Sayings of Spartan women

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/moralia/sayings_of_spartan_women*.html

by redwoolf • 5 years ago

176 212 5 years ago

penelope.uchicago.edu

kleiba• 5 years ago

...and then there's Schopenhauer: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/483552-the-cheapest-sort-of...

platz• 5 years ago

a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen

seems like an overstep

Miraste3• 5 years ago

Schopenhauer is one of history's biggest assholes, it's like his whole thing. No one liked him even when he was alive.

sto_hristo2• 5 years ago

Not quite that much according to my observations. All the nationalists where i'm from are bunch of literal morons that can't do much useful things beyond clenching fists and shouting $country greatest in the world, everyone other country run by little girl.

YeGoblynQueenne14• 5 years ago

Schopenhauer is a twisted firestarter. See picture.

tokai• 5 years ago

Hm, all most all of them are horrible. It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise when it was an awful inhumane culture and society that didn't even last that long.

mc322• 5 years ago

Aside from Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League), Sparta is always portrayed as cruel and inhumane, deservedly so. On the other hand, they were, apparently, good at waging war one way or another.

I've not seen it associated with philosophy and civilization as Athens was, among others.

jacobmischka• 5 years ago

According to Deveraux (article series linked in another comment) they weren't even good at that!

clairity2• 5 years ago

“…Sports (where competition is the whole point outside of the Ivy League)…”

the point of sports in the ivy league is also competition, whether they’re able to be as competitive as other leagues or not.

dragontamer2• 5 years ago

Sparta was good at fighting, but bad at war!

Spartans were known to have terrible logistics, they couldn't field an army for more than a year. Back then, most armies needed to live off the fat of the land and/or have huge supply trains to remain effective, and Spartans had neither skillset. (When talking Bronze age tactics: this was the key advantage of slingers, who could craft their sling-bullets from clay and rocks found near the battle areas. Mass production and distribution of arrows was still not mastered in the 1000 BC-era or so)

As such, Spartans would "gloriously" run into a few battles, declare themselves superior, then go home. While the enemies would just keep marching towards their target, sustainably pressing forward.

Its like watching an expert Sprinter battle a Marathon Runner. War is a marathon, not a sprint. Consider the Persian armies that fought against the Greeks: thousands of miles away from home.

In contrast, Spartans fought on their home turf and barely were able to do so effectively. Sure, they won a lot of battles, but holding back the Persian army required more than just winning a battle here or there.

----------

That's why the Athenians worshiped Athena: the goddess of wisdom _and_ war. They realized that waging war was both an issue of might and intelligence. Intelligence to move your supplies and organize them so that your armies can stay in the field longer than your enemies.

--------

That being said: the Marine Corps glorify the Spartan way of thinking, because the USA's Marine Corps are designed to be the spearhead of battle.

The Army is more about logistics. Its got less glory but is more practical. They don't glorify the Spartan way.

mountainb• 5 years ago

Sparta's the model for Thomas More's Utopia.

rsynnott6• 5 years ago

It's so impressive to me that we still proclaim Sparta as something worthwhile of praise

Do we? I thought it was fairly well-known to be extremely nasty.

NoGravitas• 5 years ago

It remains extremely popular with chuds, who actually want our society to be nastier than it already is.

intrepidhero2• 5 years ago

An awful lot of those sayings are extolling "willingness to commit violence" as a virtue. That's not the sort of society I think we should emulate.

duxup• 5 years ago

There's very much a cultist / opressive / disturbing aspect from the bits of quotes and history that have been passed on.

wutbrodo• 5 years ago

There's a novel twist on this particular selection too. Glorifying violence and being callous about its consequences is even more abhorrent from a position where you're guaranteed not to suffer the direct consequences.

emadabdulrahim• 5 years ago

Doesn't it depends on the context? Defending an elderly from assault or protecting one's family from a reckless person is violence in the name of virtue.

xgb84j2• 5 years ago

While violence is sometimes justified, I think it's still better to build a society that tries to solve its problems without violence or prevents problems that can only be solved with violence.

When you have reckless people attacking the elderly you need better psychological healthcare and a better social system to prevent that.

I understand your point and in a narrow context it's definitely true, but in a larger context you can prevent most violence by changing society.

Taywee2• 5 years ago

Who is suggesting we emulate it? Can't things just be interesting historically?

Applejinx5• 5 years ago

Yes. It's worth study. Especially since, all the world over, we've got resurgence of Spartan attitudes towards virtue, valor, and violence.

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

There's a subset of people who think (or at least act like they do) anything short of a strong condemnation of something they don't like is an endorsement.

Usually you see these people pop up when discussing societal norms in the 3rd world but they do pop up frequently enough to be noticed when discussing history.

Double_Cast• 5 years ago

Potential violence != actual violence.

The potential to commit violence can be reframed as strength. It's useful because it grants you negotiating leverage, regardless of whether you are the aggressor or defender. Can't defend yourself? Vae victis.

intrepidhero2• 5 years ago

The capability to commit violence might be a strength in a world where violence is an unfortunate necessity, ie for defense of the common good. But unless it's paired with wisdom and reluctance (as the opposite of the willingness noted above and gleefully promoted by adherents to the Spartan mythos) that capability is mostly the tool of tyranny.

narrator• 5 years ago

A lot of those quotes make me think that they thought they were so much better than everyone else that their downfall was chiefly caused by believing their own propaganda. This hubris, which the Athenians always warned about, has caused many empires to fall throughout history.

rufus_foreman• 5 years ago

I think the choice is between willingness to commit violence and willingness to accept violence being committed against you.

herio• 5 years ago

On the topic of Spartan societey in general, a really good read is https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/ by Dr. Bret Deveraux.

Long read but well worth it for interested people.

ianbicking2• 5 years ago

Great series! I came out with the feeling that the Spartans were like the genteel Antebellum plantation owners of Greece: seemingly noble and stoic, but in reality terribly cruel, corrupted, and decadent.

kybernetikos• 5 years ago

I had been thinking about fantasy stories and what the maximumly evil evil empire you could write in a story and still have it somewhat believable. After reading that, I think Sparta is probably it, if not a little beyond it.

gadders2• 5 years ago

I always thought the tactics of the Krypteia against the helots looked similar to the KKK.

lifeisstillgood• 5 years ago

He recently appeared in the EconTalk podcast and its worth hearing too (will find the link). But they touched on Sparta and the thing that struck me was just how unequal - something like 5% or less of the population of Sparta (and it was a big state by Greek standards), only 5% were "free" - everyone else was a Slave.

The level of violence to stop that becoming an uncontrolled uprising must have been huge.

int_19h8• 5 years ago

It's worse. Sparta is basically the first proto-fascist state in history (or, at least, the first recorded as such).

RcouF1uZ4gsC2• 5 years ago

It is a very interesting series. However, I think he understates classic Spartan military prowess.

If you look at Deveraux's list of military victories and defeats, you will see a lot of the defeats came after the Peloponnesian war. I believe even Greek sources talked about how Spartan society became softer after winning the Peloponnesian war.

Also, the Spartans were famous for their army not their navy.

If you take the list and remove naval battles and battles fought after the Peloponnesian War, you end up with something like 12 victories and 4 defeats with is a 75% win rate which is likely pretty impressive all things considered.

lq313c• 5 years ago

He also points out that the Spartans fought primarily against much weaker opponents, making their military prowess not so impressive. If I constantly pick fights against children, my win rate would be quite high as well.

lelandfe• 5 years ago

Been meaning to turn this one into a PDF to read on the train.

I wonder if he's ever considered publishing that or some of his other long reads. A low estimate has This Isn't Sparta at 130 pages. Images take that higher.

YeGoblynQueenne14• 5 years ago

That is a very biased article that is playing up all the aspects of Spartan society that modern audiences would find repulsive for internet likes. At the end of the day it is not unlike the film it criticises (300) except it's going all the way to the other end and painting a portrait of a grim, evil empire.

It is good to keep in mind that pretty much all ancient societies had norms and customs that we find repulsive today, from pederasty, to slavery, including sexual slavery, to killing of female children, to depriving women of all human rights and treating them as chattel. Sparta sounds particularly bad if one does not know much about the ancients. Otherwise they sound somewhat ordinary and only a bit more up themselves than others.

baybal2• 5 years ago

to depriving women of all human rights and treating them as chattel.

A wife was a chattel, as per law, up until the 20th century in a number of European countries.

JackFr• 5 years ago

Yes, the ancients were very different from us. But Sparta was special even to contemporaries. And it was special ways that are especially appalling to modern sensibilities. It’s dishonest to ignore that.

fishtoaster• 5 years ago

Iirc that series addresses this critique in some depth, pointing out that sparta was particularly awful even by the standards of other greek states. Another interesting bit was how it's historically rare for slave-owning societies to have more than 50% of their population enslaved. Since sparta was closer to 80% enslaved people, they relied on particularly brutal methods to keep down the regular slave revolts, making them considerably crueler than their contemporaries.

watwut• 5 years ago

We do criticize contemporary societies too. We talk about aspects like unfair justice system, inequality, corruption, sexism and such.

We do talk about contemporary totalitarian societies and near part totalitarian societies.

The expectation that we will heroise past society, to feel good, to make them sound awesome, is on itself a bias.

estaseuropano• 5 years ago

I read the entire series and can't agree with your assessment at all. Yes he was very critical of Spartan society, but I feel he very clearly demonstrates through various sources why he has these views, e.g. highlighting that most of what we hear, see and might admire about Sparta is true only for 3% of the population (spartiates), while the vast majority are lower classes and in particular slaves (helots). And even those 'good things' might not be true.

I'd be interested where you disagree on substance.

unemphysbro• 5 years ago

His econtalk appearance was great:

https://www.econtalk.org/bret-devereaux-on-ancient-greece-an...

fouc• 5 years ago

Being asked by a woman from Attica, "Why is it that you Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men," she said, "Because we are the only women that are mothers of men."

IncRnd• 5 years ago

I found that one humorous, as well.

inglor_cz3• 5 years ago

When a foreigner made advances in a mild and leisurely way, she pushed him aside, saying, "Get away from here, you who cannot play a woman's part either!"

This, on the other hand, would offend a lot of contemporary sensibilities.

mordnis• 5 years ago

I wonder if such comments were intended offensive jokes or they really thought they were superior.

speeder• 5 years ago

Explaining that one: 1. Spartans were proud of their men. 2. Sparta despite being very extreme compared to other Greek cities in a lot of things, was an exception regarding women role in politics, in the sense in Sparta was acceptable to hear women opinion (women still had no formal power, but they were allowed to talk to men about politics, while on Athens for example this was forbidden).

RcouF1uZ4gsC2• 5 years ago

I don’t think Sparta was as cruel and callous as portrayed.

I think our view of Sparta is influenced by two main things:

1. Spartan propaganda. It was in Sparta’s interest to portray themselves as crazy, devoted warriors who relished the thought of dying for their country. How would you feel going up against a bunch of guys who would rather die on the field of battle than go home in defeat and have their own mothers kill them.

2. We actually don’t have surviving first person Spartan accounts. Most of what we know about the Spartans comes from others- mainly the Athenians. Now the Athenians as bitter rivals to the Spartans also found it in their interest to portray the Spartans as crazy warrior psychopaths.

We know from history that the Spartans actually lost battles. Also in those battles, there were a lot of Spartan survivors who actually surrendered. In addition, we actually have no historical record of any mass killings of losing soldiers by their mothers.

So take what you read about Spartan warriors with a huge grain of salt.

dustintrex2• 5 years ago

Sparta was, if anything, more cruel and callous than portrayed, it's just that it was mostly the underclasses that were at the receiving end.

You are right in that they weren't particularly good at fighting though.

baud147258• 5 years ago

Spartan propaganda

Sparta milked the Thermopylae battle a lot, presenting themselves as defender of Greek independence against foreign invaders, sometime even as they were taking money from them to pay for their wars against other Greek cities

chalst2• 5 years ago

Xenophon was an Athenian, but he was positively disposed towards Sparta and had seen military service under Spartan commanders. He's probably our best source.

https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/sparta-a.html

slibhb• 5 years ago

Ditto for Thucydides, another Athenian who had a positive view of Sparta.

p1mrx• 5 years ago

So we're basically reading ancient Chuck Norris facts?

kwere• 5 years ago

*Steven Seagall

pacman2• 5 years ago

I have read a comparison about the structure of the Spartan society, basically consisting mostly of slaves like no other culture that used slave labor. Today we know what early experience of violence may do to a person and as far as I now, Spartans hat to kill one helot to be finally admitted into adult Society.

So we get two things.

1. A worrier based elite society, consisting basically of psychopaths

2. A society structure that seem more to resemble a concentration camp with guards.

int_19h8• 5 years ago

We do have plenty of evidence wrt their treatment of helots (crypteia etc). Which is honestly all one needs to make a judgment on cruelty.

antattack• 5 years ago

Lets keep in mind that quotes that survived someone had deemed as worth repeating to perpetuate certain prestige, status or idea. Plus, it's all filtered by time, people and politics,

orange_joe3• 5 years ago

It’s worth mentioning that Spartan women held huge amounts of wealth due to the violence within their society (men’s wealth would be inherited by their wives who would then remarry). According to Aristotle (who is very biased) the women lived lives of luxury. The point of this is that the women who extol the violence of men have a material self interest in the deaths of their men (minimally as a class, potentially individually).

dustintrex2• 5 years ago

Some of the 5% of Spartan women who were full citizens, perhaps. However, Sparta was an extremely unequal society, with some 85% either slaves or helots (also slaves, but owned by the state, not individuals).

marcosdumay• 5 years ago

Well, that goes for every commentary on ancient societies. Unless it's explicitly about slaves and outcasts, it's about the at most 10% of the society that wasn't.

At some point the Romans got more people to participate on their society, but that's centuries after any of that.

orange_joe3• 5 years ago

The named women aren’t helots and it’s unlikely the unnamed women would be helots either. I was under the impression The only group we refer to as Spartan are that minority population of elites as the rest were referred to as helots (who were also unable to serve in their military)

chalst2• 5 years ago

It's worth noting that Aristotle was not a disinterested commentator on Sparta: he loathed the relatively high amount of freedom Spartan women had compared to Athenian women, and went out of his way to argue that when bad things happened to Sparta it had resulted from this.

See, e.g., http://jsphfrtz.com/aristotles-interpretation-of-spartan-wom...

orange_joe3• 5 years ago

Yeah, he was super biased. For a number of reasons. I just kept it as a parenthetical because I think it’s fair to assume that they were relatively wealthy, more equal and powerful than their contemporaries, even if Aristotle is likely overstating the extent of these differences.

at_a_remove2• 5 years ago

Their sayings do have a rather "disposable" view of their sons. I suppose it is the equivalent of that loathsome White Feather movement, which had a too-significant overlap with the Suffragettes of the time.

datameta2• 5 years ago

Would you mind expanding upon this?

jezclaremurugan• 5 years ago

Obligatory - https://acoup.blog/2019/08/29/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

Not as glorious as it is made out to be..

rootlocus2• 5 years ago

How can the highest rated and lowest rated comments (at this moment) be the exact same thing?

AdmiralAsshat• 5 years ago

Anyone noticed the html filename is "sayings_of_spartan_women*.html"? That asterisk in the filename doesn't cause the webserver to explode?

Taywee2• 5 years ago

It really shouldn't. An asterisk is perfectly legal in a filename and in a URL path. It is a special shell character, but if your webserver is looking up static files via the shell, you need a different webserver pronto.

gjsman-10002• 5 years ago

The essential philosophy of Sparta: Survival of the fittest.

sto_hristo2• 5 years ago

I guess they needed more fitness then.

kamaal• 5 years ago

There is a limit to just how much you can punch above your weight.

brazzy3• 5 years ago

...as long as he's from the ruling caste, that is.

ponow• 5 years ago

... a caste originating as the most fit, no doubt

goodpoint• 5 years ago

If by "fittest" you mean "lucky enough to be born into the ruling class".

wly_cdgr• 5 years ago

They sound like a fun bunch

jacknews• 5 years ago

The Spartan culture perished.

at_a_remove2• 5 years ago

Most did.

UncleOxidant• 5 years ago

How many cultures from that era still remain?

I'm thinking Jewish culture (though it's not monolithic), that's about the only one I can think of whose customs, traditions, etc. still remain today.

abhishekjha• 5 years ago

Hindu/Vedic culture is still kicking.

DFHippie• 5 years ago

The Zoroastrians and Buddhists as well. Perhaps the Yazidis should be counted in that number as well. And certain elements of aboriginal cultures -- I'm thinking of the Rainbow Serpent -- go back tens of thousands of years.

int_19h8• 5 years ago

The Jewish culture was very different in that era. At the time Spartans conquered the Messenians (establishing the Spartan culture as we know it), Israel and Judea were still in their First Temple period - a Yahwist monolatry. The hardline monotheism that is one of the defining features of Judaism today would not appear until a century later.

throwdecro• 5 years ago

And yet here we are reading their best jokes, many centuries later.

One woman, observing her son coming towards her, inquired, "How fares our country?" And when he said, "All have perished," she took up a tile and, hurling it at him, killed him, saying, "And so they sent you to bear the bad news to us!"

rolandog• 5 years ago

I wonder if what we're reading is in part glorified propaganda of what an exemplary duty towards your country you should have.

JasonFruit2• 5 years ago

Why are these Spartans using Scottish dialect?

rdmond• 5 years ago

Spartans spoke a different dialect of Greek (Doric) than the Athenians (Attic) and it used to be fairly common to translate bits of Doric as if they had been spoken by a Scottish Highlander.

JasonFruit2• 5 years ago

That's an interesting choice. I wonder if they perceived a cultural similarity... you've given me something to look into.

gjsman-10002• 5 years ago

The cruel irony of this was that despite how friendly their society was toward violence (as seen by these quotes)... they weren't particularly awesome at fighting for it.

some_random• 5 years ago

Reminder that Spartan society was nightmarishly abusive to every single member from its slave class to its ruling class in the name of military supremacy, which they failed at. The only thing they were truly successful at was propaganda, which still dominates the way they are looked at today.

Gibbon1• 5 years ago

I remember something a friend that got a masters in history said. Peoples often define themselves relative historical empires and their own contemporary enemies. As a result they have an incentive to play up both.

I've wondered about the Spartans, they conquered and enslaved some of their neighbors. And kept them that was for 200 years or something. Probably meant they weren't able to manage anything more than that.

gadders2• 5 years ago

As the quotes come via Plutarch, I'd like to recommend Plutarch's Parallel Lives - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Lives

He gives a biography of one famous Roman and one famous Greek and compares them.

timwaagh• 5 years ago

Sounds an awful lot like what I perceived from the media of the Islamic state. I think it's a kind of mentality that, though brave, needs to be stamped out thoroughly.

greesil• 5 years ago

Myke Cole has written a new book on Spartan society and military, The Bronze Lie:

https://www.amazon.com/Bronze-Lie-Shattering-Spartan-Suprema...

His previous work on the Roman legion vs the Greek phalanx was very interesting and well-researched.

https://www.amazon.com/Legion-versus-Phalanx-Struggle-Suprem...

meheleventyone• 5 years ago

His fiction books are great as well.

rgvr• 5 years ago

I don't understand the point of changing words like "many" to "mony" or "man" to "mon". I mean if you're anyway writing the entire thing in modern day English then why do this.

Is it just for the effect of it I.e., making it look sophisticated? or is it some kind of attempt at retaining the originality/authenticity?

retrac• 5 years ago

Some people take the Sapir-Whorf theory too seriously: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

gpvos• 5 years ago

In what sense is that connected to the above?

rebuilder• 5 years ago

Isn’t this a site for people who take some things too seriously?

nerdponx• 5 years ago

I figured those were OCR errors or something. How would this help maintain originality?

duskwuff• 5 years ago

No, this is intentional. Here's the original book on the publisher's own web site:

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/plutarch-moralia_sayings_s...

There's a footnote on that part "Cf. the note on Moralia, 190 B, supra", but I'm not sure what that's referencing.

pvg4• 5 years ago

It's supposed to be conveying some kind of regional accent/dialect, I think. A bit from the same translation:

A Spartan, being asked if the road into Sparta were safe, said, That depends on what kind of a mon ye are; for the lions gang about where they wull, but the hares we hunt over that land."

Edit: poking around the translation some, it looks like it's supposed to represent the Doric Greek dialect.

https://i.imgur.com/Di0nGS9.png

thwave2• 5 years ago

Correct. The translated sentence ("my son was a gude and honourable mon, but Sparta has mony a mon better than him.") does ends with two distinctly Doric words: τήνω (there, i.e. in Sparta) κάρρονας (stronger/better), instead of the Attic ἐκεῖ κρείττονας.

stult• 5 years ago

I think I vaguely recall the explanation from a classics course many, many, many years ago, but I can't find a source without investing a ton more effort, so take this with a grain of salt: IIRC, Plutarch wrote the sayings in intentionally archaic (for his time) Greek. He lived hundreds of years after Sparta had disappeared as a power in the ancient world, so he could have intended it to demonstrate the great antiquity of the quotations, or he could have done so to paint the Spartans as rough-around-the-edges rustics. The translation attempts to mimic this effect by translating the archaic-sounding Greek as archaic-sounding English.

Applejinx5• 5 years ago

To me it sounded like suddenly they were Rastafarians. Or perhaps Rastas out of the William Gibson novel, Neuromancer? I've read that more recently than I've read the history of Bob Marley and the Wailers, because I still have Neuromancer but sold Catch A Fire (I should go buy another copy, it was a very good book).

I doubt any of this was the intent.

luxpir• 5 years ago

From a British perspective, this is pretty clearly a faux-Scots interpretation for that earthy feel the author must have thought was warranted. Appropriated with all the confidence only the English can muster. I may be way off base, but those are first impressions.

aither clear yersel' of this or stop yer living.

A few stereotypical Scots markers there. And "mony" and "mon" are Northern features from Derby to Scotland in various pockets. Dying out altogether now, of course, becoming the homogenised transatlantic factory line English we're all so excited to speak nowadays. Can I get a tea with milk to go? Cheers!

anigbrowl• 5 years ago

Per the heading, it is a scan of an old book which itself seems to be a collection of older texts. The weird spellings are consistent with English representations of Scottish speech patterns, and might have been intended to communicate to the original audience that the Spartans' general gruffness and aggression were comparable to that of Scots.

_dain_• 5 years ago

Whereas Athenian and other Grecian culture was admired and spread across the Roman empire after it was militarily conquered, Sparta's fate was humiliating. They were turned into a kind of human zoo. The old training rituals continued, but mainly as a tourist attraction for wealthy Roman aristocrats to ogle at.

motohagiography• 5 years ago

Given the alternative to prevailing militarily was typically slavery or dispersement and homogenization into the conquering society, I can see why these ideas were treated as important. As a proxy for meaning now? Spartan myths and ideals are a fun mythology and aesthetic for some and a straw man for others, so any discussion in the present is going to play out on party lines.

listless• 5 years ago

“ "Why is it that you Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men," she said, "Because we are the only women that are mothers of men."

Feels like 2021 could maybe use this sentiment.

Sayings of Spartan women

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