Spartan

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In addition to Lycurgus and Agesilaus, this volume includes the Lives of Agis and Cleomenes, as well as Plutarch’s Sayings of Spartans. Also included is the work on Spartan Society attributed to Xenophon, which adds a lot to its value as a resource. Plutarch’s sources are discussed in the Introduction to each of the Lives, and there’s a glossary as well as a list of Spartan kings. All in all a great book with some minor flaws. Understanding Sparta is important for the understanding both of our own history and as well the political history of a number of Greek states – in addition to being an endlessly fascinating subject in itself. He’s a wonderful source for Sparta because he talks about the Spartans when he’s just talking about events in Sparta itself and, as well as the Battle of Thermopylae, he also describes the Spartans at the Battle of Plataea, the following summer, when they defeat the Persians. There are a lot of snippets about Sparta in Herodotus’s account. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount.

When asked by a woman from Attica: "Why are you Spartan women the only ones who can rule men?" she said; "Because we are also the only ones who give birth to men". This year, I have decided to concentrate heavily on books about Ancient Greece and by Ancient Greek authors. To ensure that I do not unwittingly accept historical prejudices, I decided to start out with Will Durant's The Life of Greece, following it up with this collection of short essays on Sparta by Plutarch, who lived in the 2nd century A.D. The Sayings sections are a real treat as well. The Spartans were raised to express themselves in few words, so pithy witticisms abound. Some of them are laugh-out-loud funny. Take the Spartan men's tendency to wear their hair long, bearing in mind Lycurgus' statement that "it renders handsome men better looking, and ugly ones more frightening." And there's not a little manly bravado mixed in, like Leonidas' remark at the battle of Thermopylae, when the sky was invisible due to the number of Persians' arrows: "How pleasant then, if we're going to fight them in the shade." According to the ancient Greek historian Plutarch, who wrote several centuries after Sparta’s heyday in the 400s B.C., Spartans began developing soldiers shortly after birth, when male infants were evaluated by Spartan elders. The “well-built and sturdy” children were allowed to live, while those who were deemed unhealthy or deformed were left at the foot of a mountain to die. One more question before we get to the books, which will lead us into Herodotus: Athens has lots of very well-known sources: poets, philosophers, historians and playwrights whom the historian can consult and mine for information. Some of those Athenians deal with Sparta, too. But is there any homegrown literature or documents from which you can understand the history of Sparta? As a historian, how do you gather your raw material?And were the Helots a conquered people who were enslaved, so they weren’t part of the Spartan ‘race’? They would be astonished to learn just how hard it was for Dorothy and her pilot partner Pauline to forge a career for themselves in that sector.” You have to follow a methodological approach that most modern historians don’t like. You can’t just say, ‘All right, we’ll find the Spartan narrative about the Spartans’ because there isn’t one. We’ve got 7th century poetry in fragmentary form written by Spartans—Alcman and Tyrtaeus. But there were question marks even in Antiquity as to whether those two poets were actually Spartan. Later legend had it that Alcman was from Lydia in Asia Minor and an increasingly elaborate legend grew up that Tyrtaeus was actually an Athenian schoolmaster who went to Sparta. Some of the sources are bizarre. In later ones, Tyrtaeus becomes blind or one-eyed, and mad with a limp. He becomes less and less like an ideal Spartan, because later writers couldn’t believe that the Spartans could have produced quality poets.

Sparta doesn’t change much in the Classical period. The rules are that to be a citizen you have to have a certain amount of land and you need the Helots to work that for you. They were all members of a common mess and they required to bring in a certain amount of food to that mess each year. If they defaulted on that, they would be effectively relegated from citizenship. There’s a status of ‘inferior’ that we suddenly hear about in the early 4th century, and it’s obvious that it’s been a problem at some point in time in the 5th century, as well.Yes. Thermopylae was fought by the Spartans plus the Peloponnesian and some Central Greeks as well. The Athenians were, at that stage, occupied with the fleet at the Battle of Artemisium, which popular culture versions of the story tend to leave out. Other examples of the Spartan way of living were provided in a book called Spartan Society by Xenophon.

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? 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. Young people wore one item of clothing throughout the year so they'd become disciplined and ignore the extremes of hot and cold weather. His 1930s portrait is so evocative of the era, almost haunting in quality now. Charlotte is delighted that Edward’s painting is in the book.

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I have it in my head that Herodotus was an Athenian, but he was born in Halicarnassus, what is now Bodrum. Would he have thought of himself as an Athenian? I suppose that supports Thucydides’s case. If he didn’t bother to mention anything about the physical characteristics of the place, perhaps they really were that unimpressive. On Sparta is a rather mixed bag. First, there are four biographies of Spartan kings: Lycurgus, Agesilaus, Agis, and Cleomenes. There follows by far the most interesting sections, a chapter of "Saying of Spartans" followed by "Sayings of Spartan Women." [Note: There are no sayings of Athenian women, except for hetairae like Aspasia.] Finally, there is an essay attributed to Xenophon called "Spartan Society." 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. Rod’s contribution to Alison’s book describes the complexities of maintaining a Spartan in perfect flying condition. We therefore get an insight into the Gower-Spicer daily routine of running a joy-flight business and flying over 20,000 passengers. Pauline and Dorothy owned two Isle of Wight-built Spartans.”