The fate of cowards in ancient Sparta

[tercio67]

....... This punishment was permanent; no coward would ever be allowed to re-acquire his former status as soldier, citizen, or man.
........

They could redeem themselves, as Aristodemus did. He took part in the battle of Plataea, where he fought with near 'suicidal reclessness'. But while being considred redeemed he received no special honours, as it was thought to be more valorous to fight while wanting to survive.

Re the strength of Sparta; during the time of Thermopylae it was estimated to be 8000.

[juxtapose]

I don't know if there is indeed the specific Hitler/Alexander comparisons. Afaik especially GDR or left-leaning historians describe Alexander mainly as a villain while right-leaning historians describe him as the glorious, flawless conquerer. I used it as a hyperbole to underline the ridiculous moral level some of the present day historians in Germany use to judge historic persons. As JCR pointed out: The hypermoral standards of today's pacifist Germany is used as a "template" by which even historic persons like Alexander, Demosthenes, Gaius Julius Ceaser or Emperor Wilhelm IV. are measured. In my opinion it is the task of the historian to show an historic person in the context of his time and shouldn't use the moral template of today's society.

Re. The Spartians:
The full citizens of Sparta were indeed very low in number. When Sparta lost about 120 of them at Sphakteria 424 BC during the Peloponnese War, it was a huge blow to the Spartan society. There were only a few thousands Spartians at all, the rest were "normal citizens" or helots. The loss was especially severe because of the very special build up of Spartas society: The "ruling" faction within Sparta was based on the Spartians, so very few ruled many less privileged inhabitants. That's why crushing defeats like Thermopylae or Leuktra hit the stability of Sparta's society very hard

Re. Punishment:
The ancient Greek didn't use physical punishment as a sentence very often. During the March of the ten thousand Xenophon had to answer to his colleagues because he had slapped a subordinate as a punishment (if I remember correctly, I had to give the book back to the library). The point is, the punishment was rather the reduction of rights and privileges like denying the right to vote or be elected, denying the right to serve in the military or ultimately banishment from the Polis.


I don't know the book "Persian fire" yet, but since I am going to have a advanced seminar about the Persian Wars next semester, I'll will surely give it a closer look. Thanks for the tip, mate

Some interesting thoughts, Astaran. Always warms my heart to find a fellow enthusiast for classical history .

A couple of points, though:

-Sparta of that time period was extremely small by today's national standards, but still larger than a few thousand. Scholars generally estimate the number of Spartan citizens to be around 30,000-50,000. Helots (who were basically slaves, descending from non-Dorian peoples that the Dorian Spartans had conquered) probably were some multiple of this, maybe 4-5x. The perioikoi, or neighboring "allies", probably numbered around 50,000.

Still, your overall point is clearly right; the Spartan citizenry could have comfortably fit into a small baseball park. But, of course, this was true of almost all the other Greek states.

-With regard to punishment, I think it's problematic to use the example of Xenophon's Ten Thousand as representative of Greek practice in general, let alone Sparta in particular. The Ten Thousand of the Anabasis were a "multi-national" (deriving from many Greek poleis) mercenary army hired by an aspirant to the Persian throne. Like all mercenary forces, the principles of leadership and discipline were somewhat different from national forces. The leaders were elected by the troops, and the soldiers saw themselves much more as an assembly of peers than a strict hierarchy. I believe this explains the incident that you cite.

My impression is that even within the armies of the various Greek states, methods of discipline may have varied widely, reflecting the equally wide differences in the character of their respective societies. In democratic Athens, where the generals were elected in political elections by the citizen-soldiers themselves, the way that they were disciplined, particularly for more "day-to-day" offenses, may understandably have been different than in authoritarian Sparta, where kingship (which basically meant generalship) was hereditary.

That said, I suspect that it's generally correct that, for the most serious offenses, punishment to honor and civic participation was considered as vastly more important by most Greeks, wherever they lived, compared to modern times. I think this is due to 1) their shared cultural touchstones (the Iliad and Odyssey essentially had a status for all the Greeks that is similar to the Bible/Koran/Torah today, that is to say, as a primer for values), and 2) it's hard for modern people to fully appreciate, but for the Greeks, one's polis was one's world. As a general rule, one was born into membership of a small, intimate club. One couldn't simply pick up and attain citizenship status in another Greek city-state if life was made unbearable in your own (although it was possible to live as a kind of resident alien). And moving to live permanently with "barbarians" was out of the question for most Greeks. Hence the effectiveness of the disciplinary methods you mentioned.

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

Btw, what do you think of Tom Holland's "Persian Fire"? It is a very good popular history of the second persian war and also is quite fair to the Achaemid Empire.

I heard it was quite bad, as per this review: http://www.livius.org/opinion/opinion0013.html

[juxtapose]

They could redeem themselves, as Aristodemus did. He took part in the battle of Plataea, where he fought with near 'suicidal reclessness'. But while being considred redeemed he received no special honours, as it was thought to be more valorous to fight while wanting to survive.

Re the strength of Sparta; during the time of Thermopylae it was estimated to be 8000.

I think it plausible that the famous case of Aristodemus was not quite the same thing. According to Herodotus' account (the primary source for this story), Aristodemus was one of two soldiers ordered by King Leonidas to leave camp due to eye illnesses. The other, Eurytus, disobeys and has a helot lead him back to the battlefield, where he dies. Herodotus comments that if Aristodemus alone had returned to Sparta under orders, or if both of them had, then there would have been no backlash. But the example of Eurytus cast Aristodemus' decision in a bad light.

The crux of the question is (on which the original sources are not precise): was the shunning that Aristodemus experienced the full legal judgment of cowardice (including the loss of rights and privileges), or was it merely a cloud of suspicion, which in many ways mimicked the legal sanction in many social circumstances? Given the fact that he acted under orders, I am of the view that it might have been the latter. Herodotus speaks of no legal deprivation (e.g. deprived of political rights or being smacked around on the streets with no recourse, or not being allowed to marry, all of which would have been deemed worth mentioning by a Greek writer, I think, and especially Herodotus, who was partial to the colorfully pithy detail). It speaks only of "disgrace" and "reproach" and "avoidance". In other words, my read is that he was under heavy suspicion, but legally still had a chance to redeem himself, which he did at Plataea.

Even so, reading between the lines of the somewhat spare Greek accounts, the permanence of a legal judgment of cowardice seems to be implied by the case of Pantites, the other survivor of Thermopylae. Pantites had been sent on a mission to another part of Greece by Leonidas, so again, legally, he should have been covered. Nevertheless, he found the "reproach" he came back to so unbearable that he killed himself. If he could have truly redeemed himself another day, it's odd that he chose the path of suicide, and even more so if he was under an unofficial social sanction rather than a legal one.

It is perhaps a telling detail that the Spartans decided to withhold any special honors to Aristodemus for his valor at Plataea, on the justification that he fought like someone who did not care whether he lived or died. My hunch is that even Aristodemus was not able to fully dispel the initial "shame", even after his actions at Platea.

(Your estimate of 8,000 at the time of Thermopylae is basically in agreement with my range of 5,000-10,000, so obviously I think it's a good number ).

[MountainWarrior]

INteresting dicussion, I hope I did not joined late to put my knowledge and imput. For what I learned at my Western Civilization History, Spartand society was very conservative; among all Greeks, they were the most religious and fearful of the gods. Also they were not individualistic, they suspected of those that were smart and per say "thought outside the box."

[tercio67]

(Your estimate of 8,000 at the time of Thermopylae is basically in agreement with my range of 5,000-10,000, so obviously I think it's a good number ).

I believe that was the number Xerxes was told;

After the battle, Xerxes asked Demaratus if there were many more at Sparta like the 300. He was told there were 8,000 more like them.

But, besides the Spartans, I always was impressed by the Thespians.

[Astaran]

Some interesting thoughts, Astaran. Always warms my heart to find a fellow enthusiast for classical history .

A couple of points, though:

-Sparta of that time period was extremely small by today's national standards, but still larger than a few thousand. Scholars generally estimate the number of Spartan citizens to be around 30,000-50,000. Helots (who were basically slaves, descending from non-Dorian peoples that the Dorian Spartans had conquered) probably were some multiple of this, maybe 4-5x. The perioikoi, or neighboring "allies", probably numbered around 50,000.

Still, your overall point is clearly right; the Spartan citizenry could have comfortably fit into a small baseball park. But, of course, this was true of almost all the other Greek states.

-With regard to punishment, I think it's problematic to use the example of Xenophon's Ten Thousand as representative of Greek practice in general, let alone Sparta in particular. The Ten Thousand of the Anabasis were a "multi-national" (deriving from many Greek poleis) mercenary army hired by an aspirant to the Persian throne. Like all mercenary forces, the principles of leadership and discipline were somewhat different from national forces. The leaders were elected by the troops, and the soldiers saw themselves much more as an assembly of peers than a strict hierarchy. I believe this explains the incident that you cite.

My impression is that even within the armies of the various Greek states, methods of discipline may have varied widely, reflecting the equally wide differences in the character of their respective societies. In democratic Athens, where the generals were elected in political elections by the citizen-soldiers themselves, the way that they were disciplined, particularly for more "day-to-day" offenses, may understandably have been different than in authoritarian Sparta, where kingship (which basically meant generalship) was hereditary.

That said, I suspect that it's generally correct that, for the most serious offenses, punishment to honor and civic participation was considered as vastly more important by most Greeks, wherever they lived, compared to modern times. I think this is due to 1) their shared cultural touchstones (the Iliad and Odyssey essentially had a status for all the Greeks that is similar to the Bible/Koran/Torah today, that is to say, as a primer for values), and 2) it's hard for modern people to fully appreciate, but for the Greeks, one's polis was one's world. As a general rule, one was born into membership of a small, intimate club. One couldn't simply pick up and attain citizenship status in another Greek city-state if life was made unbearable in your own (although it was possible to live as a kind of resident alien). And moving to live permanently with "barbarians" was out of the question for most Greeks. Hence the effectiveness of the disciplinary methods you mentioned.

Thanks for the input! I am always eager to learn something new about Classical Greece. I have to admit that I discovered my interest in Greece just a couple of months ago and since I am lacking the required skills in Latin and Greek I cannot pursue this road any further (at least at university).

Do you know how many inhabitants Athens had at the beginning of the Peloponnese War? Hans Delbrück said in the late 19./early 20. century not more that 60.000 inhabitants, but according to Thucydides 2.13 they had 29.000 hoplites, 1200 horsemen (including 200 mounted archers [Scythian mercenaries?]) and 1600 archers. Since I do not think the number of archers already includes the number of peltasts, I think there should be a few thousand additional troops. But if you use the rule of thumb "troops * 2 = approximate seize of city state" you get more than 60.000.
On the other Hand was Athens always considered the economic powerhorse of the Greek world (in rivalry to Corinth and Megara), so it would fit in if Athens had more than 60k inhabitants before the plague hit home.

[tercio67]

Athens saw rapid growth up to 431, depending on the sources the following rough estimate;

Year	Hoplite Census	Thetes	Total Adult Males	% Change over last	Total Citizens	Total Population of Attica
480	15,000	20,000	35,000	—	140,000	?
431	25,000	18,000	43,000	+ 23%	172,000	315,500
425	16,500	12,500	29,000	- 33%	11,6000	218,000
403	9,000	9,000	18,000	-38 %	85,000	?

[California Joe]

Interesting thread fellas. I first learned about Greek military history in 7th grade history, as well as Carthage and Rome and the Punic Wars etc...

My own knucklehead post notwithstanding.

[borderman]

most have seen it but anyway a good show:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL3-GpZQdS4

[Toddy1]

Lycurgus of Sparta was credited with bringing Law and order to the Spartan society. As the founder of the agoge he probably did more for the success of Sparta than either of the two Royal households did

Look up The Great Rhetra

[KoTeMoRe]

I don't know much about Greece specifically, but in many cases when Christian emperors got around to banning stuff it was already long since out of fashion.

Such as Egypt, where Christian emperors ordered the temples to the Egyptian gods closed down...but by that point there were only a handful of temples and priests in Egypt in that venerated the old gods.

As Greece became Christianized, great cultural shifts took place that were not brought about by force, as Greece began to see itself and be seen as Eastern rather than Western.

Overall though the continuance of Greek rituals in peaceful, bucolic Roman Greece is really interesting. Read Pausanias for example, who made a tourist guide of Greece and describes a land with a massive tourist industry built around ancient monuments, historic sites, ruins, art, the Olympics, artifacts and historic objects that allegedly belonged to Trojan War heroes, etc. Basically like a large section of the Greek economy today.

Such as? The expulsion of Alexandria? The siege of Ravenna and the subsequent levelling of the "Pagan" quarter? The Olympics?

[juxtapose]

But, besides the Spartans, I always was impressed by the Thespians.

A great point, tercio, and, I think, an important one.

I loved the movie "300" as much as the next guy, but it did alter the historical record about the Greek side for dramatic effect (on the Persian side, of course, Xerxes was basically a Diablo II necromancer dweeb who managed to conjure up a hellspawn horde to Earth ).

In the movie, other Greek units such as the Arcadians, who sent 1,000 men, were scared off after hearing that there was no full-scale Spartan army, but just the small contingent that Leonidas had brought, leaving the Spartans to make their lonely stand against Xerxes' needle-toothed human ferrets and prehistorically buff mega-rhinosaur and such . This is pretty serious historical libel, and if I had any Arcadians in my ancestry, I'd be pretty pissed.

As you point out, there were others who fought. The historical reality was that many of the Greek city-states had laid down their differences and squabbles and formed a pan-Hellenic council (this wasn't the first Persian invasion. The Athenians, to their glory, had defeated the first incursion at the Battle of Marathon ten years before). The council had sent a force of approximately 7,000 men from many of the states of Greece, including 700 from Thespiai (or Thespiae). Their objective was to fight a delaying action to buy more time for the Greeks.

The entire army of 7,000 fought bravely in the first two of the three days of actual battle, keeping the Persians bottled up in the narrow pass. After the treachery of Ephialtes enabled the Persians to begin encirclement through the famous back-route, Leonidas held a war council. The complete loss of this many troops would have been a lot for the Greeks to lose for little incremental gain, and like any good commander, he gave his blessing for withdrawal to fight another day.

Except for himself and his 300. And the 700 Thespians, who elected to stay, and died with the Spartans. Spartan respect for their Thespian comrades was demonstrated in their exchange of cloaks, and vows made to be allies for eternity.

There are many possible reasons why Leonidas chose to stay. He may have been simply acting according to some notion of a Spartan code, as the romantic would have it. But the Spartan code did not prohibit orderly, tactical withdrawals (the Spartans were military professionals, and therefore not idiots).

I'm more inclined to believe that Leonidas did so because 1) he was well aware of the power of example at this dangerous and critical hour for the Greeks, and knew that his sacrifice would become a rallying cry (and in this he was spectacularly successful. It calls to mind Winfield Scott Hanc0ck, who, as recently mentioned by another poster in a different thread, said: "There are times when a corps commander's life does not count".) And, 2) to hold the Persians in place for a little while longer to allow the main body of the army to safely withdraw.

And the Thespians? Thespiai was well forward on the Persian invasion route, and the Thespians may have decided that delaying the Persians for even a little bit longer would be important for the people of their polis. In the event, the Persians razed the city, but the surviving community that managed to escape sent almost 2,000 men to the decisive battle of Plataea.

What is most impressive to me about the stand of the Thespians was that, unlike the Spartans, they were truly citizen-soldiers, with day jobs as tinkers or tailors or farmers (the movie got this part right). They did not have the benefit of having been bred and trained their entire lives solely for the purpose of combat. And yet they fought and died as the Spartan's peers. It calls to mind Stephen Ambrose's comments on the citizen-soldiers of WWII.

[juxtapose]

INteresting dicussion, I hope I did not joined late to put my knowledge and imput. For what I learned at my Western Civilization History, Spartand society was very conservative; among all Greeks, they were the most religious and fearful of the gods. Also they were not individualistic, they suspected of those that were smart and per say "thought outside the box."

From what I know, MountainWarrior, I believe your description of the Spartan character is right. At least the other Greeks thought so in the Classical period.

One theory for why became an ultra-conservative, rigid society was because of its subjugation of its neighbors. Rather than a gradual integration into a common people (I guess the history of early England would be an example), the Spartans chose to create a system of slavery maintained by separation of the master and slave classes along quasi-ethnic lines (more like the antebellum South in the US).

Unlike the American South, the helots (slaves) always hugely outnumbered the Spartan citizenry. In order for the system to survive, Sparta turned into a kind of police state which controlled the helot population through brutality and terror. In conjunction with this, any newfangled ideas were ruthlessly suppressed, because even the smallest cracks in Spartan solidarity (given the weight of helot numbers) could mean ruin for the regime.

Except for the little matter of proletarian ideology , the ossification of Spartan society has certain parallels, I think, with the Soviet Union, and North Korea currently. Although I certainly don't want to push the analogy as complete, in the case of the former USSR/NK, the helots might be equated to vast majority of the people, who serve(d) the nomenklatura (one difference being that the Soviet elite was only very partially hereditary, although NK seems much more so). More closely parallel is the belief that the purpose of the individual is to serve the state. And that any deviation from the state's ideology is the potential prelude to internal implosion, and therefore that it is critical to maintain rigidity of thought, suspicion of foreigners and a huge internal security apparatus based on ruthlessness and terror. And the disproportionate emphasis on military prowess. And relative economic poverty due to lack of incentive, initiative and innovation. And the stunted quality of the arts and culture. Actually, it seems to me that, in its own peculiar way, the Soviet regime itself recognized some of the parallels, if the institutions (like sports clubs) bearing the Spartan name are anything to go by.

While there are many aspects to admire in Spartan society (their Greek contemporaries, like Plato, certainly did, but then the Classical Greeks had an almost pathological fondness for pushing ideals to their logical extremes), but there certainly was a darker side to the Spartan idea, and a price that not only the helots, but the Spartans themselves, paid.

[Atlantic Friend]

Ιt's known that the Spartans were meticulously took care their long hair especially before any battle so they would be presentable in Hades in case of death.

Who would want to be refused entry to Hades indeed?

"No shirt no tie no Spartan hairdo = no damnation"