School is Hell @ Kekko Kamen
The life of a Spartan male was a life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity. The Spartans viewed themselves as the true inheritors of the Greek tradition. They did not surround themselves with luxuries, expensive foods, or opportunities for leisure. And this, I think, is the key to understanding the Spartans. While the Athenians and many others thought the Spartans were insane, the life of the Spartans seemed to hark back to a more basic way of life. Discipline, simplicity, and self-denial always remained ideals in the Greek and Roman worlds; civilization was often seen as bringing disorder, ennervation, weakness, and a decline in moral values. The Spartan, however, could point to Spartan society and argue that moral values and human courage and strength was as great as it was before civilization. Spartan society, then, exercised a profound pull on the surrounding city-states who admired the simplicity, discipline, and order of Spartan life.
The ideology of Sparta was oriented around the state. The individual lived (and died) for the state. Their lives were designed to serve the state from their beginning to the age of sixty. The combination of this ideology, the education of Spartan males, and the disciplined maintenance of a standing army gave the Spartans the stability that had been threatened so dramatically in the Messenean revolt.
Paradoxically, this soldier-centered state was the most liberal state in regards to the status of women. While women did not go through military training, they were required to be educated along similar lines. The Spartans were the only Greeks not only to take seriously the education of women, they instituted it as state policy. This was not, however, an academic education (just as the education of males was not an academic education); it was a physical education which could be grueling. Infant girls were also exposed to die if they were judged to be weak; they were later subject to physical and gymnastics training. This education also involved teaching women that their lives should be dedicated to the state. In most Greek states, women were required to stay indoors at all times (though only the upper classes could afford to observe this custom); Spartan women, however, were free to move about, and had an unusual amount of domestic freedom for their husbands, after all, didn’t live at home.
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February 22, 2008 at 2:44 pm
You forgot to mention the institutionalised pederasty!
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_pederasty)
February 22, 2008 at 2:49 pm
My Bad! but it’s maybe a myth created by modern historians :
February 23, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Well it’s disputed ground because both sides in the historical debate in America have a political agenda (’The Spartans were manly and American’ [right-wing] vs. ‘The Spartans were manly and bisexual’ [left-wing/liberal]).
Living in British academia, where we’re all pinko-liberal-crypto-communists in any case, the consensus among the historians and Greek teachers I have spoken to has been that during the long history of the Spartan state, there were periods in which pederasty was institutionalised.
(The use of Etruscan pictures, on the other hand, is one of those things that makes Wikipedia the unreliable instrument it is.)
February 25, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Well, after all, the Spartans were manly and Greek.
February 27, 2008 at 11:31 pm
First of all, the sexual culture of Spartans was not Christian, American, manly or liberal. It was Spartan. The same goes for the sexual culture of Japanese. It was (/is) Japanese. Liberals (in the broad sense) have a pathological tendency to abuse history in order to show how emancipation has been part of this and that culture and worked out better than the current (Christianity-induced) moral system.
Using the Spartans in such a way is shooting one’s own foot since their metaphyisics of war, central to their culture, go directly against pretty much all ‘universal rights’ of this Kali Yuga.
Animanachronism, stating the accusations toward your academic peers in an ironic fashion doesn’t make you right. I for one don’t care how ‘pinko-liberal-crypto-communist’ academics are, they’re generally egalitarian hypocrites, that’s enough for me.
(PS: I take NeoShinka wants to mingle anime with philosophy and the likes so I hope this is discussion is not considered out of place)
February 28, 2008 at 9:22 am
Well, you have a point too. It’s an error to analyse ancient greek world with our modern values.
But the historical debate remains open. The so-called “pederasty” in ancient Sparta may only refer to chaste relationships between masters and students. And the myth of this pederasty may be the result of Athenian propaganda.