant of Sparta", in particular not "Spartiate" and "Spartan". As far as I can tell, the slaves of Sparta were only known as "helots".

The general point is that the ancients didn't think of the slaves living in a city as "citi-z-ens" of that city, probably because they were not actually citizens, in the legal sense, according to the laws of the era. For example, you will find no ancient source, and I believe no modern source either, calling the slaves living in Athens, "Athenians". They were the Athenians' slaves, they lived and worked in Athens, but they were not "Athenians".

This is not completely unlike modern times. For example, I live and work in the UK, but I'm by no means "British" and nobody would refer to me and others like me as "British", simply because we live and work in Britain. Rather, "British" is reserved for, well, citizens of the United Kingdom. The rest of us that have the malfortune to be domiciled on the British Isles are "immigrants" (or "bloody foreigners"), in any case there are different words, with different roots, to describe us.

I'm happy to clarify this further if there is still confusion. I blame the author of the blog posts for the confusion, btw.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

In the end, you're downvoting me for calling out an angry rant on the internets as an angry rant on the internets and for calling out your intellectual laziness that accepts to get its knowledge second- and third-hand, from angry rants on the internets, as intellectually lazy.

This is the internets. A toxic shithole full of intellectually lazy and wilfully ignorant people who don't want to know, don't want to learn, don't want to read and study, just want to be entertained and outraged and cancel each other out. Like a good, old, Roman mob.

[CRConrad]

> This is the internets. A toxic shithole full of intellectually lazy and wilfully ignorant people who don't want to know, don't want to learn, don't want to read and study, just want to be entertained and outraged and cancel each other out. Like a good, old, Roman mob.

You're coming out of this looking as nothing so much as a prime example of exactly what you complain about.