Philosophy Now Forum

You may find this of interest...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/ino ... time.shtml

The isolated Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta was a ferocious opposite to the cosmopolitan port of Athens. Spartans were hostile to outsiders and rhetoric, to philosophy and change.

Two and a half thousand years on, Sparta remains famous for its brutally rigorous culture of military discipline, as inculcated in its young men through communal living, and terrifying, licensed violence towards the Helots, the city-state's subjugated majority. Sparta and its cruelty was used as an argument against slavery by British Abolitionists in the early 1800s, before inspiring the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

Yet Sparta also produced poets of great skill: Tyrteaus wrote marching songs for the young men; Alcman wrote choral lyrics for the young women. Moreover, the city-state's rulers pioneered a radically egalitarian political system, and its ideals were invoked by Plato. Its inhabitants also prided themselves on their wit: we don't only derive the word 'spartan' from their culture, but the word 'laconic'.

Contributors

Paul Cartledge, A G Leventis Professor of Greek Culture and a Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge

Edith Hall, Professor of Classics and Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London

Angie Hobbs, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Senior Fellow in the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Warwick

An example of the 'laconic wit' I've seen mentioned in a couple of places is their response when Phillip of Macedon (Alexander's dad) sent them an ultimatum.

He had already conquered the rest of the Greek city states. He sent a message to the Spartans saying "If I enter Laconia, then I won't leave Sparta standing." They sent back a message just consisting of the single word "If."

Since this is about the 'real' Sparta, you might enjoy the following from somewhere on the net (not my work);

The Spartans were a race renown for their physical prowess and ultimate warrior and also for their beautiful and strong women. But how did they all come to be so?

Firstly, at birth, male children were inspected and if weak were thrown into a nasty gorge.

Infanticide was not uncommon in those days, but the Spartans did it for reasons other than poverty.

Their aim was to create the ultimate soldier. The ultimate warrior that could join up as a link in what was the ultimate land fighting force.

Using advanced cooperation each man half guarded the man to his left, creating an impenetrable wall of spears and shields.

Their fighting skill was unmatched, and they devoted every aspect of their society in persuit of the ultimate army.

The movie was a suprisingly accurate misrepresentation of history despite a few ommittances.

It was actually slaves who rebuilt the wall that leonidus and his 300 doomed men fought from. They pushed back several waves of large numbers in the bottle necked space, but as in the movie they found a secret pass and flanked them. And yes, they died like mad fighting crazy men and in the end got hacked to pieces.

More importantly what they omitted from the movie was the life of a soldier outside of war. At age seven the male children were sent to the "agoge", where they were treated no better than slaves and were forced to steal fight and yes even kill for survival.

If they were whipped for stealing it was not because they stole, but because they didn't get away. If a kid complained about his sword being too short they would say "take a step forward and it will be long enough" (i guess that was a common complaint)

At age 12 Boys were paired up with a soldier who provided food, shelter, and sexual relations.

Did i mention that homosexuality amongst male Spartans is compulsory?

They believed that it incouraged bonds between soldiers who needed to work so well together in combat. If one were to get scared and run he would leave the man next to him open to attack.

In fact when the men came of age they would have to join one of an assortment of social clubs. You could only get in by votes from people already in it so it's a safe bet that you would have to be gay in order to get in.

If you did get in, you would be given an estate and slaves to support you and your potential family. If you couldn't get in, you would be nothing.

Throughout the Spartans prime years things like the agoge and numerous wars, battles, and conflicts killed off any weak males or males incapable of dealing with violence.

By age 25 (fully fledged soldier) each and every spartan warrior would be nothing less than a fighting machine. In essence the entire spartan society worked like a military training camp for every spartan male except for the sons of ruling houses.

The women were also commonly gay, though it was strictly for pleasure. Spartan women often directed slaves and led productive lives taking charge of commercial activities in markets and basically providing an infrastructure to the spartan society.

When it came to reproduction the spartans were well aware that new generations of soldiers are needed. Sometimes reluctantly spartan men would marry women even though they had ongoing sexual relations with perhaps their entire social club. Stories say that sometimes they had to shave women bald, dress them up as men, put them in a dark room, and her husband would slip away from a party at his social club, sleep with her , and slip back into his social club and sleep with his fellow soldiers as usual.

In any case this selective breeding system worked, but their demise illustrates my point.

Toward their end they suffered an earthquake. At that time the slaves used the opportunity to rebel and they took up a fortress.

Despite their fighting skills they were unable to siege the fortress. They called for assistance from the Athenians but while they were on the way the spartans were having second thoughts. They thought the athenians would side with the slaves being that theye were originally greek. out of paranoia they sent them home and because of this the athenians actually did side with the slaves.

Naturally sparta declared war on all greece. In the end the sheer mass of the athenians overwhelmed the spartans. It was their quick anger that led them to challenge greece. In essence they had bread agressiveness into their society to a critical point.

It goes to show that it was the spartans own compatibility with violence that gave them an anihilation that must have seemed like day to day life.

not sure about all that, sounds suspect

I have read this book, by a cambridge prof, which i got, from the library

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spartans-Epic-History-Paul-Cartledge/dp/0330413252/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259088457&sr=1-3



books,profs.... you know it makes sense

Hi nameless



It is commonly argued that this was a form of eugenics, but your author points out precisely why this assertion cannot be made; limited resources.

In societies where resources are limited (historically, damn near all) a parent will commonly only elect to raise a child which brings with it a safe return.

The practice of ritualistically killing children in this manner was not unique to Sparta and so it cannot be argued that it uniquely contributed to Sparta's downfall, aside from the fact that dipping a child in wine is hardly the most precise method of artificial selection; arguing that it bred a group of super-aggressive psychopaths is just plain ass-backwards.

[Super-aggressive strains of rats have been bred in Russian experiments, that also produced super-docile strains. You select which rats can breed once they have had enough time to demonstrate their tendencies, and the selection of rats is not muddied by significant non-genetic factors]



*cough* BS *cough*

Wiki on Spartan 'homosexuality'

History is a muddied affair and even those things that we can say of the Spartans we can only say weakly; we can say that such and such a source supports a proposition.

The person you quote blindly asserts whatever information he has gleaned, much of it being total misinformation. I know of no source that supports Spartan women being homosexual. I cannot, ofcourse, deny it outright as the person you quote may have access to a source unknown to me. The point being that he does not quote any sources (which in history, unlike philosophy, are bloody important).

The part on the fall of Sparta is, however, pure unadulterated fiction.

^^^
I neither condone nor condemn what i offered. It was, I thought, relevent. Strictly FWIW.
By the bye, the Spartan/Greek (overt) homosexuality was legendary. They even inscribed the various acts into their pottery. Which seems to support the assertions in the piece. I know of no valid refutations, so, tentatively, I'll accept the historicity.
Why is it a sign of gay if one sees the '300' more than once? *__-

PS; Wiki is not considered an authorative source.

I know, you made it quite clear in the original post, I was responding to the points only.



Greek homosexuality was an incredibly formalised affair. The formalisation of this practice varied widely between each region and that which was considered the norm in one polis could lose you your citizenship in another. One thing is for sure, the practice was not one of unbridled sexual intercourse.

The wiki source was not supposed to be authoritative; I do not consider anything to be authoritative and was only linking it FWIW.

The consideration of others of the relative authoritativeness of various sources is of little concern to me. Studies have demonstrated that wiki has a comparable accuracy to Encyclopedia Brittanica. For me, this highlights not the lack of worth in wiki, but the importance of being sceptical in regard to all sources.

One thing wiki does have is a list of further sources:

• Thomas F. Scanlon, "The Dispersion of Pederasty and the Athletic Revolution in Sixth-Century BC Greece," in Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West, ed. B. C. Verstraete and V. Provencal, Harrington Park Press, 2005, pp.64-70
• Erich Bethe,Die Dorische Knabenliebe: ihre Ethik und ihre Idee, 1907, 441, 444
• Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, II.13-14
• Cicero, De Rep., iv. 4
• Aelian, Var. Hist., III.12
• Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Deipnosophists, XIII: Concerning Women

I have read before that the Spartans did not engage in same-sex sexual acts, but I forget where. Ofcourse, exactly what counts as sufficiently sexual to make a person homosexual is, I think, a somewhat dubious area. I had a debate with a friend of mine recently on the nuance of this, and whether it makes a man gay if he enjoys a woman penetrating his rectum with a strap-on dildo. Discuss.

It so happens that human sexuality is a continuum; at one far end, there is (perhaps) someone (almost) completely hetero, and at the other end, (almost) completely homo. The vast majority, for all intents and purposes, everyone, falls in between somewhere, is bi- to varying degrees.
Thats my understanding, anyway (subject to revision!).

About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine had a phase in which he compared everything to classical Sparta, especially to the Agoge. He claimed that the British public (boarding) school system was based upon, or inspired by it.

The use of the word egalitarian must be taken with a large pinch of salt.
The vast majority of the inhabitants of the Peloponnese would never have
recognised the meaning of the word. If it means equal then all who were not
specifically classed as Spartiates were not considered human, and the spartiates
themselves were equal in their right to fight and die for the state. Plato was a
proto-fascist -and enemy of the Open Society according to Popper.

Plato definitely did not encourage sceptical inquiry for all.

HOMOSEXUALITY IN SPARTA is probably on the most notorious false accusation of the modern time.Used only to promote homosexuality and make a famous examples.It started in modern times by wrongly understanding or translating the word ''lover'',the name for the mentor of the young Spartan which was just that,a personal mentor,and the Greek term has nothing to do with love in our modern English sense.And every educated Greek knows it.


Add the strong evidence that doric Laconians had been influenced by doric Cretans in their legal system and there was the possibilty that Cretan "anti-effemination" laws were adopted also,and those strictly forbided homosexual relations with boys especially.
Even Plutarch in life of Lycourgos wrote that the relationship between young men and mentors was chaste.


Of couse homosexuals and paedophiles did exist.
Yet the practice was frowned upon.


The lawmaker Lykourgos characterized as most horrid if someone desired the body of a fellow man or boy and set that ''lovers'' /aka mentors should abstain from this if they happen to get the urge(in some cities in Greece it happened)

Plutarch also (Laked. επιτηδ. 7,237 c) informs us that whoever tried to ''abuse'' some man sexually was striped of his civil rights for life...that meant he could no longer be a hoplite in war,and basically all other parts of his life crumbled,that was even worse than death punishment.

"The (lycourgian) law allowed admiration towards the mental gifts of the youths but any physical desire was an abomination that declared carnal and not spiritual love . Whoever by law was condemned thus was dishonored (striped of his civil rights) for life ".

And finally there were many beautiful love quotes from Archaic Sparta,and Spartan women were known for being very healthy and good looking.

PLEASE FOREIGNERS WHO DONT EVEN SPEAK GREEK STOP MAKING UP FACTS TO SUIT YOUR PICTURE OR OTHER POLITICALLY CORRECT YET HISTORICALLY INCORRECT VIEW.

Don't try to make yourself an authority on this matter when you are clearly misusing the facts!!!!Many of the prof would turn their back if you tried to represent those arguments.No one has the time to loose or patience with those such as you.But I will,for this once..
-Romans,ROMANS ??? And what is with Xenophon "he caused lovers to abstain from boys no less than parents abstain from sexual intercourse with their children and brothers and sisters with each other. (X.Lac Const. 2.4)"......Was he influenced by Roman anti gay politics?You see how your ''theory'' holds NO water??

Aristotle, no laconophile, goes on at length about just how non-homosexual the Spartans were. He laments it in fact, for if they were more homosexual like the Celtoi the virtual Gynocracy he decries would not have power

-''By a few''(you would know right,HOW IN HELL WOULD YOU KNOW?? PROVIDE A QUOTE/PROOF)???

DID THEY HAD TO BE GAY INFECTED TO MAKE ANTI GAY LAW??? NO, BECAUSE THEY SAW THE AMOUNT OF THAT SICKNESS AMONG ATHENIANS OR IN THERA, AND THE WORST OF ALL IT WAS NOT CONDEMNED IN ATHENS. But we talk about Sparta here,not Athens,and I have provided the proofs homosexuality and pederasty was CONDEMNED IN SPARTA.And even you agree the anti gay laws in Sparta existed. To quote you:''As it occurred to you, why such a law was introduced?'' And by the way,that ''introduction'' came as soon as 8th c BC.So basically,in historical terms it was always present.



This is really in the fashion of gay people(not to say you are,but the sinister style is there),as well as the question quoted above. I though I would not dignify with an answer such low attempt but I will. No one said the homosexuality did not exist,later on in classical times there was the famous Sacred band of Theban rich brats, in some cases,homosexuals existed even in Sparta(no proof whatsoever but the benefit of doubt). BUT THE PRACTICE WAS FROWNED UPON IN SPARTA. Do you follow?. AND THEY WANTED TO MAKE THAT OFFICIALLY WRONG AND BANNED . Again that is not my or someone elses opinion but there are EVIDENCES.

As much as I know,gay people say they were born as gay,so even Sparta would not be excluded from mother natures cruel game.So Lykourgus wanted to make sure,if mother nature allowed it,he or Spartans would not. END OF STORY.

Why is that hard to cope with? I know why - because gay people today would loose valuable reference to ancient heroes. Sick and offensive gay politics isn't it? And although POLITICALLY CORRECT TODAY (in some western countries at least) it is COMPLETELY HISTORICALLY INCORRECT.

Also I don't know how can you make gay person by force,and especially make a warrior out of feminine queer??????

And to end.What were your (ancient) references that said homosexuality was ''COMMON PRACTICE IN SPARTA''..In my 6 years in university,and masters degree in it, studying and teaching MY history,I never ever read that term in context of homosexuality?????

By the way, Sparta ruled Peloponnese in Archaic times until very early Classical times,from c. 650-470's with peak of it's power,when ''laws'' were most revered,in roughly 520-480BC. Why you mention the topic is about Classical times(when many things changed for Sparta from roots) it is unclear to me.

This amount of ignorance and audacity can not be left without an answer. Can the author please provide sources for this awful lies,other than wikipedia or similar ''scientific'' reference.
To educate you, only thing compulsory in Sparta was marriage with women,WE HAVE EVIDENCE..people who did not marry were punished,and could even be stripped out of their citizen status,the biggest punishment of all.NOTHING ELSE,it was not even meant to provide shelter as you said.. And if you see ''male clubs'' gay,that that is your problem,but they were everything but gay..Such an idiocy at display here it is unbelievable.
Male clubs or συσσίτια to be precise,was meal group,club if you want, where they sat drank some wine,not too much in Sparta,drank people were whipped,and ate.Talking and joking,settling arguments and quarrels,WE HAVE A PROOF FOR THAT AND NOT ANY MENTION ANYWHERE OF THE SEXUAL RELATIONS OF ANY KIND, EVEN WITH WOMEN. Groups like that are not uncommon today either. And all got in when turned certain age,so there was not really an IF THEY GOT IN story you falsely represented. And being queer to get in I will not even comment.Safe bet??????????????

As for male bondage, I was training wrestling for 14 years. We were best buddies,the 4 of us,traveling to competitions,training,even eating,to of them were roommates in university. We are still very close.We train still,and training in wrestling is done with very little clothes.One of them is was my best man/godfather at wedding.If you add the war part,and multiply the number 4 to 16,you get the Spartan group(you do realize Sparta was 5 villages,not all people had that bondage between themselves,not even in the same oba/village) Now do you mean to tell me I am gay,or any of us. Would you think that was a ''safe bet'' ..Now I dont know if insulting is permitted on this forum,but the safe bet is you could not sell that sick story to my face and live.Think about that when you throw such disgustful lie about someone else's history.

I CAN NOT STRESS ENOUGH HOW IMPORTANT IT IS FOR YOU PEOPLE NOT TO MAKE UP HISTORY AND SHAPE IT TO YOUR IMAGINATION!!!!! I understand notion of history is very relative across the Atlantic,the nation itself is 200 y.o.(Little younger than my university.) and most of it written by Holywood. But that does not mean it is a joke.Just because it sounds cool,and Hollywood is making money on fooling with ancient Greek people,does not mean you can treat them like cartoon characters. And especially if you come to a crazy idea to actually visit Greece,saying that could get you physically hurt pretty bad.

The book on post number two is written by Prof Paul Cartledge.Whom I recently had a discussion on other issue.He won,and made me revise some of the points.But that particular book is about later Classical times,when Sparta was not in it’s peak.The peak lasted around the Thermopyles and death of Pausanias the leader of Plateia later in decade. So that book can not be used as a reference to the ‘’golden age’’ of Sparta,when most of the picture we have about them was shaped.

And to end issue once for all. There is pottery evidence on homosexuality in Athens. There is even more evidence reference on group sex in Athens yet we dont say they all did it in 3-4 somes, don’t we.
As for Sparta,there was virtually NO MENTION OF HOMOSEXUALITY UNLESS IT WAS BANNING OF IT. All confusion started when some Victorian idiot wrongly translated word ‘’lover’’ in it’s form that suggest physical relation,which it did not.Every Greek will tell you that. If he understood the meaning of ‘’lover’’ as mentor,the love you have to your friend of teacher to her students, almost father child relation.we would not talk bout this issue(Read Pressfield on this male relation,he explained it well). But the idiot victorian did not,and the picture started to be shaped to fit the homosexual context,everything was put in that context. AND I CAN NOT BELIEVE HOW FAR IT ACTUALLY WENT, HOW FAR GAYS WENT IN ADVERTISING THIS LIE, AND WHAT KINDS OF SICK PICTURES DID THEY MAKE,like our friend nameless above.