Sparta was an ancient city in Greece - officially, a "city state", as those cities were independent, akin to what we think of as nations now. Many of the free men had a rigorous training in military matters, and the women had more freedom than in other places at that time (in fact, some of my lesbian sources suggest that lesbianism was accepted there as well; I have heard nothing directly about bisexuality as we understand it today, but "intimacy" [I don't have an adult warning on this blog - sorry] in the ancient world seemed to be easily with any gender, but ... I'll leave that" it is a post for somewhere else; maybe have a look here, as it is relevant). There seems to be a tendency to view the Spartans as honourable - probably exemplified by the film "300", although I am relying on reviews of that rather than seeing it myself (see also here).
Why?
Three reasons - apart from the obvious focus on fighting, although some of that was possibly necessary for survival: if you could not defend your borders, your people would be invaded and killed or made into slaves.
Firstly, at one stage of their training, Spartan boys were expected to become thieves to steal food for survival. The ONLY situation where stealing is, in my view, morally defensible is if one is stealing to keep a dependent alive. In Western societies, such as Australia, where I live, that excuse does not hold. I've heard people try to justify a past history of theft on the grounds that they needed the food for kids, but if they hadn't wasted most of their money on drink and cigarettes, they would have had enough money. If for some reason they couldn't get a sole parent pension or other support, there are charitable organisations. [1] I particularly remember a drunk who was smoking on a train while travelling with his young daughter, who was arguing with other passengers about his "right" to smoke, and complaining that the Government didn't give him enough money to feed his kids and indulge his "one pleasure". Moron - child abusing moron, in fact! [2]
On the other hand, one of my former colleagues grew up in China, and he knew genuine shortages. He was caught stealing a duck because his younger sister was crying with hunger and wound up whipped and hung in chains. That sort of theft is morally defensible, in my view - not the smoking, drunk person who is using theft to make up for the effects of their addictions, selfishness and irresponsibility.
Sparta had enough food for their boys: they chose not to feed them because of what that would do to their character. In my opinion, that flawed basis makes all that the did flawed.
Next, Sparta was not a modern democracy: people were forced into roles based on their gender, and if you didn't comply, bad luck for you personally. Of course, some of this was aiming at getting people to think of the larger, i.e. their city, ahead of the personal, so it could perhaps be argued to be a form of selflessness, but I consider it an immature a flawed form of selflessness (what about the rest of humanity? What about peaceful coexistence?) further highlighted by the fact that they still had slaves. Part of the training was for some of the boys to become a form of secret police, and do things such as murder slaves who were out at night. In fact, part of the research for this post indicated that the Spartans once slew 2,000 slaves to ensure they were kept "in their place". I am glad a slave revolt helped weaken the Spartans, although I shudder to think what happened to the slaves.
Finally, there is the gender stereotyping of Sparta. Women were expected to push "their" men into being soldiers, and (free) men were expected to be soldiers. At least the city state of Athens had some philosophical discussions of some later benefit ...
So: in a nutshell, I consider the ancient Spartans to be without true, mature honour.
(pronounced "new-MYTH-ear")
PS - have alook at this Order of Scathach video, too.
Notes:
- As an example of how pathetic people can be around smoking, read this story, from New Zealand.
- This was also where I started learning how useless train staff could be: it was impossible to get the stationmaster to come to the carriage from where he was, and that was when I started seriously thinking about the fact that public transport where I live had some serious safety flaws. I've changed since then, and now my policy is to not use public transport unless there are conductors who WILL look after the safety and well being of travellers (or the trip is well known for safety, which excludes many part of the system here).
