The Complex Life In Sparta | The Spartans (Ancient Greece Documentary) | Timeline

When we think of

ancient

Greece, this is the image most of us have in mind: the Parthenon in Athens, this is where the model of Western civilization received its first draft. Philosophy and science. Art and architecture. Democracy itself has its roots here and all of them. embodied in the serene lines of one of the most famous buildings in the world, but there is more to the history of

ancient

Greece than Athens. This is another type of monument to a very different type of Greek city. It is the burial mound of 300 warriors from Sparta who in 480 BC.

C. they made a heroic last stand in the past at Thermopylae resisting a massive invading force from the Persian Empire surrounded and outnumbered by approximately forty to one, they put up a spectacular fight before being torn to pieces. They are buried here and honored by this inscription that still echoes through the centuries always Dame Agra Lane Luckie demons ot theack Amitha came twice to Ramar sea petal monkey go tell the strange Spartans passing by that here we we find in obedience to its laws, unlike Athens Sparta cannot boast of its philosophers and politicians and artists it is famous for two things its frugality, from which we get our words Spartan and its fighters in Spartan daily

life

these two were closely linked all Spartan society conformed to a strict code of extreme discipline and self-sacrifice.

Its goal was to create the perfect state protected by perfect warriors. The pursuit of perfection made Sparta a strange place where money was prohibited, equality was imposed and exterminated. For weak boys, male homosexuality was mandatory, and women enjoyed a degree of social and sexual freedom that was simply unheard of. In the ancient world its history is one of ruthless militarism, slavery on a massive scale and a system that can sometimes seem like a premonition of modern totalitarian regimes, but Sparta was the first Greek city to define the rights and duties of its citizens and can also Claiming, along with Athens, to have saved the Western world from the slavery of the Persian Empire, although the hardline Spartan ideals do not have the charisma of Athenian culture, they have meant as much to Western civilization as the ideals represented by the Parthenon, by What I understand is that the story of the Spartans is the story of ourselves and how some of the ideas that have shaped Western civilization were first tested in a warrior state on the Greek mainland more than two and a half thousand years ago. .

The story of the Spartans brings me to the topic. a journey through a dramatic history and there is a setting to match: the Peloponnese, a huge peninsula crowned by steep mountains and crisscrossed by deep gorges that forms the southernmost part of the Greek mainland, the ancient Greeks considered it an island and you can see why it has an eerie, closed feel as it treats the outside world coldly, but long before the Spartans of our story arrived on the scene, this part of the world was making history, many of the Greeks who fought in the Trojan War ago about 3,000 years. came from here Agamemnon the leader of the Greeks ruled my scene I am in the east and the Peloponnese and to the south in Sparta was the palace of Menelaus and his wife Helen the Helen of Troy whose beauty caused the Trojan War was once Helen of Sparta , but sometime around 1100 BC.

C. everything disappeared, no one knows for sure what happened, earthquakes, slave revolts, even asteroids have been blamed, but across the eastern Mediterranean, Helena's world plunged into a cataclysm of fire and destruction, a remnant clung to him. A few hundred years, but finally the Middle Ages came to Greece and the thread of history was broken and during those centuries of darkness, from the north new people came in search of more hospitable lands, they brought with them a new Greek dialect, their sheep and goats and some simple possessions settled throughout the Peloponnese and some found their way to the lands that once belonged to King Menelaus.

It was a trip worth taking. The people who came here must have thought they had found a shangri-la down there is the plane. The Euro River toss 50 miles from north to south of beautiful fertile farmland and a river runs through it all year round, the starving land of Greece, where 70% of the Latin population cannot farm and the rest are trapped between mountains and sea, there is a With plenty of room to move to the west are the spectacular Jesus Mountains, rising to more than 8,000 feet in places, patches of snow still remain as Dan on the plane spring is turning In summer, the slopes were once thick with deer hair and wild boar, rich prey for newcomers, but what statistics cannot convey is the surprising quality of this place, a fantastic sense of security wherever you look, in every horizon, you are surrounded by hills and mountains, it's not claustrophobic, it's just safe, you feel like everything you could ever want is here, if you could claim it and keep the rest of the world at bay, then the shepherd traded his sheep for olive trees and established here, a new Sparta was born and the new Spartans built this temple to which the Alayan men honor the legendary king and his wayward wife in the period of renewal that followed the Middle Ages new cities like Sparta appeared throughout Greece varied in size and power but they had one thing in common they were all governed by a set of mutually agreed upon laws and customs the rules by which people agreed to live varied, but the goal was broadly the same: to create good order and justice and protect against chaos and lawlessness today in Sparta archaeologists are still piecing together the history of the people who first arrived here about 3,000 years ago. and they built an ideal city, a utopia, it is not an easy task because they left few clues behind them and much of what they led was buried or destroyed when the modern city was built, but whenever there is a construction program, new precious pieces of the puzzle.

It is revealed that each find is precious because the Spartans did not leave us many things unlike the Athenians, they were famous for not building from not making things and for not writing about themselves, so of all the cities and civilizations in the world ancient. the Spartans remain the most intriguing and mysterious take for example the kings of Sparta from time immemorial Sparta had not one but two kings at the same time two royal houses double the potential for the stir that all monarchies are prone to the Spartans They explained this unique arrangement by claiming that their kings were direct descendants of the great-great-grandsons of Heracles, the strong man of Greek myth.

According to legend, it was this pair of twins who left control of the Peloponnese to the descendants of Agamemnon. The stories people tell about themselves are always revealing and This story of land grabs by a pair of aggressive usurpers, descendants of the most macho man in mythology, sent a worrying message to the neighbors and it wasn't long before before the Spartans began to exert their influence around the seasonal control of the entire territory. euro release valley enslave non-

sparta

ns or categorize them as perioikoi, that is, those living around the perioikoi became a disenfranchised caste of artisans and merchants.

Sparta's economic muscle, but ranking its immediate neighbors was just the beginning of Sparta's aggressive expansionism despite the euro's generous acreage. Toss Valley Sparta, like the rest of Greece, was always hungry for more farmland, other cities saw to this by founding satellite colonies and settlements that would eventually extend west to the Strait of Gibraltar and east to the Crimea, in the Black Sea, the Spartans arrived. With their own vision of colonization, they turned their eyes to the west and began to wonder what opportunities lay beyond the mountains. It was there they would go to satisfy their hunger for land.

It was there that Shangri-La would reveal the darker side of her because it was there that a slave nation would be created to serve the Spartan master race. The journey through the gorges of the Jesus Mountains is as spectacular now as it must have been some 2,800 years ago, when the armies of Sparta headed west in search of conquest for several days. A hard march through the mountains would take them into the territory of the Messenians. The Spartans not only came for their land, they also wanted their freedom. They intended to convert the Messenians en masse into helots.

The word translates as captives, which more clearly means slaves. in ancient Greece it was an accepted fact of

life

, but slaves were supposed to be foreigners, barbarians who did not speak Greek and were therefore obviously prepared by nature to serve the slavery of their fellow Greeks and, on a massive, it was something else and the crushing of Messini would separate Sparta from the rest of Greece, it also shaped the type of place Sparta became cautious of unrest, paranoid of revolt, enslaving the Messenians was not an easy task, It took two large-scale wars, each lasting 20 years or more.

We know something about the second war. Because we have an eyewitness to the events, one of the first identifiable witnesses known in history, his name was Curtis, a Spartan soldier and, equally important, a poet, it is a fine thing for a brave man to die when he has fallen among the front rows while fighting for their country let us fight with spirit for this land and die for our children let us not spare each other's lives let us go young, make the spirit of your heart strong and brave and do not fall in love with life when you are a Tertius fighter was a war poet who barely attended Wilfredo at school.

I doubt he had any concept of the pity of war. His verses were more like battle cries delivered with the directness of a sergeant-major who puts courage into the lazy and the weak-hearted. If you want this land, you will have to fight for it. This is the type of fighter that Tertius addresses in his poems. They called him a hoplite, an infantryman armed with an eight-foot spear and a round shield. At the end of the 7th century, practically all of them Greek cities had their own direct line contingents, these were not full-time professional soldiers, they were farmers who flooded plows in search of spare parts in defense of their communities, standing alongside their neighbors, these militiamen demonstrated not only their courage because of their status as citizens.

This is Olympia, home of the famous games, it was also the unofficial sanctuary of the hoplite fighter, but this was where you came to dedicate your arms to the gods in gratitude for the victory, that is the fiery blonde who protects the gods everywhere. A cardinal piece of equipment for a hot light and probably where it got its name from, you would have held it by sticking your left arm through that center cuff and then grabbing a leather strap on the edge, it was made of wood and metal and it weighed about 20 pounds, which is a great way to think about carrying that around for a day of fighting, but dropping the arm and dropping the shield was the biggest embarrassment.

The fight against the hoplites was a team effort. Your shield was for you. The other. Half for the man on your left, the hoplites would form densely packed ranks, the entire Phalanx seven or eight deep and perhaps fifty shields through coordination and discipline were important, but most important of all was trust, If your neighbor broke and fled you would be left exposed to the enemy's free points when the drop was found, the tendency was for each line to shift to the right, their natural instinct was always to hide as much as possible behind their neighbors shield at that time the discipline of the phalanx threatened to collapse to be effective you just had to grit your teeth and stand firm tertius had some advice typically useful to those who dare to stand firm in other places and advance towards the front ranks in a body conflict in melee, dying in small numbers and keeping the troops behind safe, there wasn't much tactics once the shield walls came together, the battlefields almost disappeared in a cloud of dust as the two opposing masses of bronze and muscle clashed.

They threw at each other, the rear ranks provided the traction I pushed forward like rugby players in a scrum I was in the first three rows within range of the enemy's spearheads, but things turned deadly, that was where you would have come face to face with this Gorgon emblazoned on your enemy's back. shields this was the goddess whose gaze had the power to turn men to stone and in the sweaty, stinging frenzy of battle ending up inches from her must have been a literally petrifying experience, ultimately Sparta would surpass all others Greek cities in the art of this particular.

In this type of fight they first had to defeat and enslave their neighbors.Messenians, this was finally achieved around 650 BC. For the next 300 years the Messenians would be forced to work as slaves in the fields of their Spartan masters like donkeys worn out by heavy loads according to tertius, but now that masini had been gained, the critical question for the Spartans then became and for centuries to come in how to maintain it in other parts of

greece

, cities were being torn apart by civil war between rich and poor with messini's loot at stake. The chances of this happening in Sparta increased enormously.

To keep their paradise safe, the Spartans chose to act in a totally radical way. From now on, utopia was their goal. They would dedicate themselves to the creation of a perfect society and this would follow the model of the phalanx. disciplined collective and selfless hoplite there was going to be a revolution in shangri-la every revolution needs its great leader and this is that of Sparta as she pants the working wolf I can't put my hand on my heart and say that he existed but the The Spartans believed In him, to them he was a miracle worker, someone who created heaven on earth following the advice of the gods themselves, whether it was him or a group of people or an entire generation who knows, but someone here embarked on an experiment social revolution that would create one of the most extreme civilizations in the ancient world.

The revolution that transformed Sparta took place around 650 BC, when Sparta's neighbors, the Messenians, were finally defeated and enslaved to keep the helots quiet and, what is Most importantly, to avoid fighting over the spoils of war, the Spartans set out to become the most formidable, disciplined, and professional hoplite warriors Greece had ever seen. The entire Spartan society became, in effect, an army. training camp Spartan men did not fish or grow manufactures or trade they simply fought and if they were not fighting they were training and if they were not training they were dating their fellow fighters the family unit counted for very little what mattered was bonding with their male companions reinforcing The Falange Solidarity was a program they followed with typical determination.

Being born a Spartan was not enough. All Spartan males had to earn their citizenship through long years of competitive fighting and surviving one of the most grueling training systems ever. invented the first test occurred early this ravine a few miles from Sparta was known as the epithet I or deposits it was also called the place of rejection because it was there where a newborn child would be thrown if it did not meet the Spartan standards of perfection physical. Infanticide was common throughout ancient Greece. Unwanted babies were usually left on the side of a hill, sometimes placed in a basket or protective pot so that there was at least a chance that someone or something came and took the child in Sparta, like Always, things were very different, boys and not girls were the usual victims and it was not the parents but the elders of the city who decided whether they lived or died, there was absolutely no possibility of melancholy. vixen or the kind Sheppard rescuing the newborn child once he was thrown there the decision of the city elders was final and absolute to survive the epithet I was just the beginning for the children at the age of seven they were separated from their families and placed in a training system called Agoge literally means to raise and the children were treated a little better than animals the Spartan children this was a classroom the wild hills of mount to gitis where they would have spent much of their time were organized to boooy its

sparta

n word for a herd of cattle and all the boy was put in charge of them, responsible for their discipline and punishment and was known as a child, the emphasis of the herd was on surviving to cope with the bare minimum.

Each child was given only one cape to last them all year. which seems fine on an afternoon like this, but here in winter the temperature drops to minus six. Food supplies were scarce and they were encouraged to steal to supplement their rations. If they were caught, they were whipped not for the act of stealing but simply for not escaping. This was both a test and an education. The mountains also provided the backdrop for one of Sparta's most controversial and disputed institutions, whose membership in the Air Vault or Secret Service Brigade was reserved for boys who had shown particular promise that the really difficult cases were selected, given them They were given a knife and set loose in the wild, during the day they would stay hidden, but at night they would infiltrate the valleys hunting and murdering any helot they captured exactly how the crypt air operated and the type of rate of His success has always been a mystery, but the mere rumor of death squads of bloodthirsty teenagers roaming the countryside was enough to establish a reign of terror, the perfect tactic to keep a slave population calm and obedient, although Sparta encouraged the collective spirit that placed.

For us, the highest value in individual achievement, children were constantly tested against each other and against their own limitations. This is the site at the Sanctuary of Artemis or Fear and it was here that the competitive nature of Spartan society had its most extreme form of expression, assuming he had survived the first five years of the Agoge system. 12 years. You were brought here for a brutal rite of passage. The altar there was full of cheese. Your challenge was simple: steal as many cheeses as possible in front of the altar. A row of older children, each armed with ingenuity, instructed to defend the altar without showing mercy or restraint, indoctrinated with the principles of endurance and perseverance and desperate to excel in a public display, the twelve year olds braved the challenge once and again. and again when faced with the whips, they suffered the most horrible injuries and, we are told, some were beaten to death, it is easy to be surprised again by the sheer brutality of a system that seems as strange and violent as these clay masks found in the sanctuary of artemis or Thea and it is not only modern audiences who find the

spartans

shocking.

The philosopher Aristotle argued that they turned their children into animals, while other Greeks imagined them as bees swarming around a hive, creatures stripped of their individuality. It has been a popular conception of Sparta. through the centuries, but that misses an important point, being part of any mass activity can be incredibly liberating. If you have ever been in a Mexican wave on a soccer field, sung in a choir or participated in a protest march, know that being part of a crowd does not diminish you, it makes you stronger, your reach is older, your sense of self is magnified and that was the fundamental appeal of the Spartan system, the possibility of transcending your limitations as an individual and becoming part of something. bigger and better from the age of 12 the training of children became possible reading and writing even more demanding we were told that they were not taught more than necessary but music and dance were considered essential the battlefields in the The dance floors of war and a phalanx that could move together in a coordinated manner made for a formidable dance partner, so the Spartans spent many hours perfecting what was known as real music, a rhythmic exercise in which changes in direction and rhythm were communicated musically.

The Spartans gained the reputation of being the most musical and warlike people by the age of 20, with their training nearing completion. The Spartan men faced their most crucial test choice: one of the common dining halls or clubs where they were expected to participate. They spent most of their time when they were not training or fighting, but entry into these exclusive gentlemen's clubs was not guaranteed. The election for the comma mess was made by vote of the existing members. You were a failed Spartan, publicly humiliated and excluded from the society into which she had been born. It must have been hell.

If, on the other hand, you were elected, the State gives you a large portion of land and a quota of helots. slaves to support you and your family you are now one of the homeo the equals of the warrior elite at the top of the hierarchy of Sparta the common dining halls that are located a mile or so in the center of Sparta we are an essential part of life City social engineering aimed at keeping discord at bay and civil conflicts old and young mixed and alleviating generational conflicts a constant source of friction in other parts of Greece, more importantly, rich and poor faced each other on foot. equality the differences between them hidden by a rigorously enforced code of non-conspicuous non-consumption at a gala in Sparta, the rule was that even if you have it, don't flaunt it and it applied to everything from houses to clothes, even food.

Elsewhere in Greece, rich men lay on a pair of open prostitutes and wine skins and invited their companions to feast on lark tongues and honey-roasted tuna. In Sparta there was no time for elegant dinners in the dining rooms. common the dish of the day every day was a concoction made of boiled pig's blood and vinegar known as treacle Oh mass black soot an old oak goes there is a man of Sybaris in southern Italy the city famous for its luxury and gluttony le They said the recipe for black soup ah he said now I understand why the Spartans are so willing to die Spartan frugality may have surprised his contemporaries but to a modern audience his diet, black soup aside, sounds nutritious and healthy judging by The expression of satisfaction on the face of this Spartan diner Lycurgus his system paid off well nourished and free from the need to make a living or keep up with the neighbors this is someone who despite the demands of Spartan society knew the good life is also the face of a completely new type of human being a citizen Spartan society was one of the first to introduce a form of social contract where the duties of an individual were balanced by certain privileges and rights, it is a profound and in force in Sparta about a hundred years before any other Greek city began to think along similar lines, but utopias need protection and in 480 BC.

C. Disturbing news reached Sparta. the Persian Empire was on the move a huge invading force was heading west by land and sea the time had come to see if the celebrated warriors of Sparta would live up to their fearsome reputation and save the Greek world from destruction archeology arrived relatively late to Sparta, so it was. It was not until 1906 that a British team began the first systematic excavations. In 1925 there was an important discovery: a surprising life-size bust of a Spartan warrior dating from the 5th century BC. These lantern slides record the moments of discovery when the bust was removed bit by bit. of the earth and it was clear that he was a magnificent warrior one of the great workers said without a moment's hesitation this is Leonie das lion Edith was the superhero of Sparta the king who with 300 warriors made a last battle doomed to failure against the power of Persia In the past at Thermopylae there is no hard evidence of that identification, although it is from the correct period, but I think we can forgive wishful thinking, after all, everyone wants a legend to have a face.

Today, the warrior presides over the Museum in Sparta, still call her Leia, she needs us, the name is in quotes, but whoever it is, it is still an impressive work, that enigmatic smile is typical of the sculptor of the time and then gives a Mona Lisa line quality, her eyes are now blank but back in the day they have been encrusted with rock crystal and seashells and what a great response the stone her torso is fantastically fit and toned her hair is very elaborate and her upper lip is clean shaven was one of Kyrgyzstan's most demanding reforms that Spartan men should not have mustaches, so if you want a photo of the best Spartan here it is, we know very little about the real Leia, she needs us.

She was a member of the Agra Die, one of the two aristocratic families that provided Sparta with its kings. He had been on the throne for ten years when the Persian giant began to advance Western Persia was the regional superpower of the Eastern Mediterranean a vast empire stretching from modern-day Afghanistan to the Aegean Sea the Greeks were an insignificant but increasingly problematic presence in the western limits of his empire inciting rebellion among the Greek subject kings in the cities of Asia Minor it was the Persian king Darius who took the first step he sent punitive forces to land in marathon only to see them defeated by Athens and her allies the king died before heHe was able to avenge the insult and it was up to his son Xerxes to resolve the troublesome Greeks once and for all.

The Persians set out by land and sea at the beginning of the year 480. The army was so fast that, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, it drank the entire army. The rivers dry up Herodotus also estimates that the combined Persian forces are more than one and a half million and a more sober estimate would put the upper limit at 300,000, large enough to crush the small towns of Greece. When the Spartans learned that a Persian invasion was on the way, they sent for advice to the Oracle of Delphi, Oracles were considered messages from the gods delivered through the mouth of a possessed priestess.

The Spartans were deeply pious and treated the Oracles as if they were military orders. On this occasion, the orders given for a sobering reading listen to your feet or inhabitants in the spaces of Sparta, either your famous great city must be established by its murderers or the entire land must be a the death of the kingdom of the house beneath the language The Spartans, being Spartans, chose the latter and took the lead in resisting the invasion as the Persian army turned south towards the Greek heartland, a force Greek under the command of King Leonidas was heading north to stop their advance at Thermopylae, the gates of fire in 480 Thermopylae were a natural bottleneck, now the sea has receded miles in that direction, but then the path to the South was trapped between the coast and these mountains.

It was here that between seven and eight thousand hoplites from all over Greece came. The first thing they did was rebuild a wall that crossed the narrowest point of the pass, crouching behind it. Their goal was to stop the Persian advance in its tracks. The Greeks were hopelessly outnumbered, but they had geography on their side if they could stop the Persians as quickly as possible. would allow others to organize more formidable defenses on land and sea, but for Leonie Das and the 300 Spartan warriors who had accompanied him, Thermopylae was more than a strategic point: it was the place where they intended to show the world what it meant to be a Los Spartans as a whole, the Greeks made a lot of noise about the nobility of dying for your country, but for the Spartans it was much more than just a cliché in battle, they were ordered to search for a kalos that Otto's death, a beautiful death that It encompassed everything. that the poet Tertius spoke of advancing calmly to meet the enemy, never fleeing the battlefield and embracing death like a lover, in fact in the campaign the Spartans made offerings to Eros, the god of love, the beautiful death was a sacrifice in the true meaning of the word. turning something mortal into something sacred the men Lainey das chose to do the job for him here were all married, older, and had children he knew none of them would return.

The Spartans who fought at Thermopylae were a Camicazi squad of 300 men for three days. The Greeks stopped the Persian advance by taking refuge behind their wall and then counterattacked in hoplite formation. three times the Persians attacked three times they were defeated Before long, the Greeks would be surrounded while there was still time for them to escape. Leonidas dismissed most of the Greek allies, setting the stage for one of the most famous last battles in history. On the final morning, the Spartans followed their normal pre-battle rituals. They stripped naked and exercised, aged their bodies and combed each other's hair, wrote their names on sticks and attached them to their arms.

Identification plates so that their bodies could be identified. Later, Persian spies who observed these strange activities reported them to Xerxes, who found them. ridiculous it was said it seemed as if they were preparing for a party in reality they were making toys Klu stereo Teresa CAI gorg Cats greatest most noble most terrible herodotus describes the final act in the morning Xerxes poured a libation to the Rising Sun and then they ordered the advance of The Greeks under lay leaders knowing that the fight would be their last, advanced towards the widest part of the pass, fought with reckless desperation with swords if they had them and if not with their hands and teeth until the Persians arrived.

From the front and approaching from behind, militarily overwhelming Thermopylae was negligible, the Persian advance was delayed for less than a week and they were soon heading south again, soon after another battle took place here in the Bay of Salamis where a fleet Greek led by Athens destroyed the Persian ships was a complicated and hidden affair, but Salamis finished what Thermopylae had started and the following year the Persians were finally expelled from Greece after victory. It was the doomed heroism of Thermopylae that captured the imagination of the Greeks. scenario in which the Spartans played the role they had spent their lives preparing for, had shown the world the kind of place Sparta was and the kind of men it produced, had fulfilled the ideals of their city and justified the claims. of their utopia and in doing so, according to Herodotus, they had saved for the Spartans a treasure of fame that no other city could share.