this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Spartans were good at war
Spartans loved smashing ass
Therefore smash ass to be good at war
Spartans were kind of shit at war.
Now, the Theban Sacred Band? THEY were good at war and smashing ass
I think that view is an overcorrection to their inflated reputation. They, like every other Classical Greek state, had their comparative times of strength and weakness.
They as a polity had times of strength and weakness, but their reputation as peerless warriors doesn't really hold up under battlefield conditions, and their rigid caste system made all except the Spartiates perform relatively poorly on the battlefield. They traded on reputation (and terror) and an economic ability to wage war at any time (as Spartan citizen-nobility had no other significant functions other than repressing helots), not actual battlefield performance.
This collection is a really good breakdown of how the reputation of Spartan society did a lot to carry them through most battles, and how the actual Spartan society absolutely sucked for everyone. One of the things that really stood out to me in regards to how their reputation carried them was that in hoplite battle, you arranged your army by strength from right to left, meaning the right side of your army is facing the left side of your enemy. Essentially the goal of the left side of your army was to survive while the right side of your army was destroying the left side of theirs. Because of the Spartan reputation, it was common for the left side aligned to face their forces in combat would flee before even engaging, leaving an opportunity for the Spartans to flank their enemies and destroy their armies. So Spartans won a lot of battles not because of their immense military capabilities, but because their enemies would allow them to flank based on reputation.
Sure, but if the Spartans were shit at war they wouldn't have had the century and a half of being undefeated in decisive battle that would form the Peloponnesian League from their conquered subjects in the first place.
The League that then led the war against Xerxes, and eventually conquered Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, a hegemony that would only be broken by the man whose tactics would teach Phillip II and his son what's-his-name how to conquer most of the ancient world.
That simply is not being shit at war, even if a critical analysis shows the Spartans did not perform notably better 1:1 than anyone else without trading on their reputation.
I don't think we disagree on the details, only the descriptor.
I think we can certainly both agree that smashing ass was apparently key to conquering Greece, be it Spartans, Thebans, or Macedonians.
Another successful Lemmy discourse!
Didn't Spartans bang their battle bros?
They also really liked smashing underage boy asses during Spartan training for the boys🤔
That, supposedly, is a bit of misinformation spread by NAMBLA types. The Greeks apparently didn't care for too large an age gap in pederastic relationships, and 16 was roughly considered to be the socially acceptable age to begin one.
Not great by modern standards but certainly better than some, and better than they treated women who were often considered marriable at 14. Though at least that was better than the Roman 12, and Aristotle even argued that 21 was the most appropriate age for healthy children (fertility periods being their primary concern)
I feel obligated as a Romaboo to point out that 12 was the absolute minimum legal age of consent for marriage, while the mid-teens would have been a more average age for noblewomen to marry at. Not that any of that is great, of course.
I just assumed Greeks were similar to Romans when it came to that kind of stuff, but I did not realize that Greeks were slightly better than Romans when it came to that kind of stuff!
A strong anus means you won't shit yourself in battle