SPARTA

We are Spartans!

The Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta has long exemplified ideals of heroism and resistance. The Spartans developed a society grounded in communal life, shared exploits, and military self-sacrifice. The area around Sparta was known as Laconia—the word that gives us “laconic,” and the Spartans were famous for their few words. But many words were written about them, and this book by Bayliss, a British classicist, excavates the literary and historical landscape to build a revisionary understanding of their world. For all their claims to independence, the Spartans were great enslavers. The “helots” were their chattel, farming the land and providing the resources necessary for Spartans to “maintain their status as citizens.” The Spartans should be viewed, writes Bayliss, as “parasites, feeding off the forced labour of their helots.” These helots, too, were hunted down by young men in rites of military passage, and they were conscripted. Yes, the Spartans faced down the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.E. Yes, they challenged Athens. Yes, they shaped a participatory democracy that included women. But they were ambitious for land and power. Anyone familiar with them from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars will want to read Bayliss’ account to find the reason behind the rhetoric. Sparta’s decline stemmed from its jealous guarding of “their conquests and their power,” and its refusal to extend its privileges to others. Bayliss writes, “The only freedom the Spartans were interested in was their own—and particularly the freedom to treat anyone they thought beneath them as they pleased.” Whatever our own fascination with their glory may mean, the Spartans were less the heroes of hope than complex, and at times, monstrous men.

An eye-opening history of Sparta, stripping the gloss from its heroism to reveal a complex grain of power and pain.