
In Defense of Sparta - hoffmannesque
https://newrepublic.com/article/154685/defense-sparta
======
jkingsbery
"Sparta preserved its regional dominance more by restraint than by hunger for
conquest. Thucydides’s history portrays the Spartans as reluctant to go to war
and often more merciful than their more liberal-minded opponents."

As Donald Kagan writes in his book about the Peloponnesian War, this was very
likely self interested restraint - the entire basis of their economy was the
exploitation of the Helots, and there was a fear that battles of conquest
would have resulted in a revolt back in Athens. There was also the fact that
every time the Spartans attempted even modest naval excursions, it completely
failed, making a larger empire in an area with a lot of water impractical.

I totally agree with emulating the best in other cultures as the other says at
the bottom in summary, but in some cases, there are trade-offs that are hard
to decouple. In the case of Sparta, the freedom to ignore the accumulation of
wealth was a luxury earned by an elite on the forced labor of others.

~~~
jkingsbery
"a revolt back in Athens" \- I meant "a revolt back in Sparta."

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cobbzilla
This article totally glosses over the Helots, the Spartans permanent slave
underclass. Any “defense” of Sparta should have some explanation for this
horrible situation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots)

~~~
squirrelicus
My God really? Slavery was the uniform norm for almost all of human history
[0]. If nothing good can come of a society that enslaved others, then the
logical corollary is an incredibly short sighted and unnecessarily nihilistic
view of the journey of humanity. Can we give history a break?

[0]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Sl...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Slavery_abolition.svg/1280px-
Slavery_abolition.svg.png)

Edit: before somebody says blah blah race, there isn't a race on Earth that
wasn't subjected to slavery in history.

~~~
tempguy9999
A very great deal of good can come of exploiting others; a whole lot of good -
for _me_. As for _them_ , fuck 'em. They're only <insert rationalisation
here>.

Owning a slave pre-industrial revolution doubles your manpower. Owning ten
multiplies it by 10.

And BTW slavery still exists, either literally or functionally. Plenty of
sweatshops in the world, and I hear chocolate isn't always grown in happy
edens.

~~~
squirrelicus
"Functional" slavery as your implication describes is so catastrophically
different from actual owning of persons that it's incomprehensibly dishonest
and devalues the very real reality of slavery in past and present in the
developing world. First world perspective, when you think having a job is the
same as being owned.

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
Halfway down I was presented with a link to another Newrepublic article: "The
Sparta Fetish Is a Cultural Cancer The myth of the mighty warrior-state has
enchanted societies for thousands of years. Now it fuels a global fascist
movement."

~~~
azernik
This is an explicit response to that piece, and even quotes it in the third
graph.

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meerita
As an amateur historian, I never understood the fascination for Sparta. They
were quite powerful in militia, but not for so long and they got instantly
owned once republican values were on the rise. They were famous in a period of
time, but not more than that. It was a totalitarian system, with little
freedom value to my eyes in comparison to Athens or Rome, for example.

~~~
scottlocklin
>As an amateur historian, I never understood the fascination for Sparta.

Well, for one thing, Plato was an adherent of the 30 tyrants, who were allied
and admirers of the Spartans. Since he kind of invented Western Civilization,
Laconophilia has a rather long and storied tradition.

~~~
meerita
By 369 BC (~20 years before Plato's death), the Thebans defetead the Spartans
with the messenians (the helots). That was the end of Sparta as a major
military power. After this, the Spartan men had to work on farms to feed
themselves and their children, and they couldn’t train all the time. So they
weren’t the best army anymore, and Sparta became just another small town,
without much power.

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merpnderp
This article seems well meaning until the end where it hints that forced
participation in the community might be something to admire about Sparta. Talk
about illiberal and fascist.

~~~
wtdata
> Talk about illiberal and fascist.

Or communist, as the article itself mentions.

------
krapp
Also posted herein: "The Sparta Fetish is a Cultural Cancer[0,1]"

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20639828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20639828)

[1][https://newrepublic.com/article/154563/sparta-myth-rise-
fasc...](https://newrepublic.com/article/154563/sparta-myth-rise-fascism-
trumpism)

------
arminiusreturns
Something I recently learned was the importance of the Spartans claim to have
been descendants of Heracles (Hercules), and that they had a much more
interesting power structure than is often assumed, but in general almost all
of their stranger idiosyncrasies and rituals stemmed from that claim and the
supposed instruction commanded to them by Hercules.

------
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1
Sparta's modern day equivalent is Israel with Palestinians as Helots.

Universal military service (aka Helot suppression) for all citizens, just like
Sparta.

~~~
azernik
There's one big difference - Israel has an economy independent of the
Palestinians that is sufficient to sustain its society. This makes isolation
and separation a more viable strategy, and makes the dynamic closer to that of
late European imperialism. (There are particularly close parallels with the
French in Algeria.)

