The way I heard it, women enjoyed more rights than other areas of the time, but that may not have been because they actually believed in gender equality, it may have just been that the men were at war so much, they needed the women to assume more roles.
Nope they were allowed to own land dance, train naked, and were renowned for it. The men were not away all of the time and large amount stayed home in case of a helot revolt.
It's not just that, property was also inherited matrilineally, and also if an unmarried soldier dies in war, his mother inherits his wealth. So Sparta was known for having a class of super wealthy women, who get richer and richer with every boy she has who dies in war. This is why Spartan mothers, and least the recorded ones, are known for being brutal psychopaths who would happily trade their son's lives for the prestige it would win her if he dies gloriously. Do a search on "Sayings of spartan woman" some time.
I lived in Sparta for three years and unfortunately most of the ancient archeology has been built over, although you can still see some ruins including an amphitheatre.
That's the way it is in all countries with millenia of history that includes architecture. People build on what has fallen or tear down what is no longer usable to use the bricks, stones, marble and stuff for a ne building. It occurs year after year for centuries and millenia. Greece, China, Turkey and so on - civilization just rolls on and the population just builds on top of what came before. Archeology is a very recent concept.
@@Olkv3D No mate, it's well known that Sparta suddenly disappeared one spooky night and the rest of Greece is now looking for it. Perhaps it fell down the back of a sofa, or someone accidentally swept it under a carpet?
"Tough love ". Can you see how easily influenced people can be by their society and governments. Being that cold to a child is unnatural but in their case, wanting, or having to fit in, that's what they did. Imagine going about your business for days on end having dumped a defenceless kid out in the wild.
To them, this seemed perfectly normal. Because their society was sustained by militarism, the state naturally becomes all-powerful because an effective military needs to be organized. The Spartans needed to be able to control their helot population as well as make war on other city-states. So their society became very centralized and obsessed maintaining the militarist social system that they had constructed.
To be fair, up until probably the 20th century and even a little bit into it, you expected to lose children to disease or other ways. This was just another way you could lose them.
@@tylerhonaker2544 Oh yeah. Whenever i read of cases back then, where people actually cared about their kids, given people bred like rabbits, i'm pleasantly surprised. Victorian era, the Old West, the 18th Century, even earlier. I'm actually taken aback.
@@kristiskinner8542 - I actually think that it has become more about *control* than being overly-permissive. For example, the way that my friends and I used to just go out, ad hoc, to ride bikes or play in the woods as contrasted to today's scheduled "play dates" supervised by adults. The exception to this was when my father bothered to be involved. At which point he demanded to *always* know exactly where I was. He was a control freak, and that's what I see in a lot of parents today. Whether they have been terrorized by media panics about child abduction or just feel that their kids should be as scheduled as they themselves are, parents have been the ones tightening the leash. Then they wonder why their kids struggle without the constant supervision that they have had since infancy.
@@2Bad4YOUuu Essentially I agree with all you say. Consider this, major wars between western countries are over. You’ll always have skirmishes in the world but the days of France invading England have ended. Countries like USA and Russia disagree on a political level while cooperating in space. Weird but true. Long term the world is becoming increasingly peaceful. Maybe tough kids who can fight is simply out of date (sure you’ll still want some sort of army) in the future. Maybe more educated people who debate not fight is where we’re heading? Too many of the remarks here look back at history and assume a world at war.
Ancient world was brutal and horrifying yet so many things get repeated even today! As for Spartans it's well know for their tough way of life mostly to produce soldiers. However still progressive for the times women had different roles but still educated, and participate in society like men except being soldiers. While terrifying it's impressive how well organized society they had.
I wouldnt say progressive in terms of women. Because in many cultures women actually had a lot of rights and men were forced cannon fodder. Different cultures have had different gender roles and these cultures have constantly changed.
whats even more "wrong" about our perception of the past ages is that people try to compare today social norms which have evolved through our history with ancient people's perception about life, society, economy. These people lived 3,000-2,500 years ago, life was so much different back then, its just wrong to say that Spartans were "bad" or "sociopaths", it just shows your ignorance. Life was so much more "organic" and connected to nature, guess what happens with sick animals in the wild, those people were trying to survive everyday, in a very harsh world. They had to be self-sufficient, one drought, famine or epidemic could have ended whole Spartan history. For you its "gross" but not because it is gross objectively, it is gross for you because of our human cultural heritage and through evolution of thoughts human race decided whats immoral and wrong. I bet there are things that we consider "normal" right now, which in 500 or 1000 years will be considered horrific and immoral, almost like killing newborns with defects. We as a humans decided that is worth to protect the life of weaker even if it costs us resources, you know why? Because we can, because we have recources, unlimited food and water, safe shelters, great healthcare, public safety - something which Spartans didn't have
When we think of history we all of us are guilty of romancing it. We think of the glorious and redeeming traits of a society or a thing without thinking of the dark side of it. If I was born in ancient Sparta I would not have survived. I know this because when I was born I needed a machine to breath. It doesn't matter if they could save me. They wouldn't I would have been chucked into a ditch and ended for the crime of being born weak. Imagine how many people watching this video would have met the same fate.
@@rodgerdodger9885 Yes that's why I said "It doesn't matter if they could save me they wouldn't." I suffer no delusion that they could save me. I am attempting to say that modern society should not adopt such an approach toward human life. If we can save the kid we should.
So interesting that the first thing listed is ritual infanticide. That’s literally the only thing I remember learning about ancient Sparta in 6th grade. I’m now 42.
Believe it or not, people in the future will think of our progressive ways the same way we see it throughout history today. The whole term is pretty stupid anyway, since there's no way for the contemporaries of telling what type of progress is actually progress and not regress.
@@mikitz You're right. We tend to judge the past based upon our own current prejudices which really isn't fair or accurate. So I'm sure the future will do the same thing to us.
Well those actors didn't have to go through a lifetime of military service beggining at age 7. But i assure you those real 300 had that build. And becuase of that there genetic trairs exist today. Im from sparta, my parents both come from that CITY. My 13 year okd son has those abs, arms, chest at that tender young age and hasn't lifted a dumb bell in his life. 14-5 inch arms already.. the bloodline still exists today. Proud dad !
@@jackalister1662 i remember growing up around 15/16 .. had a very solid build. A lot of my friends around envied that. I never showed off. My son now 13 looks like he will be even bigger and better than i was. He inherited more of my fathers genes. A lot of kids today are sloppy.. I thank God my son inherited that blood line. So yes they still exist today. Maybe not all like rhe 300 but yes the line exists
@@FruitBruteIII You know spartans have the most record losses because they completely disregard tactics in open field.... They've just win the hot gates or we called battle of Thermopylae, because it's narrow and the persian soldiers are quantity over quality, lastly the 300 spartans are not alone, they have a thousand slaves called helots and allies of thespains and thebian that has hundred of soldiers to help the spartans there. Where did you get that there are only 300 spartan handle tha- oh wait The movie 300 right not the historical fact and the most low IQ thing that Spartan did was making iron a currency which baffling and stupid thing to do in ancient time
@@eugeneflores6153 the use of iron bars as money limited or even eliminated vices like gambling, addictions, and anything else that requires large sums of money to be moved
@@eugeneflores6153 if the lost so often, how they become the masters of Greece? They defeated Athenas, they were considered the best warriors at that time.
It’s ironic how everybody loves the movie 300 and how the spartans survived all the odds, but hate how they were made like that… Though life makes tough people, plain and simple, If this people were not treated in such gruesome ways, they would’ve never grown to become the best fighters in history.
@@skfkfkd Exactly and in many cases they would resist fighting at all. When they did they usually made sure to have plenty of slave armies and allies to take the brunt of the damage so they could walk in later and claim victory. The truth is, much like today no amount of training is going to save you when someone sticks a spear in your gutt or shoots you in the chest with a bullet. The Spartan's cult like behaviour eventually created a situation in which they didn't have enough soldiers or enough brains among them to hold their empire together and the "girly men" conquered them.
Think I would have passed any Spartan conditioning. My mother left me home alone for days as a toddler and pretty much by the time I was 6 I cooked cleaned and moved out on my own by the time I was 15. Maybe my ancestors were Spartan lol
@@srypWned remember whatever doesn't kill us only makes us stronger. Fyi I am the complete opposite type of mother never would leave mine alone although I do promote self sufficiency.
@@Cameroonian In some parts of South Africa, where I live, it’s not unknown for six year olds to take on adult responsibilities. Children are left with elderly grandparents when parents leave to work in the cities or pass away. It becomes their responsibility to source water and firewood, care for siblings and livestock, and tend the crops. The worst is the children who become parents to their siblings because of the death of the parents and there is no grandparents. It’s heartbreaking to see.
God damn! It's really good to actually get to ground level on what it actually meant to be a Spartan. In school, 4th grade or so, we were taught about it in such a way, that although life was hard there, women had equal rights, hence all the girls in our class liked Sparta all of a sudden. But had we dug a little deeper on the society of Sparta, and really pondered on which was the better society, most likely all would have voted for Athens. Interesting how great soldiers are made. There's no one way though. You don't have to kill "weak" babies in order to get strong men. But yeah. I would need to learn more to know better.
@@HelennaRose I’m not sure where he said he was glorifying the killing of people based on genetics 😂🤷♀️ I think it’s quite clear he was talking about their training 😂 EDIT: on reading it again, he actually says you DON’T have to kill babies, so I’m still not sure where you got your impression from lol it’s also Aryan. Not Arian 🤓 Arians are people who followed the teachings of Arius - a fourth century Christian elder lol.
Dear fellow commenters, Most video's on RUclips are first and foremost entertainment, often enjoyable, regularly informative but most times inaccurate. Use RUclips as a trigger for interests and further study but never assume it's accurate and truthful !!!!
The "flogging contest" actually only developed under Roman rule. It worked more like a competitive game during Spartas good times. Also the amphitheater was primarily constructed for dancing and singing competitions which were even bigger tourist attractions
I wish the video editor had used depictions of Sparta and only Sparta 😂🤷♀️ there are some random drawings of other civilisations and their slaves etc. and it mixes things up lol! I noticed this on the video of Ancient Egypt and their “creepy things” 🤔 He was talking about the ram-headed god Khnum, but almost all of the depictions he showed were actually of Anubis, the jackal headed god 😂🤷♀️ More oversight would be a blessing.
yeah, and it was a time of survival rather than what we would call having a life in modern concept. Everything is manual labor and you gotta hustle to survive, u gotta bear and just pray infections and disease to get by without killing ya, water does not come of a faucet, u gotta dig wells, wait for ur turn to get drinking water buckets every day and save rain water for other purposes. Food does not come through roads like today, you don't get to eat beef or chicken or fancy combination of veggies everyday. And you certainly won't have the luxury to take shower everyday let alone bathing. Hard stony or woody beds with minimal woolly sheets, hard pillows and no heating or good shelter most of the time. And people have short lifespans from disease, infections, hunger and wars. I hope people keep all these in mind before they think it's weird, they didn't have many choices like we do today, but life was a hell lot simpler and mostly short. If they know a purpose higher than the mundane struggle, just anything to fight for, then they were living in their best lives possible no matter the pain and the death, in the dreams baby.
Nah. Knew all of what was enumerated. One thing you didn’t mention is that while the in the movie _300_ the Spartans would insult the Athenians for their tradition of homosexuality, historically the Spartan males often took on male lovers.
And the Ancient Band of Thebes, another 300 and an army of lovers, ended up defeating the Spartans. Of course that's not in the 300. Funny how that worked out 🤔
This video is not good, while most of its information is correct it’s bias shows in the statement “Women were, nothing more than breeding machines in Sparta”. That wasn’t true. Women in Sparta could own property and land. Athenians and other Greeks noted that spartan women were “confident and funny”. During sporting events Spartan girls were encouraged & expected to compete with the boys. Spartan women while not being able to hold government positions, were still able to leave their homes unattended, known for wearing “skimpy” clothing, & being expected to flirt & socially engage with men freely. Spartan women were also known to marry in their 20s, not as child brides to adult-men, which was the case in most other parts of the Greek world. Sparta had its horrible moral failings & it’s morally progressive attributes as well. Both must be noted.
I agree, this guy is trying to butcher the portrayal of ancient Spartans. He judging them from the stand point of a modern man who has probably never struggled to have food or a roof over his head. All societies were brutal back then
A lot of this is very questionable. Basically this is made with the attitude that if one record says it we will accept it as the total truth. Just to add to your example with women, spartan women in fact ended up becoming extremely influential. They would inherit, and they could re-marry. In a society where men had a tendency to maybe die young that meant that sparta had a group of elder woman who while not in direct power were extremely wealthy and we have good evidence that wealth could be used to change a lot of political outcomes.
The Spartan heiresses had more money than the King. Typically when going off to war the king would need to take out a loan from these women and you can imagine in a society where the primary occupation is war you’re probably going to have widows Consequently what happened is widows remarried and were re widowed multiple marrying and inheriting their husbands land each time. Furthermore the daughters were not cut out of inheritance so they could split fortunes. In fact this actually freaked out the rest of the world and they wanted spartan women to be depicted as Unlady like whatever that means in order for this practice to not be discovered by their female populations furthermore they were actually taught how to throw spears and we’re expected to fight in defense of Sparta should the city ever come under attack keep in mind Sparta had no walls and was very proud of this fact and made fun of others for having them. One of the best Spartan quotes is a spartan king talking to another king and coming upon his city the Spartan king saw these giant walls and he said what women live here. The king responded back where is Sparta’s walls to which the Spartan king threw out his spear and said the walls of Sparta extend as far as this spear can reach.
I think you confused Sparta with Athens in regards to who was considered more progressive. Spartans were pretty strict and very much about discipline. And they were very much against weakness in all forms.
The idea of being 'progressive' is an anachronism - it's an idea we use today, but wouldn't have meant anything to them at the time. Different people today using that term will focus on different aspects, and therefore which was more 'progressive.' Even other Greek cities at the time didn't really know how to categorize Sparta - some aspects of it were very democratic, but it also had aspects of monarchy, tyranny, and oligarchy. It had to be a very well-balanced system, as one defeat could spell doom for them - they were land-based, and trapped on a peninsula with other aggressive city-states.
They did allow their women to "mate" with other strong warriors to produce stronger offspring ( even though already married e.t.c) that's quite progressive if you ask me 🤣🤣
@@DonTeridon they also paired every boy in training, with an adult male, and that child got buggered on a regular basis, thats a bit too progressive if you ask me.
@@Vorador47 Oh wow! I didn't realize that. I had never heard of that before, must be something that was glossed over. It seems Athens is targeted for that but not Sparta.
My parents both where and im still here and so is my son who's 13 and built like a truck. He's naturally built at 13 with 14 inch arms never lifted a weight, pecks biseps and abs at such a young age. These are the genes that have passed on down that blessed my father, myself and now my son. I thank God my people came from that little greek city in southern Greece called Sparta !
@Doctor Mabuse No your wrong at 7 they went into military training. Not on battlefield. Like going to westpoint where they are tought the art of war. Don't talk rubbish about things you don't know please. They didn't fihgt with real swords at 7. Between 7-13 the learned with wooden swords. The Art of war !
Why is everyone so shocked and upset at the way Sparta was organized and run? If you know ANYTHING about Nature and how it's survival of the fittest. Animals in nature kill off their weak and sickly or leave them to die, it was the same for the old and the lame, if you couldn't keep up with the Pack or the Herd, you're gone. That rule applies to every form of animal life on the planet, historically humans copied nature in order to survive, they formed family groups and tribes, everyone had tasks to learn and work as to provide for the common good of all. It's like all of you just woke up to a life long coma.
Thats not what survival of the fittest is. Survival of the fittest is when individuals with certain traits live longer and reproduce more than others of the population without that trait. Its not deliberately leaving a baby out to die, and yes sometimes a mother animal will abandon a sickly baby, but there are also countless cases of mothers that wont abandon their babies even after they die. Bold of you to claim to know so much about nature when you seem to have less than a middle school understanding of evolutionary biology. Also, even if it was "natural" to leave a weak baby out in the woods, still doesn't fucking mean we should do it.
@@botflyguy7814 Did I say anywhere that we should leave anyone out to die? NO! I like how you think you know more than me or know more than anyone else. My point is to stop prolonging life and dragging a person's inevitable death out, it's sick and cruel. Even with a child that is born with severe defects, the merciful thing to do is put the child to sleep. There is no way that child will ever lead a normal productive life. We do it for animals we love, why don't we show the same mercy for people we love? Why do we let them suffer?
Infanticide of the unwanted was normal in antiquity, including the rest of Greece and Rome. This was not a special feature of Sparta. Also, modern children are required to obey the state and spend much of their time in schools and pre-schools.
Infanticide is still rampant. They call it abortion today. And they kill the children in what should be the sanctuary of their mother's womb. They don't even make it to birth. What monsters decide that these children are not worthy of life???
Yes, this does ring true. My high school mascot was the Spartans and we were separated from our parents at 7 years old to start training for HS football. We gave no quarter to the numerous Tigers, Bulldogs and Falcons that we faced on the field of battle. All of state Class 3A civilizations trembled in fear as we relentlessly marched towards the sectional title..
"Sparta was a totalitarian state. The government had it´s finger in every household pie and liked to control how it tasted. Even children were supposed to follow the demands of the government, wether they liked it, or not." Sounds a bit like today's America, UK and Australia...
Yet the people were freer than Athenians, the so called cradle of democracy. Maybe you should learn history and not paint current feminine thinking on what was a tough world then.
No. What people today think of as "oppressive" government in the U.S., U.K. or Australia was *nothing* compared to what Sparta was like. The state didn't just meddle, it *owned* absolutely *everything* and everyone! It was indeed effectively communism. Spartiates had homes and farms, but these were not private property. If the citizen died, the state could reassign them to somebody else as it saw fit. Citizenship could be stripped and one could be "demoted" to a lower class. It's frankly disgusting how people today who have *far* more freedoms and rights are increasingly deluded into believing that things were better in the past.
I recall as a Catholic kid growing up in the 1960’s, in parochial grade school history books, Sparta’s relatively severe social norms were used as “stand-ins” for Soviet style communism. Mainstream US Catholicism at the time was very anti-communist.
lol, that sh*t is diluted over 1000s of years. They're like every other loser out there now. Look at their economy. You really think these dudes are walking around like male models?
They do have and they called Maniats.. Mani was the only place in Greece with 0 days Turkish occupation while other places had hundreds of years.. Actually Turks and Albanians never accomplished to invade Mani even when only women and kids where inside the city and men where assisting other Greeks in the war.
@@Craig-pm2kc I am sure you have the balls to tell that face to face to one of the people of Mani since they are not descendants of Spartans and they don't have their genes right? And if you think you have those balls think twice because they are proven descendants from historians and you might dilute your pants in the process..
@cubic planet I mean no disrespect. As a black American, I've got nothing against your people. It just gets lame when people want to go on and on about the past. History is important, but we are alive right now.
I find it hard to believe that the council of elders looked for ways to reject boys. In a warring society where numbers conferred advantage, I rather think the council of elders probably looked instead for ways to accept more boy conscripts.
@@jeremyhancock321 I want talking about moral standards. I was talking instead about the cold calculus of conscription in a warring society surrounded by enemies. In such as environment the pressure is to take as many conscripts as possible rather than, as the video suggests, apply stringent measures and turn many away.
@@chacmool2581 But most things I've read say that one of the main reasons of Sparta's decline was population problems. They ended with like 1/8 of the population they had at their prime. Their practice did hurt their ability to grow their army. It seems stupid in hindsight, but they did have really astringent requirements for children to be deemed worthy of being Spartans.
You are projecting what you would do onto what people of a completely different culture with completely different values would do. You think the best way to fight off enemies is by having the largest possible army, Spartans thought the best way was to have an army made up of nothing but the strongest and most elite soldiers with no weaklings to drag the rest down.
@@jacobrackham3487 True, but wine has different alcohol contents. Sacramental wine that the Catholics use can have up to 20% alcohol content, for example. Anyway, just a thought.
Neonates need microbes because they don’t have their own robust microbiome w/ normal microflora. The majority of neonates’ developing internal microbiome comes from its passage through the mother’s canal at birth. It could certainly have done more harm than good.
Yeah at one point they sure did. But wasn't Greece a powerful Empire for about 350 years? I guess they managed a few wins here and there during that time?
yes they did, because they were not perfect and because they sometimes didn't have the support they needed . they were a martial tribe, hard trained warriors, not diplomats
Important that people understand what life was like before Christianity introduced, popularized, and enforced the concept of human rights. When you see things like infanticide/abortion and abuse become commonly accepted in our culture, just remember it's a regression to early times, not a progression to something more humane.
Both of my grandparents are from the area in Greece that was once Sparta and let me tell you they are some psycho tough love type of people but I love them all :)
@@hhattingh Well people if claiming to be SPartan Aka TheBani in descendant should start explaining the meaning of the word SPartan or The Bani for to me it associates with AL Bah,AL Ban ,ELBah,ELban …which is not Greek but GaL in origins
Being born in a specific area doesn’t give a person identity especially if it is part of copy culture that can’t explain the meaning of SPartan or TheBani meaning in they own language.
Not that strange really. Sparta was a small state surrounded by comparatively larger, richer ones. It follows that discipline and hard meritocracy had to be developed as a force multiplier.
What are you talking about? 85% of Spartan population were slaves with exactly 0 prospects of ever achieving any kind of freedom, regardless of how well they fought or how many battles they won. Sparta was fucking huge compared to its neighbouring states, particularly after the conquest of Messenia.
No wonder why Spartans could never maintain an Empire... Their own policies reduced they're military to such an extent that it made it impossible to control territory too far from home.
In the movie 300, Spartans were portrayed as benevolent warriors out to defeat the evil empire. But in truth, it's the opposite. The ritual infanticide were the old versions of today's abortion.
I think its hysterical that ancient Spartans are usually depicted butt naked, except for wearing shoes. I guess you don't have to worry about matching an outfit lol
This ideal was accompanied by the routine exposure of naked or partially clothed women's bodies, which was seen as modest rather than shameful, with all wantonness excluded. Plutarch says that this “taught them simplicity and a care for good health, and gave them some taste of higher feelings, admitted as they thus were to the field of noble action and glory”.
I’ve survived Sparta, but escaped military service by going to the educational facility with military classes. I went through the rigorous physical education and participated in competitions. Oooh! Did I say I grew up in Sparta, sorry the country was called the USSR..😂(no slaves, just GULAG)
The modern day agoge is military bootcamp. You suffer there with the intention that you will be fortified physically & mentally so you can resist & survive the torture & humiliation of being captured by an enemy.
Read and educate yourself!Before you make a generalization, Study how the rest of the ancient world lived and then you may make a valued statement. Otherwise you only reflect your lack of knowledge on the subject.
In almost all ancient societies infanticide was practised. Babies with deformities were exposed. American indian tribes also did this. While this might seem cruel, it meant full care could be directed toward healthy babies.
Correction: “We over I” is not communism. “State over I” is. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Germany and all Scandinavian countries believe in “We over I”; They all practice capitalistic economy, albeit one that is highly regulated.
Correction: "State over I" is not communism. "Ideology over I" is. And it doesn't matter if the ideology is primarily enforced by the state, politburo or the w.o.k.e mob.
@@drqq9002 “Communism: A way of organizing a society in which the State government owns everything that are used to make and transport products; And there is no privately owned property. -- Merriam-Webster -- In short: “State over I”. Disagree? Write to Merriam-Webster Dictionary and suggest a change.
The bulk of Spartan army were only part time soldiers, that occasionally trained together, the rest of the time they were landowner famers or merchants (basically civilians with weapons, a militia that had to buy their own weapons). The full time Royal Guard consisted of 300 of the strongest but that was constantly changing.
Ha! 😃 Where'd you get THAT horse crap? 😄 At age 20, Spartan males became full-time soldiers, and remained on active duty until age 60. The Spartans’ constant military drilling and discipline made them skilled at the ancient Greek style of fighting in a phalanx formation. Men under 30 lived communal barracks even through marriage.
Withholding attention to newborns is known to cause Sociopathy. They may have suspected this way back then, and was the goal by the Elders to create an unfeeling society.
300 is literally the one eyed Spartan spinning a propaganda tale to hype the troops at Platea. It's not supposed to be realistic and it's not presented as such. I don't understand why people don't seem to get this...
@@birususama827 Ahh ok that's fair it's just that people complain about 300 being historically inaccurate. Because for whatever reason they miss it's presented as propaganda.
By todays standards the Spartans practiced rituals that can only be described as barbaric. But in the ancient world it was conquer or be conquered. The weak did not survive for very long.
Infanticide was common in the ancient world. In Sparta, however, it was government mandated. In Rome it was optional, and up to the pater familias to decide. All deformed babies were not cast aside. One who became a Spartan king, Agesilaus II (444 BC) was lame and all his life walked with a limp. Helots did not outnumber Spartans 7:1. It was more like 50:1. This is why Lycurgus (820 BC) transformed Sparta into a military dictatorship: to keep the helots in line. There were many who admired Sparta. There are still many today. They admire her because they did not and do not have to live there. She was a totalitarian nightmarish dictatorship. She contributed nothing to Western Civilization except---and this is what makes the history of Sparta worth study---Leonidas’ and his 300 Spartans who died at the Hot Gates (480 BC). Because of their sacrifice Athens was able to survive. Thus was Western Civilization born.
Infanticide is a myth. There is basically no records of archeogical proofs of mass graves for children under any mountain in Sparta. And from these texts - we should have them so many that it is almost ridiculous to take this serious. Sparta begun as a backwater of ancient Greece world and ended as such. Spartans made an alliance with Persians and attacked Athens and many other Greek cities, as we can learn from later history. They were suprisingly better diplomats than warriors.
If you believe they treated boy infants like this with a survivability of nearly zero then there would never have been a Spartan army. Period. Think about it for just a minute. I don't think they were treated this unfairly however I do believe the training they went through to become warriors was down right vicious, brutal and scary.
Not Spartans; they gave wine to helots (slaves) to showcase to Spartan children that people of a lower level do not have manners and behave bad compared to disciplined higher class Spartans. Krypteia is the forerunner of Gestapo. They went around and killed just to keep their numbers down and killing the strongest would prevent any revolt from helots. First it was Theba that weakened Sparta, which led to Sparta joining the Hellenic or Achaean league, which in turn was overrun by the Roman Empire in 146BC. I have been to Sparta, it is located south from Korinthos Canal in the Peloponnese; today's Spartans are regular Greek citizens... probably subdued more than any other Greek people because they were overrun by Greek and other rulers through millennia. A fascinating history, nonetheless.
Most warrior cultures had some man on youth action going on. It was probably more common in Sparta, because boys and youths lived separately from women in barracks. Homosexuality is only frowned on in Abrahamic religions. Which are fairly recent in the scheme of human history.
Anyone who cant understand that people of the past shouldn't be thought about in any way modern, please just never look at history agian or vote or influence anyone in your life.
The Spartan warrior society was built on producing professional soildiers. War by nature is cruel and unforgiving. We can't really judge them by todays standards because it's not really that fair. Life in general at that time for just regular citizens was short and extremely brutal- only the strong s survived let alone being a Spartan warrior. Sparta produced some of the toughest warriors this world has ever seen. Truly professional soildiers.
I have been fascinated with ancient Sparta since I was little, and this video stirred that interest again. One of my very favorite books is “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield. I highly recommend it. I think we can all agree that the Spartans values, morals, and laws wouldn’t fit in today’s society. But if it weren’t for them, our world could be quite different. Ancient Greece with its philosophy, art, and liberal governance owes its survival in part to Sparta, and therefore so do we.
Oh yes, the ever stalwart Spartans, who sold their souls to the Persians in order to finally be able to beat the Athenians. The opposers of tyranny whose society stood on the backs of the helots, the slave population that made up around 85% of their society, an absurdly high percentage even by contemporary standards, who the ephors declares war against yearly, and whose standards of living were awfully inhuman, even by contemporary standards.
Perhaps you could tell us what was the behavior of other nations at the time such as those living in today Britain or USA or in Persia or in North of Greece or in Judea or in Egypt! Bet you would love to be a Spartan.
The 300 movie romanticized Sparta in a lot of today's people's minds. But that was only because they outright reimagined history and inserted lots of pretentious talk about "freedom" which *real* Spartiates did not actually have. Sparta was basically an early model for Soviet-style communism. The state was all-powerful. The rights you had were those the state chose to grant you. The same was true of property, which the state owned or could seize. You lived under perpetual martial law. "Freedom" was *not* a Spartan value!
The whole point of the movie was dilios fabricating everything that happened to galvanize Sparta against Persia, it was him mytholitizing the battle and what they fought
@@mikewillis9537 - Except that no actual Greek from that time period would have bought the claim that Sparta was a free society. Sure, the other city-states were not eager to be conquered by the Persian Empire. But that didn't mean that they had any delusions about what the Spartans were like. That part of the story was aimed directly at the real life audience.
I wonder the criteria for the babies. My son had jaundice, it passed. Crazy to think i'd have had to kill him if I lived in Sparta. Though i'd prob have been a helot anyway. I'm glad you covered the slaves/helots - I feel this is glossed over a lot when talking about Sparta. I remember reading about the massacres/cullings of the helots in school and it made me sick.
Why, Nutty History, when you mention slaves you smuggle images showing black people? I'm sure you know that there were not black people thousands of miles around Sparta at the time. Sorry, but I cannot believe that's an oversight on your part; I have to believe that's quite intentional (after all, you are a historian, aren't you?) So, why?
Yeah that's fucked up. At that time period if black people were around them they still wouldn't be slaves cause mainstream black slavery started in 1619 and ended in 1865 but I agree with the rest. It's racist af.
The way I heard it, women enjoyed more rights than other areas of the time, but that may not have been because they actually believed in gender equality, it may have just been that the men were at war so much, they needed the women to assume more roles.
That's what I'm thinking too..my society is same too,men were at war for long,so women are left pretty much on their own so..
Excellent perception.
Nope they were allowed to own land dance, train naked, and were renowned for it. The men were not away all of the time and large amount stayed home in case of a helot revolt.
It's not just that, property was also inherited matrilineally, and also if an unmarried soldier dies in war, his mother inherits his wealth. So Sparta was known for having a class of super wealthy women, who get richer and richer with every boy she has who dies in war. This is why Spartan mothers, and least the recorded ones, are known for being brutal psychopaths who would happily trade their son's lives for the prestige it would win her if he dies gloriously. Do a search on "Sayings of spartan woman" some time.
@@Adymus Thanks but I already know this! You are totally right! The late marriages etc did not help either!
I lived in Sparta for three years and unfortunately most of the ancient archeology has been built over, although you can still see some ruins including an amphitheatre.
That's the way it is in all countries with millenia of history that includes architecture. People build on what has fallen or tear down what is no longer usable to use the bricks, stones, marble and stuff for a ne building. It occurs year after year for centuries and millenia. Greece, China, Turkey and so on - civilization just rolls on and the population just builds on top of what came before. Archeology is a very recent concept.
Does Sparta even exist anymore ?
@@Olkv3D No mate, it's well known that Sparta suddenly disappeared one spooky night and the rest of Greece is now looking for it. Perhaps it fell down the back of a sofa, or someone accidentally swept it under a carpet?
@@danielcarr7090 man, that sucks. hope nobody steps on it, Spartas are even worse than Legos.
@@Olkv3D Use google earth mate. Dont post stupid questions..
"Tough love ". Can you see how easily influenced people can be by their society and governments. Being that cold to a child is unnatural but in their case, wanting, or having to fit in, that's what they did. Imagine going about your business for days on end having dumped a defenceless kid out in the wild.
To them, this seemed perfectly normal. Because their society was sustained by militarism, the state naturally becomes all-powerful because an effective military needs to be organized. The Spartans needed to be able to control their helot population as well as make war on other city-states. So their society became very centralized and obsessed maintaining the militarist social system that they had constructed.
To be fair, up until probably the 20th century and even a little bit into it, you expected to lose children to disease or other ways. This was just another way you could lose them.
@@tylerhonaker2544 Oh yeah. Whenever i read of cases back then, where people actually cared about their kids, given people bred like rabbits, i'm pleasantly surprised. Victorian era, the Old West, the 18th Century, even earlier. I'm actually taken aback.
@@kristiskinner8542 - I actually think that it has become more about *control* than being overly-permissive. For example, the way that my friends and I used to just go out, ad hoc, to ride bikes or play in the woods as contrasted to today's scheduled "play dates" supervised by adults. The exception to this was when my father bothered to be involved. At which point he demanded to *always* know exactly where I was. He was a control freak, and that's what I see in a lot of parents today. Whether they have been terrorized by media panics about child abduction or just feel that their kids should be as scheduled as they themselves are, parents have been the ones tightening the leash. Then they wonder why their kids struggle without the constant supervision that they have had since infancy.
@@2Bad4YOUuu Essentially I agree with all you say. Consider this, major wars between western countries are over. You’ll always have skirmishes in the world but the days of France invading England have ended. Countries like USA and Russia disagree on a political level while cooperating in space. Weird but true.
Long term the world is becoming increasingly peaceful. Maybe tough kids who can fight is simply out of date (sure you’ll still want some sort of army) in the future. Maybe more educated people who debate not fight is where we’re heading? Too many of the remarks here look back at history and assume a world at war.
Ancient world was brutal and horrifying yet so many things get repeated even today! As for Spartans it's well know for their tough way of life mostly to produce soldiers. However still progressive for the times women had different roles but still educated, and participate in society like men except being soldiers. While terrifying it's impressive how well organized society they had.
I wouldnt say progressive in terms of women. Because in many cultures women actually had a lot of rights and men were forced cannon fodder. Different cultures have had different gender roles and these cultures have constantly changed.
whats even more "wrong" about our perception of the past ages is that people try to compare today social norms which have evolved through our history with ancient people's perception about life, society, economy. These people lived 3,000-2,500 years ago, life was so much different back then, its just wrong to say that Spartans were "bad" or "sociopaths", it just shows your ignorance. Life was so much more "organic" and connected to nature, guess what happens with sick animals in the wild, those people were trying to survive everyday, in a very harsh world. They had to be self-sufficient, one drought, famine or epidemic could have ended whole Spartan history. For you its "gross" but not because it is gross objectively, it is gross for you because of our human cultural heritage and through evolution of thoughts human race decided whats immoral and wrong. I bet there are things that we consider "normal" right now, which in 500 or 1000 years will be considered horrific and immoral, almost like killing newborns with defects. We as a humans decided that is worth to protect the life of weaker even if it costs us resources, you know why? Because we can, because we have recources, unlimited food and water, safe shelters, great healthcare, public safety - something which Spartans didn't have
@@RPGPlayerPL truth hurts doesn't it?
@@moneyflow5766 What the hell are you talking about, are u delusional? Give me some arguments instead of that not substantive mumbling
@@RPGPlayerPL give you arguments? Who F are you? Get over yourself.
I'm very, very happy that I wasn't born in Sparta.. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have made it
Psh! You would've been chillin' oot haird doodapotamus(ette).
Me neither was born with club foot...oh well...
You would have born a slave than a citizen. So watch the nighttime
Oh I'm sure 90% of Americans wouldn't have made it.
As a woman you would have done well, fit, independent and safe.
When we think of history we all of us are guilty of romancing it.
We think of the glorious and redeeming traits of a society or a thing without thinking of the dark side of it.
If I was born in ancient Sparta I would not have survived.
I know this because when I was born I needed a machine to breath.
It doesn't matter if they could save me.
They wouldn't
I would have been chucked into a ditch and ended for the crime of being born weak.
Imagine how many people watching this video would have met the same fate.
If you want to know what the Spartans were really like consider the Nazis.
If you needed a machine to breathe you would have died on the way to the cliff
@@rodgerdodger9885
Yes that's why I said
"It doesn't matter if they could save me they wouldn't."
I suffer no delusion that they could save me.
I am attempting to say that modern society should not adopt such an approach toward human life.
If we can save the kid we should.
@@beltigussin81
Yes.
I remember reading that Hitler was inspired by the Spartans on some level.
Though I don't know the details on that.
Me
So interesting that the first thing listed is ritual infanticide. That’s literally the only thing I remember learning about ancient Sparta in 6th grade. I’m now 42.
I’m certain most ancient civilizations have creepy traditions in their closets.
ofc lol
We have Bill Cosby.
Yes. Even our current "civilization" has creepy traditions!
Creepy to us.. back then it was normal
As do most modern civilizations.
I've never heard anyone call Sparta "progressive." It was close to a fascist state thousands of years before Mussolini invented fascism.
True. It certainly wasn’t egalitarian between the sexes, either.
Nah.
Try not to project ww2 ideas to Ancient Greek states
Absolutely true, I wouldn’t say Sparta was exactly “progressive “ either. Plus they would leave baby boys to die if they weren’t strong enough.
Believe it or not, people in the future will think of our progressive ways the same way we see it throughout history today. The whole term is pretty stupid anyway, since there's no way for the contemporaries of telling what type of progress is actually progress and not regress.
@@mikitz You're right. We tend to judge the past based upon our own current prejudices which really isn't fair or accurate. So I'm sure the future will do the same thing to us.
Creepiest thing was that they airbrushed six packs on everyone
Well those actors didn't have to go through a lifetime of military service beggining at age 7. But i assure you those real 300 had that build. And becuase of that there genetic trairs exist today. Im from sparta, my parents both come from that CITY. My 13 year okd son has those abs, arms, chest at that tender young age and hasn't lifted a dumb bell in his life. 14-5 inch arms already.. the bloodline still exists today.
Proud dad !
Hurts when most of us have a 12 pack bod.
@@jackalister1662amem
@@jackalister1662 i remember growing up around 15/16 .. had a very solid build. A lot of my friends around envied that. I never showed off. My son now 13 looks like he will be even bigger and better than i was. He inherited more of my fathers genes.
A lot of kids today are sloppy..
I thank God my son inherited that blood line.
So yes they still exist today. Maybe not all like rhe 300 but yes the line exists
Sad to imagine the amount of physical, mental & sexual abuse these kids suffered under the guise of “training”
The harsh brutality of the training is why Sparta was dominant in war. It is why they were master tacticians and defeated 10,000 with 300
@@FruitBruteIII You know spartans have the most record losses because they completely disregard tactics in open field.... They've just win the hot gates or we called battle of Thermopylae, because it's narrow and the persian soldiers are quantity over quality, lastly the 300 spartans are not alone, they have a thousand slaves called helots and allies of thespains and thebian that has hundred of soldiers to help the spartans there. Where did you get that there are only 300 spartan handle tha- oh wait The movie 300 right not the historical fact
and the most low IQ thing that Spartan did was making iron a currency which baffling and stupid thing to do in ancient time
Funny thing, sparta is just like ancient korea with a little of sprinkle of women rights
@@eugeneflores6153 the use of iron bars as money limited or even eliminated vices like gambling, addictions, and anything else that requires large sums of money to be moved
@@eugeneflores6153 if the lost so often, how they become the masters of Greece? They defeated Athenas, they were considered the best warriors at that time.
It’s ironic how everybody loves the movie 300 and how the spartans survived all the odds, but hate how they were made like that… Though life makes tough people, plain and simple, If this people were not treated in such gruesome ways, they would’ve never grown to become the best fighters in history.
Let's not forget the large class of brutally repressed slaves that allowed them to spend all their time training
@@jonathanguzman3044 what? You make no sense go home
@@Jodyjo99 TRIGGERED MUCH?
Sacred band of Thebes kicked their ass were never able to recover from it so I wouldn't consider Spartans the best
@@skfkfkd Exactly and in many cases they would resist fighting at all. When they did they usually made sure to have plenty of slave armies and allies to take the brunt of the damage so they could walk in later and claim victory. The truth is, much like today no amount of training is going to save you when someone sticks a spear in your gutt or shoots you in the chest with a bullet. The Spartan's cult like behaviour eventually created a situation in which they didn't have enough soldiers or enough brains among them to hold their empire together and the "girly men" conquered them.
Think I would have passed any Spartan conditioning. My mother left me home alone for days as a toddler and pretty much by the time I was 6 I cooked cleaned and moved out on my own by the time I was 15. Maybe my ancestors were Spartan lol
lol thats crazy - kudos to you for surviving that - sending you all my love and blessings!
@@srypWned remember whatever doesn't kill us only makes us stronger. Fyi I am the complete opposite type of mother never would leave mine alone although I do promote self sufficiency.
I’m very sorry to hear of your childhood experiences. You’re a true survivor. I sincerely hope the years ahead are kind to you.
Cooked and cleaned at 6? Yeah, right.
@@Cameroonian In some parts of South Africa, where I live, it’s not unknown for six year olds to take on adult responsibilities. Children are left with elderly grandparents when parents leave to work in the cities or pass away. It becomes their responsibility to source water and firewood, care for siblings and livestock, and tend the crops. The worst is the children who become parents to their siblings because of the death of the parents and there is no grandparents. It’s heartbreaking to see.
God damn! It's really good to actually get to ground level on what it actually meant to be a Spartan. In school, 4th grade or so, we were taught about it in such a way, that although life was hard there, women had equal rights, hence all the girls in our class liked Sparta all of a sudden.
But had we dug a little deeper on the society of Sparta, and really pondered on which was the better society, most likely all would have voted for Athens.
Interesting how great soldiers are made. There's no one way though. You don't have to kill "weak" babies in order to get strong men.
But yeah. I would need to learn more to know better.
Killing people based on genetics is called eugenics, and it was used in ww2 as we know to try to breed a perfect Arian race. Don’t glorify it.
@@HelennaRose I’m not sure where he said he was glorifying the killing of people based on genetics 😂🤷♀️ I think it’s quite clear he was talking about their training 😂 EDIT: on reading it again, he actually says you DON’T have to kill babies, so I’m still not sure where you got your impression from lol
it’s also Aryan. Not Arian 🤓 Arians are people who followed the teachings of Arius - a fourth century Christian elder lol.
@@TallulahFoxxx thanks tallulah! 😉🤝🏻
Dear fellow commenters,
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Actually the spartans were pretty mediocre soldiers, even by mainland Greek standards.
The "flogging contest" actually only developed under Roman rule. It worked more like a competitive game during Spartas good times. Also the amphitheater was primarily constructed for dancing and singing competitions which were even bigger tourist attractions
It's creepy for us in the modern society, but it was the normal life back then. They served a purpose, both time and changes made them disappear.
Correct "Every soldier was a brick", as they had no great fortifications, and needed every man they had for defence .
I wish the video editor had used depictions of Sparta and only Sparta 😂🤷♀️ there are some random drawings of other civilisations and their slaves etc. and it mixes things up lol! I noticed this on the video of Ancient Egypt and their “creepy things” 🤔 He was talking about the ram-headed god Khnum, but almost all of the depictions he showed were actually of Anubis, the jackal headed god 😂🤷♀️
More oversight would be a blessing.
Amen... so fed up with people comparing history with modern morals and law. How about comparing them to the rest of the world at that time??
yeah, and it was a time of survival rather than what we would call having a life in modern concept. Everything is manual labor and you gotta hustle to survive, u gotta bear and just pray infections and disease to get by without killing ya, water does not come of a faucet, u gotta dig wells, wait for ur turn to get drinking water buckets every day and save rain water for other purposes. Food does not come through roads like today, you don't get to eat beef or chicken or fancy combination of veggies everyday. And you certainly won't have the luxury to take shower everyday let alone bathing. Hard stony or woody beds with minimal woolly sheets, hard pillows and no heating or good shelter most of the time. And people have short lifespans from disease, infections, hunger and wars.
I hope people keep all these in mind before they think it's weird, they didn't have many choices like we do today, but life was a hell lot simpler and mostly short. If they know a purpose higher than the mundane struggle, just anything to fight for, then they were living in their best lives possible no matter the pain and the death, in the dreams baby.
@@TurrisGryphus the rest of the world were nothing like sparta ,,, the persians athens and other greek states none of them were strict like sparta
Nah. Knew all of what was enumerated. One thing you didn’t mention is that while the in the movie _300_ the Spartans would insult the Athenians for their tradition of homosexuality, historically the Spartan males often took on male lovers.
And the Ancient Band of Thebes, another 300 and an army of lovers, ended up defeating the Spartans. Of course that's not in the 300. Funny how that worked out 🤔
This video is not good, while most of its information is correct it’s bias shows in the statement “Women were, nothing more than breeding machines in Sparta”. That wasn’t true. Women in Sparta could own property and land. Athenians and other Greeks noted that spartan women were “confident and funny”. During sporting events Spartan girls were encouraged & expected to compete with the boys. Spartan women while not being able to hold government positions, were still able to leave their homes unattended, known for wearing “skimpy” clothing, & being expected to flirt & socially engage with men freely. Spartan women were also known to marry in their 20s, not as child brides to adult-men, which was the case in most other parts of the Greek world. Sparta had its horrible moral failings & it’s morally progressive attributes as well. Both must be noted.
I agree, this guy is trying to butcher the portrayal of ancient Spartans. He judging them from the stand point of a modern man who has probably never struggled to have food or a roof over his head. All societies were brutal back then
A lot of this is very questionable. Basically this is made with the attitude that if one record says it we will accept it as the total truth.
Just to add to your example with women, spartan women in fact ended up becoming extremely influential. They would inherit, and they could re-marry. In a society where men had a tendency to maybe die young that meant that sparta had a group of elder woman who while not in direct power were extremely wealthy and we have good evidence that wealth could be used to change a lot of political outcomes.
The Spartan heiresses had more money than the King. Typically when going off to war the king would need to take out a loan from these women and you can imagine in a society where the primary occupation is war you’re probably going to have widows Consequently what happened is widows remarried and were re widowed multiple marrying and inheriting their husbands land each time. Furthermore the daughters were not cut out of inheritance so they could split fortunes. In fact this actually freaked out the rest of the world and they wanted spartan women to be depicted as Unlady like whatever that means in order for this practice to not be discovered by their female populations furthermore they were actually taught how to throw spears and we’re expected to fight in defense of Sparta should the city ever come under attack keep in mind Sparta had no walls and was very proud of this fact and made fun of others for having them. One of the best Spartan quotes is a spartan king talking to another king and coming upon his city the Spartan king saw these giant walls and he said what women live here. The king responded back where is Sparta’s walls to which the Spartan king threw out his spear and said the walls of Sparta extend as far as this spear can reach.
True, Spartan women had more rights and freedom than women elsewhere in ancient Greece.
Pronounciation is fkn shocking too.
Sparta in the province of Laconia (where we get the word laconic from)
Well that's cool, now wtf is that word
I'm part Greek. ! Now i know why my parents threw me out at the age of twelve.
I think you confused Sparta with Athens in regards to who was considered more progressive. Spartans were pretty strict and very much about discipline. And they were very much against weakness in all forms.
I don't think Athens was all that much better, unless you were a male citizen perhaps?
The idea of being 'progressive' is an anachronism - it's an idea we use today, but wouldn't have meant anything to them at the time. Different people today using that term will focus on different aspects, and therefore which was more 'progressive.'
Even other Greek cities at the time didn't really know how to categorize Sparta - some aspects of it were very democratic, but it also had aspects of monarchy, tyranny, and oligarchy. It had to be a very well-balanced system, as one defeat could spell doom for them - they were land-based, and trapped on a peninsula with other aggressive city-states.
They did allow their women to "mate" with other strong warriors to produce stronger offspring ( even though already married e.t.c) that's quite progressive if you ask me 🤣🤣
@@DonTeridon they also paired every boy in training, with an adult male, and that child got buggered on a regular basis, thats a bit too progressive if you ask me.
@@Vorador47 Oh wow! I didn't realize that. I had never heard of that before, must be something that was glossed over. It seems Athens is targeted for that but not Sparta.
My parents both where and im still here and so is my son who's 13 and built like a truck. He's naturally built at 13 with 14 inch arms never lifted a weight, pecks biseps and abs at such a young age. These are the genes that have passed on down that blessed my father, myself and now my son. I thank God my people came from that little greek city in southern Greece called Sparta !
@Doctor Mabuse No your wrong at 7 they went into military training. Not on battlefield. Like going to westpoint where they are tought the art of war. Don't talk rubbish about things you don't know please. They didn't fihgt with real swords at 7. Between 7-13 the learned with wooden swords. The Art of war !
The Helots came from Helps, a neighbouring city-state, conquered and enslaved by Sparta. They were Greek and related to Spartans.
Helps? They were mostly messenians. The area next to Laconia, the city itself is fabulously well preserved and well worth a visit.
Why is everyone so shocked and upset at the way Sparta was organized and run? If you know ANYTHING about Nature and how it's survival of the fittest. Animals in nature kill off their weak and sickly or leave them to die, it was the same for the old and the lame, if you couldn't keep up with the Pack or the Herd, you're gone. That rule applies to every form of animal life on the planet, historically humans copied nature in order to survive, they formed family groups and tribes, everyone had tasks to learn and work as to provide for the common good of all.
It's like all of you just woke up to a life long coma.
Thats not what survival of the fittest is. Survival of the fittest is when individuals with certain traits live longer and reproduce more than others of the population without that trait. Its not deliberately leaving a baby out to die, and yes sometimes a mother animal will abandon a sickly baby, but there are also countless cases of mothers that wont abandon their babies even after they die. Bold of you to claim to know so much about nature when you seem to have less than a middle school understanding of evolutionary biology.
Also, even if it was "natural" to leave a weak baby out in the woods, still doesn't fucking mean we should do it.
@@botflyguy7814 Did I say anywhere that we should leave anyone out to die? NO! I like how you think you know more than me or know more than anyone else. My point is to stop prolonging life and dragging a person's inevitable death out, it's sick and cruel. Even with a child that is born with severe defects, the merciful thing to do is put the child to sleep. There is no way that child will ever lead a normal productive life. We do it for animals we love, why don't we show the same mercy for people we love? Why do we let them suffer?
Infanticide of the unwanted was normal in antiquity, including the rest of Greece and Rome. This was not a special feature of Sparta. Also, modern children are required to obey the state and spend much of their time in schools and pre-schools.
Infanticide is still rampant. They call it abortion today. And they kill the children in what should be the sanctuary of their mother's womb. They don't even make it to birth. What monsters decide that these children are not worthy of life???
Yes, this does ring true. My high school mascot was the Spartans and we were separated from our parents at 7 years old to start training for HS football. We gave no quarter to the numerous Tigers, Bulldogs and Falcons that we faced on the field of battle. All of state Class 3A civilizations trembled in fear as we relentlessly marched towards the sectional title..
😄
🤣
"Sparta was a totalitarian state. The government had it´s finger in every household pie and liked to control how it tasted. Even children were supposed to follow the demands of the government, wether they liked it, or not." Sounds a bit like today's America, UK and Australia...
My opinion that's what I thought as soon as the sentence was finished 👍
Yet the people were freer than Athenians, the so called cradle of democracy. Maybe you should learn history and not paint current feminine thinking on what was a tough world then.
@@davidedbrooke9324 lol. Damn. "female thinking"
No. What people today think of as "oppressive" government in the U.S., U.K. or Australia was *nothing* compared to what Sparta was like. The state didn't just meddle, it *owned* absolutely *everything* and everyone! It was indeed effectively communism. Spartiates had homes and farms, but these were not private property. If the citizen died, the state could reassign them to somebody else as it saw fit. Citizenship could be stripped and one could be "demoted" to a lower class. It's frankly disgusting how people today who have *far* more freedoms and rights are increasingly deluded into believing that things were better in the past.
@@daniels7907 indeed, it got so bad and was a Main reason Sparta declined.
.
Sparta’s motto, “What doesn’t kill you only makes you kill better. “
I recall as a Catholic kid growing up in the 1960’s, in parochial grade school history books, Sparta’s relatively severe social norms were used as “stand-ins” for Soviet style communism. Mainstream US Catholicism at the time was very anti-communist.
Not you using a picture of black slaves for Spartan slavery when the pic takes place thousands of years later 😐😐
The Helots were a greek people not black
It all worked so beautifully in that window of time and we're still talking about it now.
The people from these areas must have good genetics after all that filtering they did to their people back in those days
lol, that sh*t is diluted over 1000s of years. They're like every other loser out there now. Look at their economy. You really think these dudes are walking around like male models?
They do have and they called Maniats.. Mani was the only place in Greece with 0 days Turkish occupation while other places had hundreds of years.. Actually Turks and Albanians never accomplished to invade Mani even when only women and kids where inside the city and men where assisting other Greeks in the war.
@@Craig-pm2kc I am sure you have the balls to tell that face to face to one of the people of Mani since they are not descendants of Spartans and they don't have their genes right? And if you think you have those balls think twice because they are proven descendants from historians and you might dilute your pants in the process..
@cubic planet I mean no disrespect. As a black American, I've got nothing against your people. It just gets lame when people want to go on and on about the past. History is important, but we are alive right now.
I find it hard to believe that the council of elders looked for ways to reject boys. In a warring society where numbers conferred advantage, I rather think the council of elders probably looked instead for ways to accept more boy conscripts.
Yeah this guy has a little bias to his thoughts. Judging an ancient civilization by standards of today is foolish and ignorant.
@@jeremyhancock321 I want talking about moral standards. I was talking instead about the cold calculus of conscription in a warring society surrounded by enemies. In such as environment the pressure is to take as many conscripts as possible rather than, as the video suggests, apply stringent measures and turn many away.
Yes exactly my thoughts. But maybe they were trying not to waste time raising boys that were not suit. Like having an abnormality?
@@chacmool2581 But most things I've read say that one of the main reasons of Sparta's decline was population problems. They ended with like 1/8 of the population they had at their prime. Their practice did hurt their ability to grow their army. It seems stupid in hindsight, but they did have really astringent requirements for children to be deemed worthy of being Spartans.
You are projecting what you would do onto what people of a completely different culture with completely different values would do. You think the best way to fight off enemies is by having the largest possible army, Spartans thought the best way was to have an army made up of nothing but the strongest and most elite soldiers with no weaklings to drag the rest down.
I wonder if the wine-bathing actually helped in some way. High alcohol content would effectively kill any microbes.
I think that’s need spirits not wine. Average % of wine 11/13. Spirits 35/55. As an example of alcohol killing germs. Hand sanitiser is 65/70 %.
@@jacobrackham3487 True, but wine has different alcohol contents. Sacramental wine that the Catholics use can have up to 20% alcohol content, for example. Anyway, just a thought.
@@notcrazy6288 - yeah definitely true. Just to effectively kill germs it needs to be like 65% +.
Not trying to put your comment down man.
@@jacobrackham3487 No problem. My ignorance on the subject of how much alcohol is requred to kill microscopic organisms is pretty much total.
Neonates need microbes because they don’t have their own robust microbiome w/ normal microflora. The majority of neonates’ developing internal microbiome comes from its passage through the mother’s canal at birth. It could certainly have done more harm than good.
After all that martial training .they still lost wars
That's life. In your case I don't think you would even have the balls to go to war.
Yeah at one point they sure did. But wasn't Greece a powerful Empire for about 350 years? I guess they managed a few wins here and there during that time?
yes they did, because they were not perfect and because they sometimes didn't have the support they needed . they were a martial tribe, hard trained warriors, not diplomats
Go get 299 of your bros and get down with a group of 10,000 people right now I dare you
@@hoplitecenturion9441 facts
Important that people understand what life was like before Christianity introduced, popularized, and enforced the concept of human rights. When you see things like infanticide/abortion and abuse become commonly accepted in our culture, just remember it's a regression to early times, not a progression to something more humane.
This right here.
Most of the things mentioned here are from their enemies or Sparta during the Roman times, where it was a kind of tourist trap...
The fact that they all died out tells me they screwed up somewhere along the line. Their society failed because of its flaws.
@@beltigussin81 They didnt die out, they were conquered... There are still direct descendents of sparta..
@@arcajeth626 The maniot people
@@beltigussin81 they didn't die out bruh they just left these "traditions" behind
Both of my grandparents are from the area in Greece that was once Sparta and let me tell you they are some psycho tough love type of people but I love them all :)
Buddy that is so true. Now one has to wonder if that is the watered down descendants of the Spartans. Then how crazy rough were the real McCoy's?
Same, we might be 2nd cousins
@@hhattingh Well people if claiming to be SPartan Aka TheBani in descendant should start explaining the meaning of the word SPartan or The Bani for to me it associates with AL Bah,AL Ban ,ELBah,ELban …which is not Greek but GaL in origins
Being born in a specific area doesn’t give a person identity especially if it is part of copy culture that can’t explain the meaning of SPartan or TheBani meaning in they own language.
@@MAKDÁVID-KRIŽ ur a major buzz kill Dav
You kids today don't know how good you got it! Why, back in ancient Sparta, we....
Not that strange really. Sparta was a small state surrounded by comparatively larger, richer ones. It follows that discipline and hard meritocracy had to be developed as a force multiplier.
What are you talking about? 85% of Spartan population were slaves with exactly 0 prospects of ever achieving any kind of freedom, regardless of how well they fought or how many battles they won. Sparta was fucking huge compared to its neighbouring states, particularly after the conquest of Messenia.
No wonder why Spartans could never maintain an Empire...
Their own policies reduced they're military to such an extent that it made it impossible to control territory too far from home.
They did not dare to venture away from home for long because they feared that the slaves will rebel.
@@ilonapapp7559 didn't they have colonies
I am amazed at how many colour photos have survived from that time period.
Simplicity is not how history should be portrayed
Name ONE society not born on creepy secrets.
By living to 60 considering how aggressive their society was might have been a matter of luck or smarts to have survived that long.
In the movie 300, Spartans were portrayed as benevolent warriors out to defeat the evil empire. But in truth, it's the opposite.
The ritual infanticide were the old versions of today's abortion.
I think its hysterical that ancient Spartans are usually depicted butt naked, except for wearing shoes. I guess you don't have to worry about matching an outfit lol
This ideal was accompanied by the routine exposure of naked or partially clothed women's bodies, which was seen as modest rather than shameful, with all wantonness excluded. Plutarch says that this “taught them simplicity and a care for good health, and gave them some taste of higher feelings, admitted as they thus were to the field of noble action and glory”.
@@mariuszsobolewski9839 but it meant that literally everyone would have to guard their physique
I am half Spartan. My dad was born and raised there. Still have property there but haven't been since I was a kid.
Should've been called "Creepy things Spartans did to their children"
As in the famous line from Aliens, "Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Hell for everybody, EXCEPT the ruling families.
Sounds like the USofA
@@basilbeams5290 If USA is so terrible a place to live, how come people flock to it by the millions?
And Hollywood had the nerve to portray them as "the good guys" who "fought for freedom."
I’ve survived Sparta, but escaped military service by going to the educational facility with military classes. I went through the rigorous physical education and participated in competitions. Oooh! Did I say I grew up in Sparta, sorry the country was called the USSR..😂(no slaves, just GULAG)
The modern day agoge is military bootcamp. You suffer there with the intention that you will be fortified physically & mentally so you can resist & survive the torture & humiliation of being captured by an enemy.
When you live in a hard world, you must be a harder society, or die, one way or another.. .
What did Will Rogers say, Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you read".
It is HILARIOUS to me that this started with ‘ PPL THINK SPARTA WAS REALLY CHILL AND EQUAL FOR EVERYONE’.
Just- 0% of people think that.
Read and educate yourself!Before you make a generalization, Study how the rest of the ancient world lived and then you may make a valued statement. Otherwise you only reflect your lack of knowledge on the subject.
In almost all ancient societies infanticide was practised.
Babies with deformities were exposed. American
indian tribes also did this. While this might seem cruel,
it meant full care could be directed toward healthy babies.
So... Nazis!! Romans, Spartans, all the so adored ancient societies WERE ALL NAZIS!!!!!
@@WillyWeiss-HH no, that's just your view of bias, a spartan would've thought very much the same thing had he saw that conditions of modern society
@@sentinel_nightcrawler I doubt it.
@@WillyWeiss-HH they would've seen it as a society of weaklings. And in all honesty, anyone that was around centuries ago would've thought the same.
@@WillyWeiss-HH besides, the Spartans were more of Soviets than they were nazis
5:56 ahh the good ole days
Correction: “We over I” is not communism. “State over I” is. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Germany and all Scandinavian countries believe in “We over I”; They all practice capitalistic economy, albeit one that is highly regulated.
Correction: "State over I" is not communism. "Ideology over I" is. And it doesn't matter if the ideology is primarily enforced by the state, politburo or the w.o.k.e mob.
@@drqq9002 “Communism: A way of organizing a society in which the State government owns everything that are used to make and transport products; And there is no privately owned property. -- Merriam-Webster -- In short: “State over I”. Disagree? Write to Merriam-Webster Dictionary and suggest a change.
And to think: Karl Marx envisioned end-stage communism as a free enterprise system in which the workers controlled the means of production 😔
In the good old day, housing cost woods and stones.
In modern day, house is for real money owner and real money bags.
At 5:20 he shows a picture of a mosaic which is from Piazza Armerina in Sicily. Sparta was in Greece, probably in Larconia southern Greece.
The bulk of Spartan army were only part time soldiers, that occasionally trained together, the rest of the time they were landowner famers or merchants (basically civilians with weapons, a militia that had to buy their own weapons). The full time Royal Guard consisted of 300 of the strongest but that was constantly changing.
Ha! 😃 Where'd you get THAT horse crap? 😄
At age 20, Spartan males became full-time soldiers, and remained on active duty until age 60.
The Spartans’ constant military drilling and discipline made them skilled at the ancient Greek style of fighting in a phalanx formation. Men under 30 lived communal barracks even through marriage.
You show a picture of the Acropolis in Athens when talking about Sparta.
Tbf there is nothing left of the real Sparta let alone an acropolis
Withholding attention to newborns is known to cause Sociopathy. They may have suspected this way back then, and was the goal by the Elders to create an unfeeling society.
This was a different time for sure. You had to be tough or be slaughtered and risk annihilation.
True, but Sparta was still unnecessarily tough for its citizens. At the same time there were flourishing more easy-going civilizations
Persians, Romans, Hittites and Egyptians etc all built magnificent empires, and fall for sure. But none were so pathetic, inhuman
They need to make another Sparta movie, it would be boring and long but more realistic than 300.
300 is literally the one eyed Spartan spinning a propaganda tale to hype the troops at Platea. It's not supposed to be realistic and it's not presented as such. I don't understand why people don't seem to get this...
@@LanMandragon1720 I understood it was not ment to be a realistic look on spartan life style, I just want to see something close to it.
@@birususama827 Ahh ok that's fair it's just that people complain about 300 being historically inaccurate. Because for whatever reason they miss it's presented as propaganda.
Even till today Spartans still suffer from mental illness.
Ah-go-gee!
Ah-go-gee!
Ah-go-gee!
"As a reward for their dumb luck" 😅
By todays standards the Spartans practiced rituals that can only be described as barbaric. But in the ancient world it was conquer or be conquered. The weak did not survive for very long.
Infanticide was common in the ancient world. In Sparta, however, it was government mandated. In Rome it was optional, and up to the pater familias to decide.
All deformed babies were not cast aside. One who became a Spartan king, Agesilaus II (444 BC) was lame and all his life walked with a limp.
Helots did not outnumber Spartans 7:1. It was more like 50:1. This is why Lycurgus (820 BC) transformed Sparta into a military dictatorship: to keep the helots in line.
There were many who admired Sparta. There are still many today. They admire her because they did not and do not have to live there. She was a totalitarian nightmarish dictatorship. She contributed nothing to Western Civilization except---and this is what makes the history of Sparta worth study---Leonidas’ and his 300 Spartans who died at the Hot Gates (480 BC). Because of their sacrifice Athens was able to survive. Thus was Western Civilization born.
The West still loves to kill babies
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol 40,000,000 since Roe (1973).
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol so does everywhere. Abortion and infanticide are much more common in countries which ban Abortion.
Infanticide is a myth. There is basically no records of archeogical proofs of mass graves for children under any mountain in Sparta. And from these texts - we should have them so many that it is almost ridiculous to take this serious. Sparta begun as a backwater of ancient Greece world and ended as such. Spartans made an alliance with Persians and attacked Athens and many other Greek cities, as we can learn from later history. They were suprisingly better diplomats than warriors.
Actually the 7:1 provideed by Heredotus is a great exagerration
If you believe they treated boy infants like this with a survivability of nearly zero then there would never have been a Spartan army. Period. Think about it for just a minute. I don't think they were treated this unfairly however I do believe the training they went through to become warriors was down right vicious, brutal and scary.
At 77 I'm undoubtedly too old and way too senile to finish watching this school boy interpretation of history.
Wow
Then don't. No body wants u to watch it either. Whether u like it or not, it doesn't make any difference 😭 bye.
based boomer
@@trenaceandblackmetal5621 Do your math. I am a war baby and have the ration book to prove it.
Your time will come old man 💀
Why am I both horrified and not at the same time? An entire society build on Narcissism, Pshycopathy and Sociopathy. No love or empathy detected.
it’s the senile senators for me 🙈
I love this dudes voice for history
How did the Spartans separate the men from the boys?
-
With a pry bar.
That was a terrible joke
Obviously.
Bathing in wine makes sense. The alcohol would kill many germs.
This does a great disservice to everyone by judging every aspect of every factoid and assuming the reasons behind them.
This is untrue. Spartans did not engage with wine or any other substance that incapacitate you, as it was seen as building weakness.
Not Spartans; they gave wine to helots (slaves) to showcase to Spartan children that people of a lower level do not have manners and behave bad compared to disciplined higher class Spartans. Krypteia is the forerunner of Gestapo. They went around and killed just to keep their numbers down and killing the strongest would prevent any revolt from helots. First it was Theba that weakened Sparta, which led to Sparta joining the Hellenic or Achaean league, which in turn was overrun by the Roman Empire in 146BC. I have been to Sparta, it is located south from Korinthos Canal in the Peloponnese; today's Spartans are regular Greek citizens... probably subdued more than any other Greek people because they were overrun by Greek and other rulers through millennia. A fascinating history, nonetheless.
I think it weird that you left out the real creepy thing going on in Sparta which was all the weird amount of boy love.
Greek were famous for male love
The Greek Army motto: Never leave your buddy's behind.
It’s not creepy 🙄 literally every nation before BC has this and it wasn’t hidden ( check Egypt, roman empire and vikings)
Most warrior cultures had some man on youth action going on. It was probably more common in Sparta, because boys and youths lived separately from women in barracks. Homosexuality is only frowned on in Abrahamic religions. Which are fairly recent in the scheme of human history.
@@raygiordano1045 🤣
That's the last time I have a Spartan babysit!
I think you went a little easy on them--especially the child abuse.
Anyone who cant understand that people of the past shouldn't be thought about in any way modern, please just never look at history agian or vote or influence anyone in your life.
The Spartan warrior society was built on producing professional soildiers. War by nature is cruel and unforgiving. We can't really judge them by todays standards because it's not really that fair. Life in general at that time for just regular citizens was short and extremely brutal-
only the strong s survived let alone being a Spartan warrior.
Sparta produced some of the toughest warriors this world has ever seen. Truly professional soildiers.
I have been fascinated with ancient Sparta since I was little, and this video stirred that interest again. One of my very favorite books is “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield. I highly recommend it. I think we can all agree that the Spartans values, morals, and laws wouldn’t fit in today’s society. But if it weren’t for them, our world could be quite different. Ancient Greece with its philosophy, art, and liberal governance owes its survival in part to Sparta, and therefore so do we.
Oh yes, the ever stalwart Spartans, who sold their souls to the Persians in order to finally be able to beat the Athenians. The opposers of tyranny whose society stood on the backs of the helots, the slave population that made up around 85% of their society, an absurdly high percentage even by contemporary standards, who the ephors declares war against yearly, and whose standards of living were awfully inhuman, even by contemporary standards.
Perhaps you could tell us what was the behavior of other nations at the time such as those living in today Britain or USA or in Persia or in North of Greece or in Judea or in Egypt! Bet you would love to be a Spartan.
One of the first societies to practice eugenics (eu = good, genics = genes).
The 300 movie romanticized Sparta in a lot of today's people's minds. But that was only because they outright reimagined history and inserted lots of pretentious talk about "freedom" which *real* Spartiates did not actually have. Sparta was basically an early model for Soviet-style communism. The state was all-powerful. The rights you had were those the state chose to grant you. The same was true of property, which the state owned or could seize. You lived under perpetual martial law. "Freedom" was *not* a Spartan value!
The whole point of the movie was dilios fabricating everything that happened to galvanize Sparta against Persia, it was him mytholitizing the battle and what they fought
@@mikewillis9537 - Except that no actual Greek from that time period would have bought the claim that Sparta was a free society. Sure, the other city-states were not eager to be conquered by the Persian Empire. But that didn't mean that they had any delusions about what the Spartans were like. That part of the story was aimed directly at the real life audience.
You should educate yourself more and try to use your brain
It's funny, they were utterly conquered by the Roman's, who I'm sure had a vastly higher quality of life overall.
Please list your sources in the description thanks.
No stop being lazy and write your own paper 💀
You forgot to mention that before a man would go to battle, his mother would tell him "You're either coming back as a winner, or dead"
I wonder the criteria for the babies. My son had jaundice, it passed. Crazy to think i'd have had to kill him if I lived in Sparta. Though i'd prob have been a helot anyway. I'm glad you covered the slaves/helots - I feel this is glossed over a lot when talking about Sparta. I remember reading about the massacres/cullings of the helots in school and it made me sick.
Been trying to tell people this stuff for a long time. The movies gloss over so much.
I've always found it discouraging how some look back on history and render spme moral judgment. As if doing so puts them on the moral high ground.
I would like see a breakdown of the Phoenicians and of Timbuktu
Why, Nutty History, when you mention slaves you smuggle images showing black people? I'm sure you know that there were not black people thousands of miles around Sparta at the time. Sorry, but I cannot believe that's an oversight on your part; I have to believe that's quite intentional (after all, you are a historian, aren't you?) So, why?
Facts black people came out in 2001
Yeah that's fucked up. At that time period if black people were around them they still wouldn't be slaves cause mainstream black slavery started in 1619 and ended in 1865 but I agree with the rest. It's racist af.
@@bean3230 oh my fucking God I need your profile picture framed
@@lareinadivestinesa2184 Black Slavery started about 1400 and is still going today.
@@MrJking065 Which type are you talking about? American or something else?
Thats Why Kratos Behaves Like Jehadi Terrierist.
Truly He Is Profit Moohaammhead Of Sparta.
Cover the Aztec.
The Khmer Rouge.
And in fifty years cover this generation of CCP canon fodder for the PLA.