The True Origins Of The Spartan Soldiers | The Spartans | Odyssey

[Music] when we think of ancient greece this is the image that most of us have in mind the parthenon in athens this is where the blueprint for western civilization received its first draft philosophy and science art and architecture democracy itself have their roots here and they're all embodied in the serene lines of one of the most famous buildings in the world but there's more to the story of ancient greece than athens this is another kind of monument to a very different kind of greek city it's the burial mound of 300 warriors from sparta who in 480 bc made a heroic last stand in the past at thermopylae resisting a massive invasion force from the persian empire surrounded and outnumbered by about 40 to 1 they put up a spectacular fight before they were hacked to pieces they're interred here and honored by this inscription which still echoes down the centuries go tell the spartans stranger passing by that here obedient to their laws we lie unlike athens sparta can't boast of its philosophers and politicians and artists it's famous for two things it's frugality which is where we get our word spartan from and its fighters in everyday spartan life these two were intimately linked the whole of spartan society conformed to a strict code of extreme discipline and self-sacrifice their aim to create the perfect state protected by perfect warriors [Music] the pursuit of perfection made sparta a strange place where money was outlawed equality was enforced and weak children were exterminated male homosexuality was compulsory and women enjoyed a degree of social and sexual freedom that was quite simply unheard of in the ancient world [Music] its history is one of ruthless militarism slavery on a massive scale and a system that can sometimes seem like a premonition of modern day totalitarian regimes [Music] but sparta was the first greek city to define the rights and duties of its citizens and it can also claim alongside athens to have saved the western world from enslavement by the persian empire although spartan hardline ideals don't have the charisma of athenian culture they've meant as much to western civilization as the ideals represented by the parthenon so in a sense the story of the spartans is the story of ourselves and how some of the ideas that have moulded western civilization were first tried out in a warrior state on the greek mainland over two and a half thousand years ago [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello [Music] the story of the spartans takes me on a journey through some dramatic history and there's a setting to match over there is the peloponnese a huge peninsula crowned by rugged mountains and scored by deep gorges that forms the southernmost part of the greek mainland the ancient greeks thought of it as an island and you can see why it does have a brooding closed in feel cold shouldering the outside world but long before the spartans of our story arrived on the scene this part of the world was making history many of the greeks who fought in the trojan war some 3000 years ago came from here agamemnon the leader of the greeks ruled over mycenae in the eastern peloponnese and to the south in sparta was the palace of menelaus and his wife helen for helen of troy whose beauty caused the trojan war was once helen of sparta but at some point around 1100 bc it all disappeared no one knows for sure what happened earthquakes slave revolts even asteroids have been blamed but all over the eastern mediterranean the world of helen went under in a cataclysm of fire and destruction a remnant clung on for a few hundred years but finally the dark ages came to greece and the threat of history snapped [Music] and during those centuries of darkness out of the north new people came seeking more hospitable lands they brought with them a new greek dialect their sheep and goats and a few simple possessions they settled all over the peloponnese and some found their way to the lands that once belonged to king menelaus it was a journey worth making [Music] [Applause] the people who came here must have thought they'd found a shangri-la down there is the plane of the eurotas river 50 miles north to south of precious fertile farmland and a river runs through it all year round in land hungry greece where 70 percent of the land can't be farmed and the rest is squeezed between the mountains and the sea that's a lot of elbow room to the west are the spectacular tajitas mountains rising to more than eight thousand feet in places patches of snow still linger while down on the plane spring is turning into summer the slopes once teamed with game deer hare and wild boar rich pickings for the new arrivals but what statistics can't convey is the striking quality of this place a fantastic sense of security everywhere you look on every horizon you're bounded by hills and mountains it's not claustrophobic just safe you feel that everything you could possibly want is here if you could just lay claim to it and keep the rest of the world at bay and so the herdsmen traded in their sheep for olive trees and settled down here a new sparta came into being and the new spartans built this temple the menilaen to honour the legendary king and his wayward wife in the period of renewal following the dark ages new cities like sparta appeared all over greece they varied in size and power but had one thing in common they were all governed by a set of mutually agreed laws and customs the rules by which people agreed to live varied that the aim was broadly the same to create good order and justice and to protect against chaos and lawlessness today in sparta archaeologists are still piecing together the story of the people who first came here some 3000 years ago and built an ideal city a utopia it's not an easy task because they left few clues behind them and much of what they did leave was buried or destroyed when the modern day city was built but whenever there's a building program precious new pieces of the puzzle are revealed every find is precious because the spartans didn't leave as much in the way of stuff unlike the athenians they were famous for not building for not making things and for not writing about themselves so of all the cities and civilizations in the ancient world the spartans remain the most intriguing and mysterious take for example sparta's kings since time immemorial sparta had not one but two kings at the same time two royal houses twice the potential for the rows that all monarchies are prone to the spartans explained this unique arrangement by claiming that their kings were direct descendants of the great great grandsons of heracles the strongman of greek myth according to legend it was this pair of twins who rested control of the peloponnese from the descendants of agamemnon the stories that people tell about themselves are always revealing and this tale of a land grab by a pair of aggressive usurpers themselves descended from the most macho man in mythology sent out a worrying message to the neighbors and it wasn't long before the spartans started throwing their weight around seizing control of the whole of the eurotask valley enslaving non-spartans or categorizing them as peri-oikoi meaning those who live around the periokoi became a disenfranchised cast of craftsmen and traders sparta's economic muscle but sorting out their immediate neighbors was just the start of sparta's aggressive expansionism despite the generous acres of the eurotas valley sparta like the rest of greece was always hungry for more farmland other cities dealt with this by founding colonies satellite settlements that would eventually spread as far west as the straits of gibraltar and as far east as the crimea in the black sea the spartans came up with their own take on colonisation they turned their eyes west and began to wonder what opportunities there were beyond the mountains it was there that they would go to satisfy their land hunger it was there that shangri-la would reveal its darker side because it was there that a slave nation would be created to serve the spartan master race [Music] the journey through the gorges of the tajitas mountains is as spectacular now as it must have been some 2800 years ago when the armies of sparta headed west in search of conquest [Music] several days hard march through the mountains would bring them to the territory of the missenians the spartans weren't just coming for their land they wanted their freedom too they intended to turn the missenians on mass into hellets the word translates as captives that means more bluntly slaves slavery in ancient greece was an accepted fact of life but slaves were supposed to be foreigners barbarians who spoke no greek and so were obviously suited by nature to servitude the enslavement of fellow greeks and on a massive scale was something else again and the crushing of masini would set sparta apart from the rest of greece it also shaped the kind of place sparta became wary of unrest paranoid about revolt enslaving the missenians was no easy task it took two full-scale wars each lasting 20 years or more we know something about the second war because we have an eyewitness to the events one of the first identifiable eyewitnesses known to history he was called turtius a spartan soldier and just as importantly a poet it is a fine thing for a brave man to die when he has fallen among the front ranks while fighting for his homeland let us fight with spirit for this land and let us die for our children no longer sparing our lives come on you young men make the spirit in your heart strong and valiant and do not be in love with life when you are a fighting man tertius was a war poet but hardly at the wilfred owen school i doubt he had any concept of the pity of war his verses were more like battle cries barked out with the directness of a sergeant major putting backbone into the shurkas and faint hearts look if you want this land you're gonna have to fight for it this is the kind of fighter that turtius addresses in his poems he was called a hoplite an infantryman armed with an eight-foot spear and round shield by the end of the seventh century practically all greek cities had their own contingents of hoplites these weren't full-time professional soldiers they were farmers who swapped plows for spears in defense of their communities by standing side by side with their neighbours these militiamen demonstrated not just their courage but their status as citizens this is olympia home of the famous games it was also the unofficial shrine of the hoplite fighter for this was where you'd come to dedicate your arms to the gods in thanks for victory [Music] that's the hoplon or round shield the cardinal item of equipment for a hoplite and probably where he got his name you'd have held it by thrusting your left arm through that central armband and then grasping onto a leather thong at the rim it was made of wood and metal and would have weighed around 20 pounds which is a hell of a weight if you think of carrying that for a day's fighting but to let your arm fall and the shield drop was the ultimate disgrace hoplite fighting was a team effort half your shield was for you the other half for the man to your left the hop lights would form into densely packed ranks called a phalanx seven or eight deep and perhaps fifty shields across coordination and discipline were important but most important of all was trust if your neighbor broke and ran you'd be left exposed to the spear points of the enemy when two phalanxes met the tendency was for each line to shift to the right your natural instinct was always to tuck yourself as far as possible behind your neighbor's shield at that moment the discipline of the phalanx threatened to collapse to be effective you just had to grit your teeth and stand your ground turtius had some typically helpful advice those who dare to stand fast at one another's side and to advance towards the front ranks in hand-to-hand conflict they die in smaller numbers and they keep the troops behind [Music] safe [Applause] [Applause] there wasn't much in the way of tactics once the shield walls came together the battlefields all but disappeared in a dust cloud as the two opposing masses of bronze and muscle heaved against each other the rear ranks provided the traction pushing forward like rugby players in a scrum it was in the front three ranks within range of the enemy's spear points but things got deadly it was there that you'd have come face to face with this a gorgon emblazoned on your enemies shields this was the goddess whose gaze had the power to turn men to stone and in the sweaty stabbing frenzy of the battle ending up inches from her must have been a literally petrifying experience ultimately sparta would surpass all other greek cities in the art of this particular kind of fighting but first they had to beat and enslave their neighbors the missenians this was finally achieved around the year 650 bc for the next 300 years the missenians would be forced to slave in the fields of their spartan masters like asses worn out by heavy burdens according to tertius but now that masini had been won the critical question for the spartans became then and for centuries to come how do we keep it elsewhere in greece cities were being torn apart by civil war between rich and poor with the spoils of messini up for grabs the chances of that happening in sparta were greatly increased to keep their paradise safe the spartans chose to act in a totally radical way from now on utopia was their aim they would dedicate themselves to the creation of a perfect society and it would be modeled on the hoplite phalanx disciplined collective and unselfish there was going to be a revolution in shangri-la every revolution needs its great leader and this is sparta's lycaurgus the wolf worker i can't put my hand on my heart and say that he existed but the spartans believed in him for them he was a miracle worker someone who created heaven on earth following the advice of the gods themselves whether it was him or a bunch of people or a whole generation who knows but someone here embarked on a social experiment that would create one of the most extreme civilizations in the ancient world the revolution that transformed sparta took place around 650 bc when sparta's neighbors the massenians were finally defeated and enslaved in order to keep the hellets quiet and as importantly to stop themselves falling out over the spoils of war the spartans set out to become the most formidable disciplined and professional hoplite warriors that greece had ever seen the whole of spartan society became in effect a military training camp spartan men would neither fish nor farm manufacture nor trade they would simply fight and if they weren't fighting they were training and if they weren't training they were hanging out with their fellow fighters the family unit counted for very little what mattered was bonding with their male peers bolstering the solidarity of the phalanx it was a program that they pursued with typical single-mindedness being born spartan was not enough all male spartans had to earn their citizenship through long years of competitive struggle and the survival of one of the most grueling training systems ever invented the first test came early this ravine a few miles out of sparta was known as the apotheti or deposits it was also called the place of rejection because it was down there that a newly born child would be thrown if he didn't match up to spartan standards of physical perfection infanticide was common throughout ancient greece unwanted babies usually girls were left on a hillside sometimes they'd be placed in a basket or protective pot so that there was at least a chance of someone or something coming along and taking the child in in sparta as ever things were very different boys rather than girls were the usual victims and it wasn't the parents but the city elders who decided whether they lived or died there was absolutely no possibility of a broody vixen or kindly shepherd rescuing the newborn child once they'd been tossed down there the city elders decision was final and absolute surviving the apothe was just the start for the boys at the age of seven they were taken from their families and placed in a training system called the agogi it means literally rearing and the children were treated little better than animals for spartan boys this was a classroom the wild foothills of mount tajitas where they'd have spent much of their time they were organized into bui their spartan word for a herd of cattle an older child was put in charge of them responsible for their discipline and punishment and he was known as a boy herd emphasis was on surviving coping on the minimum each child was given just one cloak to last them all year round which seems fine on an afternoon like this but in winter here it drops to minus six food supplies were short and they were encouraged to steal to supplement their rations if they were caught they were flogged not for the act of stealing but simply for not getting away with it it was as much a trial by ordeal as it was in education the mountains also provided the backdrop for one of sparta's most controversial and disputed institutions the crypteer or secret service brigade membership of which was reserved for the boys who'd shown particular promise the really hard cases were singled out given a knife and turned loose into the wilds by day they'd lie low but at night they'd infiltrate the valleys hunting down and murdering any hellers that they caught exactly how the cryptera operated and the kind of hit rate it had has always been a mystery but the mere rumor of bloodthirsty adolescent death squads roaming the countryside was enough to institute a reign of terror the perfect tactic to keep a slave population quiet and obedient though sparta encouraged the collective spirit it placed as higher value on individual achievement the boys were tested constantly against each other and against their own limitations this is the site of the sanctuary of artemis or fear and it was here that the competitive nature of spartan society had its most extreme form of expression assuming you'd survived the first five years of the agogi system age 12 you were brought here for a brutal rite of passage the altar up there was piled high with cheeses your challenge was simple to steal as many cheeses as possible in front of the altar there was a line of older boys each armed with a whip their instruction to defend the altar showing neither mercy nor restrained indoctrinated with the tenets of endurance and perseverance and desperate to excel in a public display the twelve-year-old boys braved the gauntlet again and again and again meeting the whips face on they sustained the most horrific injuries and some we're told were beaten to death [Music] it's easy to find yourself reeling back at the sheer brutality of a system that seems as alien and violent as these clay masks found at the sanctuary of artemis orthea and it's not just modern audiences that find the spartans shocking the philosopher aristotle argued that they turned their children into animals while other greeks pictured them as bees swarming around a hive creatures stripped of their individuality it's been a popular conception of sparta through the centuries but one that misses an important point being a part of any mass activity can be fantastically liberating if you've ever been in a mexican wave in a football ground or sung in a choir or taken part in a protest march you'll know that being part of a crowd doesn't diminish you it makes you stronger your reach is greater your sense of self is magnified and that was the fundamental attraction of the spartan system the possibility of transcending your limitations as an individual and becoming part of something bigger and better from the age of 12 onwards the boys training became if possible even more exacting reading and writing we're told were taught no more than was necessary but music and dancing were regarded as essential [Music] the battlefields on which hoplites clashed were once memorably described as the dancing flaws of war and a phalanx that was able to move together in a coordinated way made for a formidable dancing partner so the spartans spent many hours perfecting what was known as war music a rhythmic drill in which changes in direction and pace were communicated musically the spartans earned the reputation for being the most musical and the most warlike of people at the age of 20 with their training nearing completion spartan males faced their most crucial test election to one of the common messes or dining clubs where they'd be expected to spend most of their time when they weren't training or fighting but entry to these exclusive gentlemen's clubs was not guaranteed election to the common mess was by the vote of existing members if you fail to measure up you could be blackballed and then that was that you were a failed spartan publicly humiliated excluded from the society into which you've been born it must have been a living hell if on the other hand you were elected you were given a big fat portion of land by the state and a quarter of heller slaves to support you and your family you are now one of the homioi the equals the warrior elite at the top of sparta's hierarchy the common messes which lay a mile or so out of the centre of sparta were an essential part of the city's social engineering intended to keep discord and civil strife at bay old and young mixed here easing generational conflicts a constant source of friction elsewhere in greece more importantly rich and poor met on an equal footing the differences between them hidden by a rigorously enforced code of conspicuous non-consumption in egalitarian sparta the rule was even if you have got it don't flaunt it and it was applied to everything from houses to clothes even to food elsewhere in greece rich men would lay on a couple of prostitutes crack open some emperor of wine and invite their mates around to feast on lark's tongues and honey roasted tuna in sparta there was no time for fine dining in the common messes the dish of the day every day was a concoction made of boiled pig's blood and vinegar known as melas zomas black soup an old joke goes there's a man from siberis in southern italy the town infamous for its luxury and gluttony he was told the recipe for black soup ah he said now i understand why the spartans are so willing to die spartan frugality may have shocked their contemporaries but to a modern audience their diet leaving aside the black soup sounds nutritious and healthy judging from the contented expression on the face of this spartan diner my curcus's system paid off well nourished and free from the need to make living or keep up with the neighbors this is someone who despite the demands of spartan society knew the good life it's also the face of an entirely new kind of human being a citizen spartan society was one of the first to introduce a form of social contract where the duties of an individual were balanced by certain privileges and rights it's a profound concept and one that was current in sparta 100 years or so before any other greek city was even beginning to think along similar lines but utopias need protecting and in the year 480 bc disturbing news reached sparta the persian empire was on the move a huge invasion force was heading west by land and sea the time had come to see whether sparta's celebrated warriors would live up to their fearsome reputation and save the greek world from [Music] destruction [Music] archaeology came relatively late to sparta it wasn't until 1906 that a british team began the first systematic digs in 1925 there was a major find a striking life-sized bust of a spartan warrior dating from the 5th century bc these lantern slides record the moments of discovery [Music] when the bust was inched out of the earth and it became clear he was a magnificent warrior one of the great workmen said without a moment's hesitation this is leonidas [Music] leonidas was sparta's superhero the king who with 300 warriors made a doomed last stand against the might of persia in the past at thermopylae there isn't any hard evidence for that identification although he is from the right period but i think we can forgive the wishful thinking after all everyone wants a legend to have a face [Music] these days the warrior presides over the museum in sparta they still call him leonidas but the name is safely in quote marks but whoever he was he remains an impressive piece of work that enigmatic smile is typical of sculpture of the period and it gives him a mona lisa-like quality his eyes are blank now but in their day they'd have been inlaid with rock crystal and seashells and would have glittered out of the stone his torso is fantastically fit and toned his hair is very elaborately dressed and his upper lip is clean shaven it was one of like kirkus's more fussy reforms that spartan men should not have moustaches so if you want a picture of the ultimate spartan here he is we know very little of the real leonidas he was a member of the agodai one of the two aristocratic families that supplied sparta with her kings he'd been on the throne for 10 years when the persian juggernaut began to roll west persia was the regional superpower of the eastern mediterranean a vast empire stretching from present-day afghanistan to the aegean sea the greeks were an insignificant but increasingly troublesome presence on the western limits of their empire inciting rebellion among the king's greek subjects in the cities of asia minor it was the persian king darius who made the first move he sent punitive forces to land at marathon only to see them routed by athens and her allies the king died before he could avenge the insult and it was left to his son xerxes to sort out the troublesome greeks once and for all [Music] the persians set out by land and sea early in the year 480. the army was so vast that according to the greek historian herodotus it drank whole rivers dry herodotus also reckons the combined persian forces at more than one and a half million a more sober estimate would put the ceiling at 300 000 big enough to crush the minnow-like cities of greece when the spartans learned a persian invasion was on its way they sent for advice to the oracle at delphi oracles were thought of as messages from the gods delivered through the mouth of a possessed priestess the spartans were deeply pious and they treated oracles as though they were military orders on this occasion the orders made for sobering reading here your fate o dwellers in spot of the white spaces either your famed great town must be set by perseus's sons for the whole land must born the death of the king of the house beneath the flowery language a simple choice was on offer capitulate or fight to the death the spartans being spartans chose the latter and put themselves at the head of the resistance to the invasion as the persian army swung south towards the greek heartland a greek force under the command of king leonidas headed north to stop their advance at thermopylae the gates of fire in 480 thermopylae was a natural bottleneck now the sea has receded miles in that direction but then the road south was squeezed between the shoreline and these mountains it was here that between seven and eight thousand hoplites came from all over greece the first thing they did was to rebuild a wall that crossed the most narrow point of the pass hunkering down behind it they aimed to stop the persian advance in its tracks the greeks were hopelessly outnumbered but they did have geography on their side if they could just slow down the persians it would allow others to organize more formidable defenses on land and sea but for leonidas and for the 300 spartan warriors who'd accompanied him thermopylae was more than a strategic strong point it was the place where they intended to show the world what it meant to be a spartan as a whole the greeks made a great deal of noise about the nobility of dying for your country but for the spartans it was far more than just a platitude in battle they were ordered to seek out a callos thanatos a beautiful death it encompassed everything the poet turtus spoke of advancing calmly to meet your enemy never fleeing the battlefield and embracing death like a lover in fact on campaign the spartans would make offerings to eros the god of love the beautiful death was a sacrifice in the true sense of the word turning something mortal into something sacred the men that lainidas chose to do the job for him here were all married older and with sons he knew none of them would be coming back the spartans who fought at thermopylae were a 300 strong kamikaze squad [Applause] for three days the greeks held off the persian advance sheltering behind their wall and then counter-attacking in hoplite formation three times the persians attacked three times they were beaten back xerxes had almost given up and then he was told about a secret path that went through the mountains and came out behind the greek wall when leonidas discovered the persians were on their way he knew the game was up before long the greeks would be surrounded while there was still time for them to escape leonidas dismissed most of the greek allies setting the stage for one of history's most celebrated last stands on the final morning the spartans followed their normal pre-battle rituals they stripped naked and exercised they oiled their bodies and combed each other's long hair they wrote their names out on little sticks and fastened them to their arms dog tags so their bodies could be identified later persian spies observing these strange activities reported them back to xerxes who found them laughable it was said it looked as though they were getting ready for a party in fact they were making themselves mate zoice kylu theriotarise kygor goteroice greater more noble more terrible so [Music] herodotus describes the final act in the morning xerxes poured a libation to the rising sun and then ordered the advance the greeks under leonidas knowing that the fight would be their last pressed forward into the widest part of the pass [Applause] [Music] [Applause] they fought with reckless desperation with swords if they had them and if not with their hands and teeth until the persians coming in from the front and closing in from behind overwhelmed [Applause] militarily speaking thermopylae was insignificant the persian advance delayed for less than a week was soon rolling south again shortly afterwards another battle took place here in the bay of salamis where a greek fleet led by athens destroyed the persian ships it was a scrappy hidden miss affair but salamis finished what thermopylae had started and the following year the persians were finally driven out of greece in the aftermath of victory it was the doomed heroism of thermopylae that captured the imagination of the greeks thermopylae was a stage upon which the spartans played out the role they'd spent their lives preparing for they'd shown the world the kind of place sparta was and the kind of men it produced they'd fulfilled the ideals of their city and justified the claims of their utopia and by doing that according to herodotus they had laid up for the spartans a treasure of fame in which no other city could share next week on the spartans with persia defeated sparta comes up against a more implacable enemy athens but it's not just sparta's men who are mobilizing for war [Music] meet sparta's women a match for the most armor-plated warrior [Music] you

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 103,435

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, sparta, spartans, ancient sparta, 300, spartan warriors, ancient greece, 300 spartans, ancient rome

Id: vQgDdKviA8Q

Length: 48min 36sec (2916 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021