[connorpeters]

> we should remember that, in actual history, Sparta was an oppressive society that established itself as the enemy of the Greek city-states that valued democracy and the arts. We should also remember that many of the modern people who have been most enthusiastic about the Spartans as historical role models have also been really enthusiastic about oppressing and killing their fellow human beings.

My interest in Sparta is that it exemplifies how elite a group of people can become when they focus on one thing. As mentioned in the article, Sparta beat Athens in the Second Peloponnesian War. Athens was the naval and intellectual powerhouse of the area at the time, yet the unsophisticated specialized warmongers won. It illustrates that in life hyperfocusing can yield results. I do not forget that Sparta was an oppressive and brutal society that I in no way would want to live in. I do not idealize their caste culture or slaveholding, but sometimes the bad guys win, and Sparta is a colorful example of that.

> Leonidas’ 300 men made a brave stand in the mountains, and a superior Persian force wiped them out. You can see it like the Nazis did and the guys in the ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ T-shirts do, as a glorious battle in which an honorable band of brothers sacrificed their lives for their principles. Or you can see it as a tragedy in which the leaders of an oligarchical, slave-dependent society threw away their finest soldiers’ lives, and for what? To briefly delay the Persian Army while failing to achieve their goal of protecting Athens and the rest of northern Greece from the Persian attack?

Interestingly, the Greeks did end up fending off the Persian invasion due to the victory at the Battle of Salamis where the Athenian navy crushed the Persian navy. The Spartan stand at Thermopylae was critical to delay the invasion though, let's not pretend like those deaths were futile.

[GolfPopper]

>My interest in Sparta is that it exemplifies how elite a group of people can become when they focus on one thing.

Except they weren't particularly elite. As (already mentioned) A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry author Bret Devereaux points out[1]: "Instead, what we might say is that the Spartans phalanx was, in most respects, just like every other Greek hoplite phalanx, with the addition that Spartan command and coordination was somewhat better, but hardly excellent by the broader standards of antiquity."

And, as he also observes, any Spartan superiority didn't manifest on the battlefield:

Spartan Victories: 18.5, Spartan Defeats: 18, Draws: 1.5, Spartan Batting Average (victories/battles): 0.486

1. https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

[connorpeters]

I will give it a read, thanks for the source. I'm definitely guilty of indulging in pop culture impressions of the Spartan warrior being the most disciplined and elite singular unit in history so this will be an interesting read.

Does Thermopylae count as a loss by this definition? As I'm sure it does, that doesn't dispel much of the myth of the prowess of the individual Spartan warrior, which is really what I find intriguing about the whole thing.

[jcranmer]

Yes, Thermopylae is counted as a defeat in coalition (the author gives a full list of every battle and his categorization in the linked blog post, you can read it for yourself).

One of the Spartan losses is when they decide to pretend to not be Spartan so they can surprise their opponents with their skill, but they turn out instead to be utterly wrecked by their opponents. The Spartans really do seem to be mediocre fighters (not good, but not bad either) with a stellar PR agency.

[siriaan]

I'd love to see someone make a kind of response to 300 based on the Battle of Leuctra where the Spartans got their butts handed to them by the Thebans

[kergonath]

> I'm definitely guilty of indulging in pop culture impressions of the Spartan warrior being the most disciplined and elite singular unit in history so this will be an interesting read.

There are better examples of forces that were actually good, even if they are less flattering in pop culture. For example, there is a reason why the Romans ended up controlling the Mediterranean and not the Spartans.

[rexpop]

Do you likewise idealize chattel slavers' plantations? Eichmann's bureaucracy?

What do you emulate from King Leopold's "colorful" subjugation of the Congo? How do you coach subordinates to follow the example of the conquistadors who plundered Latin America?

Are we so short of winning "good guys" that we must plumb the depths of evil for role models?

> The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity.

— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

[connorpeters]

Of course not. We must however be reminded in the West that weakness is not the same as goodness and that all the pontificating on virtues doesn't matter if your society can be dominated by another (ie. Athens losing to Sparta). My problem with the article and your response is the notion that anyone interested in the (supposed) military capability of the Spartans are de facto Nazis, when in fact it might just be interesting history we can still learn from. There's a saying about babies and bathwater or something.

[rexpop]

> Of course not.

Why not? There's a saying about babies and bathwater or something.