The Spartans

[fajrdrako]

The Spartans by Paul Cartledge was fascinating. I liked his style; he's nicely readable, and yet historical enough to explain the sources and to discuss the problems with interpreting them. He talks about what is not known about the Spartans as well as what is known.

What a strange, powerful, mesmerizing society. We hear so much about what Athenian culture has given to the world - particularly in terms of philosophical and political thought - they have come to seem very like us. Sparta was the opposite: anti-democratic, war-mongering, elitist, even vicious. And yet their women got to be athletes, and were obviously outspoken, and their heroes are bywords for courage. Before reading this book, probably the only Spartans I could name were Leonidas and the King Cleomenes who was in the wonderful Naomi Mitchison novel, The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Only she calls him Kleomenes.

Things I didn't know about the Spartans, and found remarkable:

• Though they weren't into arts and letters (least of all written historical records), they were very into music and dance. Horsemanship, too - both men and women.


• They were not usually polygamous but there are records of women having more than one husband/lover, presumably for reasons of keeping the Spartan population up (a longstanding problem) and keeping the bloodlines pure. See, only the elite stratum of society was Spartan - they were supported by the Helots (basically a serf class) and the Perioeci (did I spell that right?), a sort of mercantile middle class. Spartans could not go into business or trade, or do anything an artisan class would do. They were warriors, or women belonging to warriors.


• They had two kings who ruled jointly - a Eurypontid king and an Agiad king, descended from (respectively) the sons of Artedamus, Eurypons and Agias. I love the word Eurypontid. Such a nice sound.


• Mind you, a lot of things about the Spartans were not very nice. They were into man-hunting, for example, which made me think of the movie Hard Target. Just to keep the Helots in line. No wonder they were so prone to rebellion. In this respect, Cartledge's final chapter is on hunting - I found it wandered excessively and didn't really make a point.


• In some ways I found it a little difficult from Cartledge's description to understand the details of the Spartan lifestyle, or, even more so, the lifestyle of the Helots around them. At first I thought there was a geographical separation - that the Helots lived in the country on farms, which they ran; that the Pereioci had their own villages; but then there are references to Helot wet-nurses for Spartan babies, so that obviously to some extent the Helots lived among the Spartans, in their households - like household slaves, I would assume. Clearly the Spartan women didn't do their own housework. Who lived in a Spartan household? Male Spartans always ate communally in groups, to which they were elected. Presumably they also had homes, with their wives and children in their homes? If they weren't married by thirty, they had to undergo rituals of public humiliation. Before that point the men lived communally, with male lovers. It seemed a bit of a jigsaw of information to me, with a lot of the pieces missing. Did adults keep separate households of their own? Who would be in that household? Wife, children, lover, Helot slaves? Parents? Were families (for want of better terms) nuclear or extended? Did one generation live under a roof, or more? Presumably young males (and maybe young females) left the household young to live in (or with) the Agoge, but I wasn't sure if that would be a large building (analogous to a school), or a collection of buildings, or tents, or some other form. A Hogwarts for bloodthirsty young homoerotic warriors?


• One interesting practice: that young men would be sent into the wilds to prove their ability to survive.


• I liked Cartledge's reference to "sado-tourists" of the 3rd century who came to Sparta to see the public arena where boys were beaten. (Did he say there were reenactments?)


• In the times I am familiar with, the Middle Ages, the upper class saw their relationship to the serf class as being protective and legislative. The Spartans treated their Helots as enemies and annually renewed the 'war' against them to keep them servile. They hunted and killed them individually to make a point, or maybe even for fun. Obviously they didn't fraternize - and yet they must have had Helots living among them. I find it difficult to keep this picture straight in my head.


• Social conditions seem to have been strict: all boys (except the heirs to the thrones) went to the Agoge, all young men were expected to have male lovers, all older males were expected to marry and have offspring and we warriors for the state. When they had no wars of their own to fight, they became mercenaries - but that was in later, in more decadent times. I wondered what happened to the boys who flunked out of the Agoge, or who had no lover or wife. I guess every had family, by definition.... But in a family of warriors, anyone can be killed in battle at any time. Hmm.


• Though the Spartans liked to adopt and rule other states, they never seem to have expanded the parameters of being a Spartan. The book only mentions one non-Spartan becoming a Spartan, ever. If you didn't have the family background, if you didn't have the Agoge training, you couldn't become a Spartan. (I wondered if adoption outside the bloodline was possible.) Later on, they accepted non-Spartans into their Laceademonan army, but they were still non-Spartans.


• They didn't marry non-Spartans, either. So it was the opposite of Philip of Macedon's policy or marrying princesses from all the neighbouring states to form alliances.


• I enjoyed the appearance of Philip of Macedon on the scene. The wily devil, no wonder I love him. He didn't conquer Sparta. He didn't even take Sparta on. He didn't need to. He took over all the adjacent territory and left them alone. Whether this is the ultimate compliment or the ultimate insult, I'm not sure. Cartledge calls it "the non-settlement of Sparta's position".


• I love the Spartan art. There isn't a lot - they weren't into decorative arts or architectural permanence - but what there is looks sort of Mycenean, only, well, different. Small statues of men naked except for breastplate, weaponry and formidable helmets. Graceful flat-chested women doing athletics. Stylized, but with personality.


• Nakedness seems to have been pretty normal for Spartans, men and women alike.


• It's clear that the Spartans spoke a dialect of their own, probably very like Athenian Greek, but still different. They called Poseidon "Pohedonis", IIRC - I can't find the reference to look it up.


• I liked King Epaminondas.

Usually Cartledge was eminently readable, but sometimes there'd be a sentence or a paragraph I could make no sense of at all. Perhaps occasionally a line of text was misplaced? He threw me once by using the word "legitimate" as a transitive verb, where I would have said "legitimize". (Maybe a British/Canadian difference? The Cambridge Dictionary online seems to think 'legitimate' as a verb is an American usage. Huh.) In one section... after a page describing historical events over the space of a century, Cartledge has a line break, and then starts out with the words "At that time..." and goes on to describe something very specific. I was at a total loss to guess which part of that century (or before it, or after it) "that time" might have been. In fact, I thought there was too much jumping back and forth in time - I'd think we were a couple of generations past someone, and then he'd appear again. Perhaps if I read the book again it would be less confusing. I was having a lot of trouble sorting out the various Leagues and their allegiances - the Achaean League, the Atolian League, the League of Corinth.... Cartledge makes a point of calling the Pelopennesian War the Athenian War, and I just thought that made things more confusing than ever.

Greek history is such fun.

Comments

[thornsilver]

All history is fun. *hearts history*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Truer words never spoke. Or wrote. It doesn't seem to really matter what era or culture you're looking at, it's endlessly fascinating.

[ifeelfinite.livejournal.com]

Agreed!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I also find that each history book I read leads me to two others... or more. And more avenues to explore.

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

In English, and Kiwi, English, "legitimate" is correctly a verb in *this* context:

To *make* legitimate, ie to make a child no longer a bastard by marrying his mother and claiming him as your own.

I've never seen it as a synonym for legitimise, as in make an *action* legitimate, if that's how it was used here.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure now of the context but I think the object of the verb was some sort of legislation.... I find unusual English usage fascinating, and it's amazing what crops up. I wonder where Cartledge is from? I had the impression he was British.... yeah, he works at Cambridge University. (I just looked him up.)

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

Well it was legalese I was thinking of, the Legitimation Act, specifically, so that might make sense if it was legislation...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You know, that's probably correct. It's probably a specifically legal usage.

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

*pleased to have helped figure it out*

See, law and classics. I knew it was a good combination. :-D

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It sure is - especially when those Greeks pretty much started it all with both.