Perhaps one of the less popular groups to be the talk of history
class. However, the Spartans are one the most awesome people who will ever
encounter in your study of antiquity! Where else would you encounter people who
threw their babies off a cliff just because they were found to have defect? Where
would you come across people who bathed their babies in wine to toughen them
up? And where else would you run into people who always ate disgusting broth
made of pig blood and vinegar? Nowhere else in the Greek world was luxury
scorned, and any innovation regarded with aversion. Nowhere else in the Greek
world were boys surrendered at the age of 7 to military life which would last
for most of the period of their lives. Nowhere else in the Greek world were
girls allowed to exercise naked alongside boys. Welcome to Sparta.
The origin of the Sparta, or Lacedaemon, is shrouded in myth. The Spartans
were believed to be among the Dorian invaders of Greece as opposed to the native
Ionians who resided in Attica (Athens being the main city in that region) and
established themselves along the west coasts of Turkey at the time of
colonisation. Sparta lay in a fertile river valley in the southern Peloponnese,
a landmass named after the mythical figure called Pelops. Like a typical Greek
landscape, it was rocky and barren. As a result of the inhospitable landscape,
Greece bred a race of fiercely independent and individualistic people. The
mountainous surrounding further serves to foster this individualism and lay a
foundation for the establishment of fragmentary city-states or polis
that littered the country. One of this is Sparta.
Sparta itself could hardly be called a polis. Rather it
resembled a collection of villages or settlements. Known for their conservatism
and frugality, their buildings were unimpressive and its citadel scarcely
imposing, which hardly did any justice for the city’s position as a major
power. The sense of isolation of the city was greatly reinforced by the high
barrier of Taygetos rang, which cut off Sparta from the west. In summary, the
Spartans could not be any more different than their friends in Attica, the
Athenians. While the Athenians were innovators, thinkers and reformers, the Spartans
were extremely old-fashioned, conservative, resentful of changes, and disliked
outsiders.
 |
| Military prowess is everything for Sparta where her soldiers serve as her walls |
Another typical Spartan characteristic is that they dislike babbling.
Gossip was neither popular nor encouraged. So were long speeches. Children were
taught to read and write “to the extent necessary.” Writing was not widely
practiced and records rarely kept. As a result, the Spartans were terrible at
PR and we know very little about them than we would like to! The aversion to
long speeches and chatter gave us the term “laconic.”
 |
| The simple city layout exemplifies the Spartan austere way of life |
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น