How Accurate Was The Depiction of Spartans In 300? | The Ancients

they believe that if you separate them so that they become sort of hornier and more they desire each other more then their sex will be more intense and then their children will be more energetic that's what they believe all these Greek city states were raised with this idea that you would defend your own city state right they are taken away from their parents and never see them again this kind of image is clearly wrong rule it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today it's fantastic to be here thanks so much for having me you're more than welcome and to do it filmed here in this studio in London and to talk about the Spartan warrior now this feels like one of the most iconic units of ancient history but also one there's a lot of fiction around this unit today we're talking about a bunch of people who basically have become the Paragon of the ancient warrior and who are sometimes cited as being you know the iconic foremost Warrior culture in history but more recent scholarship has been kind of picked at that to the point where there's not much left with that facade so there's a big discrepancy between what people in wider audiences think about the Spartans and what Scholars are actually saying about them well we're certainly going to explore all of that and first of all for yourself as a historian exploring all of the material that we have for the actual Spartan warriors how difficult is it when you look at the sources to dissect fact from fiction it's incredibly difficult and that's particularly true for spart I mean they're famously difficult in the sense that when you look at ancient Sparta you're not looking at a society talking about itself you're almost always looking at others looking at this place and saying look at those guys like these guys are weird they're doing things differently let's talk about that let's talk about what's good what's bad and obviously that's distorting view in itself but it's even more distorting when you realize that many of them are kind of trying to sell you this system and they're trying to say look this is great this creates fantastic outcomes we should do things their way that obviously means that they're not going to talk about all the things they take for granted all the things that they already do anyway all the things that they accept they're going going to focus on the things that are a little bit strange to them a little bit different but that also means that they're going to be biging that up and they're going to be trying to portray that in the best possible light and they're going to try and glorify it and polish it and that just means that it's very difficult to get at the core of what's actually true about that Society very hard to get anything that you can say with confidence like this is what it was it's also really interesting because these are Outsider sources and yet they're really trying to promote a way of life almost quite fix way of life of a society that they themselves think is quite weird yeah no it's absolutely about sort of almost utopian thinking right like they're talking about like a lot of these Greeks especially in Athens there's a lot of philosophical and political discussion about what an ideal Society should look like and obviously there are different versions of different voices in that the voice that's almost kind of lost interestingly enough is the one that promotes the way that Athens actually exists you know the Democratic fairly liberal sort of free-minded way of way of life that kind of thing is not promoted it's taken for granted so what you do get is a lot of voices that are more conservative voices that are more aristocratic voices that essentially are representing the idea of like it would be better if we the rich were in charge and we could determine you know the values of the society in a more sort of traditionally um traditionally approved way and when they want an example of what such a society should look like of course they're going to turn to the Spartans and they're going to say look there's a society that's run entirely by a class of Rich citizens they have created the society as that they think is best and look these are all the ways in which it is better than the way that we live here under the Yoke of democracy and that is how they approach Sparta so interesting indeed we're going to be focusing in on Fifth and fourth Century Sparta but why of all centuries is it these two centuries in particular that we always have these images of Sparta with these iconic Warriors so Sparta obviously emerges from the Archaic Period so the centuries before that as the foremost Greek State and in The Classical period so from around the Persian Wars to Alexander they are one of the biggest players and they have claim which they keep on trying to assert in more or less successful ways um to being the heden of the Greek world so being the most powerful most influential state in that whole constellation of of Greek communities um and so it is in that period that they are the most prominent it's in that period that they have the most power um but it's also that period in which their story The myth that they propagate about themselves becomes best established that follows entirely from their actions during the Persian Wars and just as Athens is promoting themselves as like the great protector of the Greeks because they fought with their ships at salamis the Spartans are saying that they are the great Protectors of the Greeks because they fought to the death at TH mop and because they destroyed the Persian army at PLA and if we go pre Persian Wars so pre fth Century do we know much about the Spartan Army are there any great stories of the Spartans before the fth century surprisingly not I mean this is the really interesting aspect like when you're talking about the Persian Wars Herodotus who describes these for us obviously he lives a few Generations later and he lives in a world where Spartan military prowess is just completely accepted like they believe all the stories that they hear because they remember thermop and because they remember pataya and they're just like this is what the Spartans do right um so he's describing it as if back in that day they already had this reputation of being these glorious Warriors who who fight together and are just completely Invincible um or at least you know undaunted by defeat undaunted by any enemy Etc the thing is like if you want to actually look through pick through what he tells us of the earlier period you can't actually find good evidence of any of this he says very offhandedly in one sentence that they managed to suppress the entire pelones how they did that is difficult to find but we do find that all of these different states in their own backyard the pelan in their own region were able to resist them sometimes successfully we're able to band together we're not afraid to band together and try to resist them and there are very few episodes where we actually have some detail we can see this Persian army at work where we can see what they're actually doing and when we do they don't always actually succeed they often end up being evenly matched or even defeated by their enemies and I've got in one case on because it just sounds such an awesome name this battle of the Champions what exactly is this yeah the battle of the Champions is one of those episodes so around the five the middle of the 540s we don't know exactly when because chronology in this period is very fuzzy um Herodotus wasn't able to reconstruct this accurately um but around that time they have a big war with Argos who is the other biggest player in the peles they're fighting over a Borderland between them and basically they're fighting for control but they know that this is going to be a big bloody battle so instead they instead of having that battle they decide uniquely in Greek history this never happen before or since um to send 300 of their best warriors out into battle against 300 of the best argives and to have this sort of mass duel that way and to try and decide it now obviously if you believe what we are now told about the Spartans this should be an absolute Cakewalk for them right the Spartans are obviously better Warriors and therefore they're just going to trounce these argives and that'll be that'll be it but the way Herodotus describes it actually it ends with more or less even outcome at the very end of that everyone dies and two argives are left alive and one Spartan so apparently one-on-one you know Spartan against argive in this period they're more or less evenly matched um the thing is at that point the ARG guys say well there's two of us and there's one of you so they just go home to Argos and say look we won at which point the Spartan looks around him and sees that he's the only one left on the battlefield and says well that means I won so he goes home to Spartan and says he won um at which point obviously the two armies decide okay well neither of us are accepting this outcome so there was a big battle anyway um the whole experiment to try and limit the fight to this like narrow Mass duel completely fails right this this doesn't work because ultimately the outcome is still disputed and they decide to have their allout fight um but it's also one of those moments when you can actually see the SPID the arive Army being apparently pretty evenly matched until they can bring their full numbers to bear at which point the Spartans actually do win and and take this land for themselves and cause a great humiliation to the ARG I mean look at that Sparta versus Argos one of those great Rivals of antiquity on the Greek mainland isn't it yeah it isn't over you know this goes on for centuries absolutely it does doesn't say well let's explore the education of one of these Spartan warriors particularly when we get to the fifth and fourth centuries BC rule when did training or their education begin for a full spartiate citizen right so there's obviously lots of famous we talk about the Spartan education right and we would like to say that we know a lot about this but actually it's it's really difficult to to pin this down we have a very good source from the fourth Century that describes it and we have a lot of faith in that account because that is a person who sent his own Sons through this educ system so he would have seen it to or at least heard heard very close this is Zenon um and then we have a much later account by plutar who is writing in the second century ad so we're talking about you know four 500 years later those are the two accounts that we have of it when we try to talk about the Spartan education further back like in the fifth century let alone before the Persian Wars we're quite in the dark we have indications that for instance there was an education system that Leonas went through so you have something that is there but we don't know if it quite had the same shape as it did later on um but when we're talking about the 4th Century so we have this this good account we have zenon's account um and then when you dig into that you realize that actually this isn't maybe what you have been told about the education um it does start at 7 which is the common account right they taken away from their homes at 7 and they're brought into this um you know into this this this common mess where they have to or this common Barracks where they have to you know live out their their their formative years um it does start at 7 but initially it doesn't seem to have much to it they they're just kind of gathered in these bands these these herds as they're called of boys under a supervisor um but there's not much specifically about what they do they just kind of hang around and they're taught they're they're trained in the morality that a Spartan is supposed to have so they're basically being taught what to do and how to think and how to speak but there doesn't seem to be any kind of element of training to that this is this is indo this is education more than it is training and throughout that period as far as we can tell from these anecdotes um they do still go home as well they do spend some of their time just spend you know with their parents at home they they they have to learn certain things from their parents like reading and writing um there are certain things that seem to be entirely sort of antithetical to this idea that they have they are taken away from their parents and never see them again that this kind of image is clearly wrong um but also there are stories for instance like oh you know when a Spartan boy is punished by in public by a supervisor by a random Citizen and he goes home and complains about it it's the duty of the father to punish him again and from that anecdote which is obviously you know beautiful demonstration of the sort of collective mindset that they're supposed to represent this sort of unity of values but it also shows that these kids go home you know they talk to their parents about what happened to them during the day so you really have to picture them as going to school and then coming back at the end of the day um so this kind of image that they're they're off to the barracks and never seen again or or you know even sent into the Wilds this is completely exaggerated um it's not until later in their education and xenophon places this around maybe 12 that they actually start doing exercises and start to sort of merge into this the system that looks a little bit more like what we what we think of when we think of Spartan training because one of those images we sometimes get today of the Spartans in that early stage of their education is and know going somewhere to a very difficult environment and hunting uh in pop in 300 get the wolf don't you or a boar or something like that but that feels like later Legend yeah well not entirely in the sense that that a very difficult thing to pin down so we're talking about when we're talking about general education from age 12 they started doing exercises they started being trained a lot of that training is just Athletics and it's also song and dance literally like they they do a lot of singing and dancing we'll get back to that I think um but when they reach 18 there is another stage to this which is depicted in the movie when he and you know goes out in the snow and kills a wolf um this is called the crya and this is a separate thing that we find very very difficult to pin down because we have different sources of it that all contradict each other and that don't have a coherent sense of what the crypta is or who it's for so you have Plato who's the earliest one who mentions this who just says that that some of these kids the pick a couple of Select ones are basically sent out into the wild not to kill wolves or to kill hels or anything else but they're basically just sent out to survive on their own own for a little bit obviously this is easily you know anthropologists are Keen to grab onto this and say like this is just a right of passage this is something we see in a lot of societies where children around that age when they are on the cusp of manhood they sort of get sent out and then they have to come back in and that is the moment when they turn into full adults and full citizens um but later sources talk about this as either um a sort of like informal form like State terrorism like they're supposed to go and hunt and kill helots so they they're enslaved underclass to keep them on their toes and another account that actually says that they are just Special Forces like they're an elite unit that is sort of training to be to operate separately on the battlefield a lot of those accounts are very difficult to believe but in any case what we can tell is that this is not a part of the normal education most of these kids would not go through this this is something that is for an exceptional few and what it even is we're not entirely sure so for the normal education how much of a military bent really was there for this early stage in Spar and education I'm tempted to say none um fundamentally what we don't hear of in any account of Spartan Spartan upbringing is weapons training for inst that isn't a factor um they do a lot of fighting but obviously fighting means many things I mean it means a scrap with another boy who insulted you or it means like a full-on like mock battle and we don't know exactly where we are on that Spectrum um they get beat up a lot which is not really military training so much as it is just the kind of way that that that the upbring of children uh looks like in that period not just in Sparta but elsewhere in the Greek World um but in terms of their actual exercises this is all gymnastic as far as we can tell this is them doing running jumping you know um wrestling and boxing maybe to the extent that they do um they do Combat Sports um but nothing that we can really identify either as for instance formation drill um military exercises that that are EXP explicitly military um that just doesn't occur in any of these accounts so as far as we know it's broadly it's a fitness regime right they're being trained in PE they're regularly made to exercise but they also we can tell have a lot of extra time they have a lot of spare time in which they're kind of just hanging around together socializing each other and essentially sort of training each other to behave like proper spartiates they also have time to go off on their own quite a bit and then the question is like what do they actually do um there's a lot of talk about how they're expected to behave and how they're better behaved than any other Greeks anywhere which is again that idea of presenting this in the most favorable light um but what that probably means is that there's a lot of anxiety about what these boys get up to because they're not under so much control there's they're not under sort of permanent supervision and so there's a question of how do we make that into something that actually turns them into the kind of people we want them to be is there any Focus from what you're saying there therefore maybe not weapons training but is there mental resilience they want to build that up very much from a young age with these Spartans yeah so that is something they are focusing on much more so there's a lot of emphasis on the idea that this upbringing this the Supervision in groups and these common activities and these exercises they're meant to make them obedient and they're meant to make them Hardy so like resistant to um shortages of food um resistant to the hardship of um cold and heat and exhaustion these kind of things are that's what they're that's what they're basically being trained to endure so there's a lot of the kind of things that that are being focused on like they're not being given a lot of clothing right they're only wearing the same outfit throughout all season so in summer it's very hot they have to wear the cloak in winter it's very cold they have to wear just one cloak still the same cloak so they're always sort of either hot or cold to make them sort of willing to endure those kind of extremes um they're supposed to sleep on simple mats they're not going to have any padding any soft sort of pillows or anything like that um they're made to go barefoot um and supposedly they don't receive enough food now that's kind of an a contested one because on the one hand there's sort of well attested sort of instances of cadets for instance and there's a great scholar Helen Ro who has studied the comparison between um uh the Spartan upbringing and for instance the upbringing of Prussian Cadets in the 18th and 19th centuries um and she explains how this is a feature of their education as well is that they are not given enough food because that means that they're encouraged to steal which is then going to train their cunning and train their subterfuge um but it also means that if they fail at being good at stealing you know if they're caught then they can be brutally punished so it's a way of trying to condition a certain way of at a certain attitude a certain kind of behavior um and it also bonds them together because they're obviously going to try and help each other get supplement their diet so on the one hand that seems perfectly plausible they're not given enough rations and they're encouraged to steal to make up for it which then sort of trains them into a certain way of thinking about how to provision for to provide for themselves on the other hand we have really nice stories of all the nice things that they would bring to their meal so you know it's kind of like a potlock like all of these sort of elite meals in the Greek world you can bring your own food to supplement the kind of stuff that's already there so while their rations are not very luxurious they can bring more food presumably from home like this is just something that they can bring along and then that it gets handed out by the leader of their pack um and some of them are excluded from it and others are given it so there's there's clearly a way to sort of get around this idea that can't get enough food um and the other thing obviously is the factor that these are these are all rich kids right all spartian citizens are are all spartiat are our Leisure Class so these are all you know the children of estate owners whose own Leisure as you see later on SP in Spartan life and their own form of training is to hunt and so these kids are learning to hunt in the same period that they're learning to you know to be obedient and to to be uh to be fit and and to to behave like spans um and so they're supplementing their food that way as well I mean if they catch something or if they kill something in the Hunts then there you go there's your your extra ration so a lot of that idea that they're sort of going around stealing apples from Orchards or like stealing food off the a cooling pie from a window sill I mean this is very romantic but actually there are lot of ways that you can find extra food if you are growing up in such a society where your parents are rich your parents are trying to train you um to hunt to to provide for yourself that way um and obviously where a lot of people are are are living entirely to support your livelihood and it's interesting how you mentioned how they would be in this this group of people their same age and as you say they are bringing stuff to the table so that they can all eat at times if as you say they didn't actually have enough so they're encouraged to do the these various different ways of acquiring food well following this early stage of a Spartan's education it's the agog if I'm correct well yeah so it's it's known as the agog from later sources the interesting thing is that in the Classical period the period we're talking about that word isn't used interesting um it's a helenistic word that gets used for all education systems from the sort of fourth from the third Century onward um in this period it's just called pidea p and this is kind of another Factor that's it's it's important to stress this when you when you're talking about the agog and people are like to oh the Spartan agog the agog you know they like to know that they know this word um it's just a word for an education system there's nothing special about it like as a term it's not a unique term it's not just used for Spartans um the Spartan education system for the period that we're talking about is called hia just like every other education system in the Greek world and later on it's called agoga just like every other education system in the Greek world and in fact the agog as we know it from later sources wasn't designed by a Spartan it was designed but when it was reintroduced in the 3 Century um by someone who's brought in from the outside a philosopher who was engaged by the kings of Sparta to say look we've you know our education system is deteriorated can you help bring us back to our old standard and so he reformed the education system brought it back and and it's from that point that it starts to be called the agog because presumably it's modeled on other education systems that exist in the helenistic Greek world so yes it's called the agogi in sort of the popular imagination and in some sources but not because the agogi is some kind of special label it's like others have education but they have the agog it's actually just it's that's what you call it it's it's school right I stand corrected my knowledge of SP is increasing every moment as we talk through this rule well when they've passed this first stage of the P of spar education where do these Spartan boys or adolescent young men where do they go next so when they're 18 they they they grow up they become adults right and this is true in Sp it's true in every Greek state which means that if you're an Athenian that that's the time when you get enrolled um and that's the time when you become liable for military service and that's also true in Sparta so basically they are enrolled as adult citizens we don't think there's necessarily as much of a written record as there is in other places um but they become sort of known as adults um and it's at that stage that Things become a bit blurry like we're not exactly sure what happens between the period when they turn 18 and when they're 20 at which point they become eligible for various other things like that's when they become eligible to serve in the field Army for instance they never really send out men who are only 181 19 um and also when they become eligible to serve in the hipes so the the royal guard um so there's a period in between when some are being sent out on the crypte which we mentioned before so some of these kids are being taken out and and sent out into the wild maybe to go and either fend for themselves or to to enforce State tyranny um and others are essentially just in a in a final stage of their upbringing it's possible that we should situate military training in this period but we're not really sure there's not much explicit testimony to that effect so maybe this is the time when they're finally training to do their instance formation drill there's no indication that they would have done weapons training because Spartans just don't do that that that's just not a factor in in Spartan life but maybe this is when they get together and start to learn how to operate you know in in a in a body but the thing is the kind of formation drill that we know the Spartans had is described in some detail by Zenon which is really really helpful um modern people who have experimented with this they said you can learn this in half an hour so if he says you know this is something the Spartans are really good at and other Greeks aren't doing it now I'm sure this is something the Spartans did that made them stand out because it's at least more than other Greeks were doing but that doesn't mean it takes two years to learn it and so the question is were they actually spending a lot of time doing this or were they just continuing the old exercise regime where they have daily you know daily gymnastics daily athletic exercises but this kind of formation drill they're only really taught it when they when they are drafted when they're where they're sent on campaign basically when the ban is called because I guess one of the big questions is was all of this preparation so that these Spartans then become part of a professional Army that they become professional soldiers you're laughing when I yeah people use that word a lot in fact Scholars use that word um they call about call them soldiers or professional soldiers and you see these kind of Pop Culture descriptions of the Spartans are like the only professional forces in the this is not a professional Army and you really have to be as explicit as possible this is a militia these are citizens who are called up only at need there is no Spartan Army that exists in Spartan society unless it is called to war so just like all the other Greek States you know they all have this militia system they all have a system in which citizens adult male citizens form the Army when there is a military crisis when there is a military situation that requires troops um no Greek state has a standing military except in very small ways so very small standing forces that they might may or may not operate the Spartans don't even have those they just have their militia the whole system of their society is built around the idea that it is every Citizen's duty to fight for their City fight for their community and therefore you don't need a professional Army you don't need to pay someone to fight for you on your behalf you don't need to have a small selection of people whose job it is to serve as your soldiers in war because you all do it that is your duty as Citizens and so they don't have an army you know when when you grow up and you go around spart Spartan City or the Spartan Countryside there is no Army right there's there is nothing you can point to and say that's the that's the military that's the barracks or that's the you know the military school or the academy whatever that doesn't exist there are these tent groups where people eat but they are citizens they're citizens together just like they are in other Greek States you know having their drinking parties having their dinner parties um and then nothing else that you can point to and say that's the Spartan Army so these are just Civic militias that have been indoctrinated to believe that it is their Duty their obligation to fight for their state and no one else will do it and that's how you form an effective Army in the Greek world yeah but surely that alone doesn't make them better soldiers than other Greek city states right I mean the Athenians would have a similar thought cycle like some would take up the ore with the Navy or they pick up the spear and the shield to fight they similarly all these Greek city states were raised with this idea that you would defend your own citystate right yeah so who said they were better soldiers I mean this is no but this the thing that that that is distinct about them is because they're an oligarchy who consists entirely of a Leisure Class right so in Athens you have everybody's a citizen everybody has equal citizen rights if you're an adult male who is born an Athenian citizen um that means that some people fight in the Cavalry because they are very rich and they can afford a horse other people fight as hotlights and a lot of people can't afford even that so they fight as light arm troops where they fight in the Navy in Sparta everybody's a Leisure Class citizen which means everybody has the money to afford to fight however they want but also everybody has the time to prepare for that fight in Athens obviously everybody who gets called up and many of them will have you know busy day jobs and otherwise they can't eat in Sparta they have people to do that for them so their entire citizen class is free to prepare for war um obviously we exaggerate that we are inclined to exaggerate that and say that makes them you know that means they spend all of their time Drilling and fighting and being like in this is like what the movies portray you know this idea that the Spartans are doing nothing but preparing for war and some ancient sources actually say this but in practice when you try to pin that down what they're actually doing is they're exercising right they're they're doing athletic exercises um and so in that sense they are fitter right they're going to be more at least more uniformly fit um to go on campaign and this constant focus on deprivation this idea that they can't get enough food or that they can't get enough sleep or that they have to deal with cold and heat these are the kind of things that in the Greek mind prepare you for war being able and willing to go through things like night marches or going without sleep or fighting without food or you know these kind of things so that's what makes them perhaps more willing more prepared you know better prepared to endure what it is to go on campaign but otherwise I mean they don't have any special preparation for this except that formation drill which they've accen themselves to by the late fifth century and if these Spartan citizens were they have enough money to fight either as Cavalry as infantry but was there a particular type of unit that the Spartans preferred that their Spartans citizens fought as yeah so all Spartan citizens fight as hop lights interesting right which is actually kind of a question why because in a lot of other states where you know the the the ruling class is rich land owners that's what it's true in Sparta it's also true in places like thessy or for instance in some Sicilian cities um those people tend to fight as Cavalry because that is a the the best way to display your wealth is to ride a horse because horses are incredibly expensive maians the macedonians there you go um so have lots of different peoples in and around the Greek World whose way of establishing their status and political and cultural dominance is by fighting as Cavalry and that is also tactically extremely effective I mean you know i' I've written about this before so I'm a very sort of strong proponent of this idea Cavalry is disproportionately effective in Greek Warfare it tends to win battles and so we would have expected kind of to see these Spartans say we are a Cavalry Elite we fight as Cavalry and that is how we dominate our neighbors they don't do this they fight as lines they so they fight as heavily armed infantry and it's not entirely certain why because they have an equestrian culture they love horses you know one of the things that the Spartans do in order to affirm their status in the Greek world as wealthy you know Leisure Class citizens is send Chariot teams to Olympia where they win the Olympic Games for the Chariot race which is the most expensive contest in the games they win that all the time like that is their thing the Spartans are you know consistent winners in the most luxurious form of comp competition in the Greek world so they they love their horses but they don't fight on Horseback and so the question is why and one way sure certainly is the idea that you know their their neighbors don't necessarily fight as Cavalry and so to some extent they have to kind of adapt to their own tactical environment but another aspect of it is perhaps that even though they're all Leisure Class citizens they actually have to deal with quite a lot of inequality within their society they're covering that up they're pretending to to you know outward out outward facing is that they're all equals they call themselves the similars the homoo um but actually there's a lot of inequality within them some of them are very rich and getting richer all the time others are on the brink of losing their citizenship because they can't make the property threshold right they can't you know make their contributions to the mes holes which you need in order to be a Spartan Citizen and then of course below that because there are so few spartiates they rely on other people to flesh out their military formations a lot of those people obviously can't afford to fight in the the way that they might and so in order to form a unified Block in order to present themselves as you know people who are all the same and who fight the same and who fight under the same structure and same like and display the same level of obedience and courage um they fight as they have to set that bar a bit lower they can't set the bar at cavalary service they have to set it a bit lower so they fight as as hopeles the other aspect to that of course is when you double down a reputation for military bravery which they do after the Persian Wars when they say oh they're which is actually you know a disaster um they turned to spin this into oh this is a great achievement actually we were we were very brave here we we exemplifying our morality um that morality is better portrayed by fighting as a hoplight because Cavalry fights sensitively it can charge in for close combat but most of the time it sort of uses javelins fights from a distance Wheels away from a fight it can't win whereas if you want to prove that your whole morality is built around standing and fighting standing in a falank and fighting in a a battle line as hoplight is the way to do that and that's true in Sparta it's true in Athens it's true elsewhere The Narrative that the rhetoric of Courage is associated with hotlights because a Cavalry man can always get out of get out of a sticky situation but a hoplight has to stand and fight we'll definitely explore the fank a bit more but before we get there rule you did mention how the Spartans that wanting almost to look the same as hot plights if we talk briefly about their equipment as these heavily armed infantrymen did they have stand standardized equipment can you imagine a row of Spartans famously with that iconic Lambda on their Shield is that myth or is that truth can we imagine them all being quite standardized in how they looked yeah it's a difficult question actually because the evidence is so bad I mean this is something obviously gets picked up a lot in pop culture that they all look the same they all have these Lambda Shields so the shields with the big L on it for Ladon which is the the region the Pol um there is evidence for that but it's literally the evidence there some evence evidence for the lamna shield is a fragment of a lost comedy so it's a single sentence that's that's making making fun of the Athenian General Cleon um which says that Cleon ran away when he saw the lambdas gleaming probably bronze Shields with Lambda on them but that's that's essentially it that's the sum total of it so there's no other reference to these Lambda Shields anywhere in Greek literature or in in in in Greek archaeology you know there there's no sign of this um what we do have is a couple of descriptions of what the Spartan looked like in battle which do emphasize their uniformity and do emphasize their ferocious look um they seem to have had bronze polished Shields so you have these big round Shields right which hoplight carried into ble which we could which could be faced with anything you could put your own blazing on it um the Spartans seem to have been required to keep that as a bronze facing first of all so it was they were covered in bronze rather than doing it on the cheap um and then to have that polished so that it would shine so that it would look as intimidating as possible flashing in the sun um and and then they would wear these red tunic which I've already mentioned or these red cloaks I mean we don't exactly sure what the f is it's the red one um literally that is what the name means or the purple one um it could be a tunic it could be a cloak but either way they're all wearing that which means that they look as xenophon describes it on one occasion as you know a single mass of bronze and Scarlet basically the idea that they they look uniform whereas other Greeks obviously can put whatever they want on their Shields and they can wear whatever they want into battle so the Spartans do have this sense of uniformity which is is kind of unique to them although others also adopt uniform Shield Blazin for instance eventually um and others also adopt maybe red cloaks or red tunics because it's just one of the colors that the Greeks thought was like particularly manly so it's not necessarily something that others can't do too it's just that's something the Spartans are famous for by the 4th Century but I have to stress that because earlier on we have the earliest evidence for these things for either the Red Cloak or the Lambda Shield is the late fifth century during the time of the pelian war during earlier times we have no evidence of this we have no references to it we have no indication that the Persians or the Spartans in the time of the Persian Wars for instance were in any sense uniformly equipped nothing like that it seems to me quite plausible that they were especially by the pelian war because they doubled down on their military reputation and because they doubled down on this sense that we are sort of one in our obedience one in our discipline and one in our willingness to face any enemy and in order to sort of broadcast that and be terrifying to the en to their enemies um they decided you know one of the ways we can do that is to is to look the same but another aspect of that which I think is really important to bear in mind is again the Spartans as their population declined really relied on others to kind of fill out their fail Lang so they're relying also on these per ooy these non-citizen freeorn lonians and also on freed hels to fill out their battle line and so if you dress them all up uniformly you can't tell which is which and that's a really important part for you know intimidating your enemies is making them believe that all the thousands they're facing are all these Spartan citizens spartiat um when in fact a lot of them are not this idea of a mixed fallings is really interesting because at the end of Alexander the greats Reign when he's running low on his Macedonian troops he employs some Persian troops and other troops and he puts them further back in his fank so you always have the front row of macedonians looking the same with their long Pikes and then you have Persians with Spears and javelins behind them in this mixed fing it doesn't seem to have lasted very long WR but I didn't realize that it was a similar case with the Spartans that you could see a Spartan battle line look Spartan from the front but maybe behind them you've got Slingers or Javelin or something like that perhaps well no there wouldn't have been mixed formations or at least that's not what we think so hoplight formations are always homogeneous right which sets them apart so there would have been pero who could afford to equip themselves as hotlights and hels who presumably were equipped on you know some kind of state funding um to to be hoplites to fight as hoplites although we don't actually know how that worked and we don't actually ever see that happening um we have to assume that those hels would have been um would have been equipped by the state but the majority of of the men in the fanks would have been the peroy and also increasingly over this period um what's called hippo hippo mayones which sounds like what mayonnaise Hipp mayonnaise and yes so they put mayonnaise on their failings these are called inferiors and the most likely explanation for that name it's not gloss in the sources is that these are the spartiates who have lost their citizens status because they couldn't afford to be sparts anymore they couldn't afford their mesu so they lose their citizen rights but of course they still have to fight and some of the motivation to fight is to hope hopefully maybe regain some of their reputation um but the increasingly these falankes they have a very small sliver of spartiates largely in front because they would be the officers behind which would be a mass of pero and hippon so these these inferiors who are ex spartiates essentially who would have been trained in this system Maybe maybe their ancestors were trained in the system but who themselves no longer take part in it and obviously you kind of want to obscure the difference you kind of want to make them look all like they're all the same so that you're going to be terrified thinking you have to plow through all these spartiates and it's going to be really hard because they're famously don't give up um but when in fact most of those guys are are are basically just you know other inhabitants of the Spartan territory Hipp menes I love that name well keeping on a bit longer on the armor of one of these Spartan warriors if we talk a bit more about the shield how important really was the shield to a Spartan because you have those famous sayings you know come back with your Shield or upon it yeah yeah the shield was very important but it's important to sort of recognize that this is not just for Spartans but for all Greek Hines I mean the idea and this gets you know stressed sometimes in the sources is that when you're forming a battle line your Shield is one of the sort of bricks in the wall so to speak and there sometimes literally covers covers the man on your side some people interpret this as like you know it overlaps with the man on your on your left so he's also hiding behind your Shield so if you drop it that you create a gap I think more plausible is simply the fact that this is supposed to be an unbroken line um any sign of disorder can cause panic because they're very afraid that they fall into disorder and become easy pickings so if they see any kind of sense of disorder they will panic and so they want to make sure that that Shield line remains unbroken so The Shield is very important but it's also this factor of if you're hoplight and in battle and things are going against you first thing you're going to do is you're going to throw away that heavy Shield which might weigh six kilos or something like that it's going to burden you so that you can run away so if you're running away you're throwing away your shield first which then is a sign that you didn't fight to the end you didn't stay with the rest and you may have been the reason why because the others saw you running away the whole line started to crumble so in order to kind of prevent those things from happening a gaps in the line appearing and be possibly Panic spreading through the ranks because people are starting to starting to abandon their post and run run off um both Athens and Sparta basically criminalize throwing away your Shield this is something that is is is a crime it's it's not it's not meant to happen um because you are letting down your entire formation and possibly being one of the causes of defeat in bastel so the Spartans have these famous sayings associated with them like don't throw away your Shield you know you must come back with it and in fact they had a rule that said you weren't supposed to be very far away from your Shield so even during their exercises when they were on campaign their Shields had to be piled up nearby they had to be sort of within a Stadium's distance from their Shield or something like that so basically they weren't allowed to get very far removed from their weapons um but the purpose of that is essentially to make sure that you're ready to fight and secondly that when you're in a fight you're not going to abandon it for any reason you're going to stay there and you're going to keep doing your doing your part to make sure that the formation can function so the Spartans have these wonderful you know anecdotes connected do that but we mustn't forget that in Athens this was also a crime like they had the same sort of rhetoric of like Shield flinging which why call it rip aspia which is like throwing away your Shield is is a you know it's a slander if you call someone a shield flinger you're calling them a coward right this is a huge deal and so some people are are mocked in Athenian comedy for being shield flingers for having throw thrown away their shield in battle and this is a huge disgrace you know these people are are known as cowards for the rest of their lives so there's a lot of that rhetoric because that's the way that hoplight WI battles is by staying in the line holding on to their shield and hoping that the rest is doing so too so you have to police that and did the spart and warriors did they wear body armor um most likely yes although we don't really know I mean there's no concrete evidence for any Spartan body armor anywhere which is one of those things where just like oh we wish we knew it's just that you know hotlights equip themselves as they wish right so some of this is clearly in Sparta becomes regulated so they have the the Red Cloak which they're supposed to wear the red garment whatever it is and they have these Bron Shields but other parts they can do more or less whatever they want or at least as far as we know there's no regulation um so they would have worn helmets which increasingly we think are very simple pillow so these conical bronze helmets um and they may have worn body armor if they wanted it um which could have been sort of the Full Metal Cass that you get in the Archaic Period but increasingly would have been these tuban yoke curas so these things you see in arts a lot of the time which are basically made out of something more pliable which is likely to be layered to Quilted linen um but this is the kind of armor that you know if you wanted to if you could afford it you know obviously no one's going to stop you wearing it so if we go back to formations and the fank so we've talked about like their armor looking quite uniform their education their training having more time to train in theory at least does this transfer into the battlefield as them having more discipline than other Greek city states and their soldiers yeah so this is the point that I tried to emphasize a couple of times when people tell me like oh you're constantly doing down the Spartans and you're kind trying to sort of you you're busting their myth at the expense of going too far the other way basically um this is the point that I emphasiz is the Spartans are very effective in batttle they have one thing that they do that other Greeks don't do which is maintain order in their formations they March into battle in Step which means that they can maintain their formation even when they're moving um they're responding to orders which means they can maneuver in certain ways they can make a basic maneuver like a wheel or a counter Marge and that allows them to perform more cohesively in battle and it's firstly it's vastly intimidating other Greeks are terrified of seeing the Spartans come down at them basically um and secondly it means that a lot of time they have that edge of control in battle so they can win a pitched battle because they can maneuver their troops when others due to their lack of training and lack of a articulated officer hierarchy lose control once the signal is given basically once they March into battle those those troops become sort of Fairly mindless uh singular advancing troops advancing forces the Spartans maintain some level of control and this gives them an edge I mean for a long period they are they're unbeaten in Pitch battle and you can point fairly precisely to the fact that this level of control is is letting them win where other Greeks might have already sort of either it would have been you know coin toss basically like you encounter another force and you have to see who wins it comes down to you know Downs to chance more or less um or would have just broken in panic and run away which happens very often in hotl battles the Spartans do have a greater level of discipline um which comes in comes into play in these these big orchestrated pitched battles where they have a definite Edge over other Greeks and is this thanks partly because you mentioned it in passing there due to the command structure of Spartan armies was that also a bit better than other Greek city states yeah so this is the one thing that that lets them do this is you on the one hand you could talk about formation drill but as I said we don't really have any evidence of it and we must suppose that it's actually quite simple and easy to learn which actually xenophon keeps stressing like this is easy to learn you can pick this up anyone can do this he clearly wants other people to do the same because he thinks there should be no obstruction to this so it's not like you need to have gone through the agog or through through the pidea um to learn this it's something that anyone can do according to him but the what you need in order to do that is to make sure that you have a front rank of soldiers who know what they're doing and that front rank in the Spartan Army is these officers so they have a greater a more articulated officer hierarchy where instead of having a single Commander with a couple of underlings who each command like a large chunk of of men like in Athens the lowest ranking officer is the Locos who commands several hundred men um so how are you going to operate that block how are you going to to make those troops follow orders they can't even hear you when you're shouting you know some of them will be too far away the Spartans break that down further so below that level they have another level the pentecostes and below that they have the anotar and these are like levels of of units subdivision um with each with their own officer which allows them to pass down orders quickly and so when you're in one of these units you know there's a guy that you can talk to there's a guy that you need to listen to you know where he is he's right there in front of you um all you have to do is either listen to his commands as they come down which can be passed on very quickly down that chain or you just have to see what he does and follow him and that um subdivision which means a Devolution of the responsibility of leadership um means that this this fank becomes much more responsive and that this this formation is is able to maneuver much more effectively well there you go yeah the Spartan officers renowned of course they send sometimes send officers rather than whole armies don't they to to inspire and sometimes really influence the cause of certain wars in the fifth and fourth centuries BC I'd like before we completely wrap up we need to talk a bit about 300s but actually the 300 themselves was there really an elite unit of 300 Within in the Spartan Army uh there was but we have to separate those things we don't know if the 300 at thermop were the 300 that later exist as or that that we knew exist even at the time as an elite unit within the Spartan Army so the Spartan Army as I said is a militia and there is no standing Force there is no sort of constantly available sort of army of the Spartans but there is a unit that is more or less constantly ready and at the disposal of the Spartan Kings and I've referred to it earlier as the royal guard they're called the hippes confusingly which means Horsemen um they're not Horsemen and they don't seem to ever fight on Horseback possibly they're called hippes in the same way that a lot of other elite units or Elite segments of society in various other Greek states are called hippes because they're horse owners so they may have been originally a unit of particularly Rich citizens who therefore fought as a military Elite we don't know that's possibly the origin of the name but certainly in our time they're basically a picked force of um of an o that serves as an honor guard so they're not necessarily Elite in any sense that they are you know operating independently they're not a special forces kind of unit they're not armed differently as far as we can tell there's nothing unique about them that you Mak means that they are distinct on the battlefield um but they are picked from each year group so as Spartans mature and and and become citizens the best ones of them are picked for this for this Elite group um and they are to serve as guards of the king and they're also at the disposal of their officers in the sense that you know if you need some muscle if you need something done within the Spartan society you can go to the E force and the a force will say go to the commander of the of the guard and whoever he has at his disposal they can just sort of group them and send them along with you um so these are basically people who are hanging around as sort of police force as well um but these men are are supposed to be picked from the from men who's turned 20 basically and there's a lot of competition for this for this honor of course because it is an honor guard it it's serves in the botle line as identical to the rest of the army but around the king so they get to prove themselves personally they get to be close to these Kings um and that is that makes it very competitive people want to be part of it and so according to xenophon there's a lot of fights in the streets where people are trying to obtain the sort of the right to be uh to be picked for this and they dispute it among each other they say you can't be picked if if I'm here you know you're you're not as Brave as I am you're not as good as I am whatever um so there's a lot of competition for this but the fact is that as Spartan population declines as their their number of Citizen declines you end up with the problem that there aren't more than 300 people graduating each year and in fact there should be much fewer towards the end of of Spartan history that we can see so by the third century when they when they start to think seriously about reforming the state everyone would have gone through this every Spartan growing up would have been picked for the hipas because otherwise you can't fill the numbers so it stops being kind of a picked unit of of uh that is honored for its prowess but rather becomes a unit of just you know a right of passage essentially a unit of the 20 to 30 year olds within the Spartan militia so it sounds like sparton training does although rather confusingly at a later date become more severe like the fictional idea we have of Spartan training at let's say at the beginning of the fifth century BC well we don't actually know anything about whether this unit trained I mean this is again something that is that is totally obscure I mean there's no indication that this unit was separately grouped for training or anything like that um so they would have served with the other sparad and in fact if they were members of their own tent groups as all Spartan citizens had to be then they would have actually eaten and and and celebrated and feasted and trained separately so they wouldn't necessarily have been set aside for that purpose and kept in a Barracks like pick troops in thieves or in Athens potentially um they would have just been you know available when when needed but otherwise would have would have been a separate would have been a sort of scattered part of the of the Spartan militia um so again we mustn't interpret this as a standing Force right we mustn't interpret this as a as a a military Elite that is sort of um that is serving as a s of special force or anything like that um you have to to interpret this as as just a section of the militia that behaves as an honor guard in battle so that that is grouped around the king and on one memorable occasion um chaperon theistically is the Athenian General when he's on his way homes and this is considered one of the greatest Honors that the Spartans can bestow is that he is accompanied by the royal guard in in honor of his his leadership at at Salam and is it also true that with the Spartans let's say they are out in campaign whether they're at thopi or platea or elsewhere if the Spartans they don't surrender and they die there on the spot would their bodies be taken back to Sparta and be buried somewhere in a cemetery there or what would happen to their burials um so first of all they don't always stand their ground and fight I mean this is something obviously that they like to propagate because it makes them even more intimidating as I said you know a lot of their um success in battle hinges on their discipline but a lot also depends on the fact that their enemies are scared of them so a lot of the time they don't actually have to fight when they do have to fight because their enemies will just run away right like this happens at least four occasions when they go into battle and the enemy just goes like I'm not fighting those guys like I'm by like that's it that's how they win um and so a lot of it is based on fear when they do have to fight obviously that reduces the odds to roughly even because as we've seen an individual Spartan is no better than an individual hoplight from elsewhere you know they may be fit you know they may be tough but you know in a fight you know that spear is going to hit you and that's a dice roll like you're still going to go down um what you do see is that um when when when it gets tough for them when when the Spartans do get they get stuck in a fight is it you know they might lose and they might when they lose when they start to see their numbers going down they might break this does happen especially from the 4th Century onwards that that does start to be a big problem for them is that they can't rely win battles anymore and even before that in situations that are not quite a full- pitch battle when they're beset by light troops or beset by Cavalry for instance they might just break and run I mean that just happens because they can't do anything to reach that enemy they can't fight in the way they want to and eventually they their morale just gives in because they're not superhuman so those who do fall you know fall abroad either in battle or or because they're they're sort of driven out um the Spartans don't bring them home which is kind of a separation between Sparta and Athens in this period the Athenians become very ESS with bringing all the dead home so they have they are the origin of the modern attitude that the dead should be buried at home even the Unknown Soldier should be buried at home um that is an Athenian tradition the Spartans rather have a tradition to bury the dead on the battlefield um or somewhere near the battlefield where they can leave a testimony to their willingness to go and stick their neck out for other people so to to fight on behalf of their allies for instance or to fight of behalf of those who ask for their help so the Spartans do actually bury their dead as as far away from home as possible and there's this really great anecdote which I mean we don't know if it's historical but I for this one I love to for it to be true where an argive and a Spartan obviously these are the argives again you know they're they're ancient Rivals and the argive boasts there are lots of Spartans buried in my territory and the Spartan retorts but there are no no SP no our guys buried in ours the idea being that you know we go out to fight you where you are you have never managed to come and fight us where we are so the idea is like the Spartans are proud of the fact that Spartans are buried abroad rather than at home which creates an obvious problem when you're looking at that famous quote of come home with your shielder on it um because the Spartans don't come home if they're if they die if they fall in battle um they're buried where they where they fell and so the question is does this mother mean that he's only wounded like he's being carried back on his shield because he can't walk um more likely and this is a really interesting argument that a friend of mine has made it's it's something that that we're trying to to pick apart because we don't understand understand whether this quote is historical or not um he's argued that maybe this is something that relates to an older tradition before the Spartans start burying their dead abroad um because we do hear in the Archaic Period so much much further back than than the Persian Wars that there are tombs of Fallen Warriors in Sparta eventually they stopped doing this but if you have tombs of Fallen Warriors in Sparta that means they're bringing their dead back to the city which then means that that could be a context in which that that phrase about you know coming home with your shield on it might make sense so maybe that phrase is not only authentic but very ancient whereas in The Classical period they've changed to a different tradition where they actually don't bring back their dead so it would be come back with your Shield or don't this is been absolutely brilliant last question it might have to be quite a short answer but with everything we've discussed and I think I already know the answer to this already but we get regularly this depiction of Sparta as a warrior culture how much for Warrior culture really was classical Sparta deep breath um I would say not at all but that's a risky claim because there are ancient sources who you know people from from who've seen Sparta you know who who know about Sparta in their own world who still say that this is not a city it's a barracks right they they emphasize this this military aspect we have to be aware of the fact that for them this is quite a low bar like they're looking at their of this society and saying it's very different from hours and so we emphasize the difference so to some extent we can put it away that way and say like oh well they're just talking about a society that looks a little bit more militarized a little bit more regimented than their own um but the other side of that is there are some features of this society that you can see as militarizing that you can see as sort of turning this Society into a military Society like this common messes the fact that all these adult men have to eat together have to dine and and sleep together um and you can say well this this is like an army camp you know it's not really like a city um but you can look at that in a different way when you bring a bunch of elite elite men in ancient Greece together and have a drinking party that's called a symposium right all Greeks do this this is how they want to live this is how they want to Advocate how they want to display their their wealth the Spartans have this same system but they've regimented it in a way that enforces moderation and sameness they make them do it every night but in certain conditions that restrict the lavishness and restrict the extravagance of these parties so in a way they're not really doing things differently they're just doing the same things in a way that reinforces these things that they want to believe about their own society that they're all the same they're all dedicated to the same values dedicated to the same lifestyle so you can look at the kind of Spartan practices that other Greeks think is like well that's a bit it's a bit Grim it's a bit harsh and turn it into something that's just like well no it's just Spartans trying to reinforce the way that they want their citizens to to behave without necessarily having a military purpose in mind like these mess holes they are so much emphasis in the sources on their their moral um conditioning these mes holes are about people getting together and singing the songs that Advocate their values and telling the stories that that evaluate what they think is good and and and bad um it's so much about indoctrinating children you know who who are introduced to these mes Hol they have to come and attend these dinners and they supposedly are just asked direct questions like what do you think of that who do you think is a good man who do you think is is the best man in the PO these kind of questions they're about this like can you behave can you pick up and and and become an expression of Ideal Spartan values it's not about military training it's not about militarism even it's about being the Spartan citizen that they want a Spartan citizen to be and that's very much about being good in Council and War and being good as a citizen and upholding the state and upholding its institutions and its values and its morality um and and behaving in a way that doesn't cause a stir you know it's this sort of imposed conservatism it's this imposed sense of like this is how we want to live and you have to accept that you have to live that and you have to breathe it you have to you have to exude it and if foreigners ask you if you know you go abroad and you encounter people you have to represent us you know you have to be a proper Spartan and that is what they do in their upbringing that is how they condition people some other aspects of it you know the sports the the athletic uh preparation obviously again you could say that has a military purpose it surely does I mean these guys are becoming you know fit fit men who are prepared as I said for the hardships is campaigning you could say that this is all about Warfare um but the women have to exercise too um or or rather I should say the girls until they marry have to exercise too um and so the purpose of that is explicitly according to the sources eugenic you know they want to create fit men and women so that their babies will also be fit so that their children will be healthy that's what they believe that's how they think that genetic works you know you they don't know about genetics they think that if you have you know uh if you have a fit and healthy and and and and and um energetic man and a fit and healthy and energetic woman and they have sex then their child will also be healthy and energetic and in fact they believe that if you separate them so that they become sort of hornier and more they desire each other more then their sex will be more intense and then their children will be more energetic that's what they believe so this is purely eugenic right this isn't necessarily about creating the best warriors are conditioning people to be these super super Fighters you know these extremely tough men this is about the idea of obviously you want your soldiers to be healthy and fit obviously you want your militia which is drafted from the ordinary citizens to not be diluted by citizens who are not well prepared for this which happens in all the other states you know when you draw up the whole population for your militia as xenophon W widely complains and Plato complains some of them are going to be too old or Too Young or too fat or too thin and they can't stand it you know they're not they're not built for it so they want to make sure that everybody is more or less of an even standard so that they are useful to the state there are military sides to that there is a military Dimension to that usefulness but that's not the sole purpose of this they are meant to be citizens they're meant to be the best citizens of Sparta well Ro what an answer to finish this episode on it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today thank you so much it's been a real pleasure to be here thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube Chann Channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel History hit. 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Channel: History Hit

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Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, ancient spartans, ancient spartan training, ancient spartan armor, ancient sparta facts, ancient sparta and athens, spartan history, history of ancient sparta, life in ancient sparta, sex in spartan society, spartan history 300, spartan history podcast, podcast ancient sparta, roel konijnendijk, roel konijnendijk 300, roel konijnendijk sparta, the ancients podcast, the ancients history hit, myths of ancient sparta

Id: 38yfv_0c_ek

Length: 61min 39sec (3699 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023