It will surprise precisely nobody that the 300 movies are not
historically accurate portrayals of the Spartans, but the movies do lean on an existing myth. We
all grew up thinking of the Spartans as the ultimate military badasses. Was this true?
The Spartan Triumphs
No one could deny that Spartans were one of the most
impressively organized militaristic cultures in history. Their style of warfare, an eight-person-deep unwavering
wall of shields and spears, broke nearly anyone who went up against them. Their intense training, starting at eight and
officially lasting ten years – and unofficially never stopping – made for an
absolute discipline. Their part in the
Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC is rightly acknowledged as one of the turning
points of history.
In some ways, they are given too little credit. They weren’t the guileless, undifferentiated
blunt instrument they are so often made out to be. They had different fighting forces – armies,
navies, and elite forces. Like all
successful militaries, they employed and promoted crafty tacticians.
Spartans were among the first fighting
forces to recognize the importance of spycraft and infiltration. The kryptea, a specially-trained unit,
functioned as something between a spy agency and a secret police, keeping an
eye on the conquered territories and on the troops at home. The Spartan empire, though small compared to world empires, was large compared to those of their neighbors. They held it for hundreds of years. This was not an accident.
The Society in the Background
It’s now common knowledge that the Spartans were a slave-owning
society. While a loss to the Persians would have meant enslavement for the Spartans, it might have meant freedom for the conquered territories around
Sparta. What’s not often discussed is
the way being a slave-owning society shaped Sparta. From nearly the beginning, the slaves, or helots,
outnumbered the Spartans.
All
slave-owning societies fear a slave revolt.
The Spartans had more to fear than most.
The concerted militarism of their society wasn’t an expression of
athletic prowess, or an ideal of strength. It
was the way they stayed alive. The more Sparta expanded, the less they could afford to let their guard down. Sparta, like many cultures with a secret
police force, was a culture of
paranoia.
During a helot
uprising, Athens sent troops to help Sparta put the rebellion down.
The Spartans sent the Athenians packing.
They didn’t want Athenian values disseminated among the Spartan
population, and especially the helot population. Today, the Spartans are
portrayed as a freedom-loving culture – even if they only valued their own
freedom. In truth, their actions and
thoughts were kept in line by the government and the law.
Which isn’t to say the Spartans didn’t enjoy some freedom. Their women enjoyed the greatest freedom in
ancient Greek culture, and were encouraged to read, write, own land, speak up
when it came to politics, and practice sports.
The upper echelon of warrior men, who had survived battles and attained
rank and power, were honored and given a free hand.
The dark side to this free hand is
exemplified by no less than one of the fabled 300. Aristodemus was one of the warriors at
Thermopylae. He and another soldier came
down with eye infections at the beginning of the fight. Leonidas,
their king and commander, ordered them to go home.
The other warrior, on the final day of battle, had a slave guide him to
the field. Aristodemus, meanwhile, obeyed orders and
went home. He was branded a “trembler,”
and suffered the fate of anyone judged to lack courage. He had patches sewn onto his cloak, letting
everyone know he was a coward. All his
acquaintances were to ignore him. If
someone ordered him out of their way at public events, he had to obey, no
matter who they were.
The Spartans were early eugenicists, and as Aristodemus had proved his genes were
faulty, his daughters were no longer allowed to marry.
A year later, when the Spartans faced another
incoming force of Persians, Aristodemus was allowed to fight, and ran eagerly to his
death. His willingness to die was noted, his status as coward was
officially revoked, and his children were no longer forbidden from breeding. Either Spartan soldiers would fight to the
death, or Spartan society would make them wish they had.
None of this negates the impressive Spartan military victories, but it does put them in
context. When we picture “warrior cultures”
or “militaristic societies,” they are often represented to us as cultures
focused on honor, bravery, freedom, or even just the exhilaration of battle. That is the way many see the Spartans, and
probably the way the Spartans saw themselves — but idealism wasn’t what created
their society. Their military was a
practical solution to a problem. Eventually it became the only solution to
that problem.
And though individual
warriors were taught, and believed, that courage was the ultimate virtue, their
idealism was braced by more than just morality.
Each soldier knew he could risk his life and have everything, or keep it
and have nothing. It was not death
before dishonor. It was death before
unending abuse and contempt.
The Spartans weren’t alone at Thermopylae
Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
This poem by Simonides of Ceos commemorates the most
famous battle in western history. The attacking
Persian army, forced to a choke point, was held at bay by a force of only 300
Spartans. And a few hundred of their
slaves. And about a thousand other
Greeks from different city-states. Also,
there was a naval battle nearby, to keep the Persians from simply saying, “screw
it,” and sailing around the Spartan force.
The Persian invasion took place at an inconvenient time for the
Spartans. The Olympics were happening,
as well as a religious festival. If
there was one thing the Spartans took as seriously as their fighting, it was
their religion. They couldn’t abandon
the festivities, but everyone, including the other Greek city-states, knew the
threat that the Persians posed. In the
end, Leonidas led an elite group of 300 Spartans out to fight. (Leonidas might have felt especially
pressured to go, as there were rumors that he’d killed the previous king of
Sparta and married that king’s daughter in order to assume the throne.) Other city-states contributed soldiers, and
the overall force at Thermopylae was 5000.
After a few days of fighting, during which the Greeks held the
pass, the Persians found a goat path along the hills that would allow them to
flank the Greeks. It’s not clear on
whether a traitor gave the Greeks up, or whether the Persians simply found it
while scouting the area. (We should feel free to blame the goats, though.)
Greek runners
stationed on the path warned Leonidas, and he ordered most of the other
soldiers home. There was no question
that the Spartans would stay. They also
kindly volunteered their own slaves. What’s surprising is the fact that at least a
thousand other Greeks chose to stay, knowing that they were to be
massacred. The Spartans led the forces
at Thermopylae, and their bravery isn’t in question. They weren’t the only soldiers who bravely stayed. Not only weren’t
the Spartans the only ones to die at Thermopylae – they weren’t even the
majority. They did, however, have the
best PR.
The Spartan Defeats
Even in their own time, Spartans were revered for their fighting
ability. Their performance at Thermopylae
became a contemporary myth, and some historians do believe that it rallied all of Greece
to successfully resist the Persian encroachments. That being said, they were not undefeated.
The most infamous Spartan defeat was during the Peloponnesian
War, a decades-long war between Athens and Sparta that started not long after
the end of the Persian threat. The defeat shocked all of Greece, including Athens and Sparta, because the Spartans weren’t just beaten. They surrendered.
It was the Battle of Sphacteria in 425
BC. Sphacteria was a little island,
technically in Sparta’s own territory, on which a Spartan force was isolated
after a larger battle didn’t go their way.
The Athenians laid siege to the Spartans, who had sheltered against some
cliffside terrain, showering them with arrows and eventually surrounding
them. The 120 Spartans gave up their
weapons and surrendered.
Even at the
time, it was unheard of for a Spartan to surrender. When asked about it, one Spartan blamed the
Athenians for attacking them with arrows, which he called “spindles,” instead
of “masculine weapons.” In other words, “They
were so wimpy that we had to surrender to them.” The entire fiasco proved so crushing that
Sparta sued for peace. The Athenians,
full of confidence, let the peace talks break down – which they must have
regretted when they lost the war in 404 BC. (It’s telling that Sparta actually went to
Persia for the money to raise the fleet of ships that they needed to defeat
Athens.)
Another group to kick the Spartans around was the famous
Sacred Band of Thebes. Thebes provided
its own 300 super-soldiers, although they have never been the subject of a
film, possibly because they were all lovers. It also possible that the Sacred
Band never got their stories on film because, by the time they were formed, the
Spartans had already taken some hits.
Thebans formed the band just after they had kicked the Spartans out of
their capital city. The Sacred Band won
three different battles against Spartan forces.
In one of the battles, in 378 BC, they won simply by refusing to follow
the Spartans onto unfavorable ground. The
Spartans had breached outer blockades in front of Thebes and the Theban army
retreated behind the inner walls. When
the Spartans charged, hoping to make the Thebans break ranks, the Thebans were
ordered to assume a resting posture, calling the Spartan’s bluff. The Spartans left, and then predictably
complained that they should be considered the winners of the battle because the Thebans hadn’t
fought them right.
The Sacred Band directly fought the Spartans on two different
occasions, and were outnumbered each time.
In Battle of Tegyra, outnumbered two to one, they killed the Spartan
commanders and charged the ranks so boldly that the Spartans opened up a
channel, assuming the Thebans would use it to escape. Instead, they attacked
from within and routed the Spartan troops.
In the Battle of Leuctra, the Theban cavalry made short work of the
Spartan ground forces, despite the fact that the Thebans commanded a force of
6000 to the Spartans’ 10,000.
In
the end, the Spartans’ greatest defeat came at the hands of their own slaves.
The military defeats took their toll on Sparta, as did the Spartans’ slow
accumulation of enemies. Eventually, the catastrophe that the Spartans had built their culture to avoid happened,
and the helots successfully rebelled. Sparta was built on slavery, and
with most of its slaves gone it was impoverished. It dissolved into a kind of Disneyland, where
traditional Spartan rituals were performed for money in front of visitors. Its last king died trying to raise money for
the city by fighting as a mercenary.
No
country falls gracefully, and no entity can live up to its myth. The point of myth is to take an inspiring
story and turn it into a perfect one. The
Spartan legend, the legend of the supersoldiers, while based on reality, wasn’t
entirely applicable even in the Spartans’ own time.
The myth of the 300, of Thermopylae, and of Sparta as a culture of
perfect warriors, has value. The reality
of Sparta as an imperfect society does as well.
[Via Persian
Fire:The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, The
Spartans: The World of Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, Arktouros.]
