(W.W. Norton & Co., 326 pages)
Other than Rome, is there any ancient civilization that commands more attention than Sparta?
Sparta remains front and center in the popular imagination in part because of the Spartan Race franchise, headquartered in Vermont, as well as the many books and films about the culture, to include Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire. And most everyone who is well-read knows the adjective “Spartan” and has an opinion about whether it should be capitalized.
But the popular view of Sparta is largely informed by myth, which is why historians talk about “the Spartan mirage.” British historian Andrew Bayliss proposes to correct the record in Sparta, The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower.
Although Sparta’s glory days began two centuries earlier, the first surviving history was written in the fifth century BCE. Little was written by actual citizens of Sparta, and even then, that’s “a few hundred lines of verse,” Bayliss writes. How then, did Sparta become so important that it was seen as aspirational by a diverse collection of thinkers, including Plato, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Robespierre and even Samuel Adams, who wanted the United States to become “the Christian Sparta”?
Part of the answer appears to be selective memory because, as Bayliss explains, we have cherry-picked the good of Spartan culture and conveniently excised the abhorrent, such as the practice of throwing prisoners and babies deemed inferior off a cliff and the violent enslavement of “helots” in order to enable the lifestyle of the citizens of Sparta — who were called Spartiates, by the way, not Spartans. (Bayliss uses the terms interchangeably, however.)
Slavery was common at the time, even in Athens, where historians believe there were about 80,000 enslaved people in the fifth century BCE.
“What singled the Spartans out was the ruthlessness with which they conquered and enslaved their fellow Greeks, in order to ensure that each of their own citizens possessed a captive, self-producing human workforce,” Bayliss writes.
The official citizenry of Sparta, determined by their land holdings, did not work at all, at least not in order to sustain themselves and their families. They worked on their bodies, readying themselves for battle and for their famed athletic games. The women, too, participated in athletic games and were required to maintain a high level of fitness, although they were not required to serve in the military. (Women were also allowed to inherit and own land in Sparta, unusual for their time; Bayliss points out that this wasn’t allowed in Britain until 1870.)
Theirs was a communal lifestyle, with everyone required to gather together for meals in the evening, in which the main feature was “unbaked barley burgers” and something called “black broth,” which scholars believe was a liquid derived by boiling pork in salt and blood. “The broth was so unpleasant that a visitor … remarked that he no longer considered the Spartans to be brave after trying their food, because ‘anyone in their right mind would prefer to die ten thousand times than share such a poor living.’”
For the Spartiates, death on the battlefield was considered a privilege, an idea that was inculcated from childhood, and one that enabled the battles that have become legendary, including the “Battle of the Champions” in which 300 elite warriors of Sparta fought an equal number of warriors from the region of Argos. All but three died — two from Argos and one Spartiate; the Spartan warrior later committed suicide because he was ashamed for having survived.
Interestingly, Spartan men who died in battle were the only citizens permitted gravestones, and the ones that have been found are reminiscent of the uniform graves at Arlington National Cemetery: small, identical markers engraved with the name of the warrior and the words en polemoi, “in war.”
In their ideals and practices, Spartan culture lingers in modernity; “Come and take them,” the popular retort of gun enthusiasts, is said to have originated with Leonidas, the Spartan king who died with his men at Battle of Thermopylae, depicted in the 2006 film 300.
Despite their fierceness, the Spartiates were a superstitious people who thought that the devastating earthquake in the fourth century BCE was punishment sent by the god Poseidon. “A tremor at the wrong time would halt a Spartan army in its tracks, in the belief that the god was expressing his displeasure at the mission.”
And yet their government was oddly predictive of modern democracies. Sparta had two kings, from separate families, and a ruling council of elders composed of 28 citizens over the age of 60. The system, Bayliss writes, provided stability and worked to cancel out “the excesses” of the leaders, much like the American system of government is supposed to do. Citizens of Sparta could vote on bills the council had put worth, although the value of this seems dubious since the Sparta constitution said, “If the people choose crookedly, the kings and elders shall set it aside.”
The Spartan Race philosophy is that people become “unbreakable” by doing hard things. Unfortunately, the Spartans proved not to be unbreakable themselves; like Rome, they had a rise and fall, and the fall of Sparta came relatively fast, in less than three months. Their power, too, proved to be “illustory,” Bayliss writes. “Their alliance system gave the impression — both to insiders and onlookers — that Sparta could dominate the Greek-speaking world for generations, and even allowed them to think that they might be capable of taking on and conquering the Persians. In fact, none of this was really possible, because there were simply too few Spartans.”
In short, they overextended themselves, and not for a noble cause.
“The only freedom the Spartans were interested in was their own — and particularly the freedom to treat anyone they thought beneath them as they pleased,” Bayliss says.
Although Sparta is superbly researched, it often feels like required reading for a history class. One must be very interested in Sparta, its enemies and the Peloponnesian War to remain engrossed throughout. Fortunately for Bayliss, a good many people are. For everyone else, there is a lasting takeaway: Choose your heroes wisely. B-
Featured Photo: Sparta, by Andrew Bayliss
