They Really Just Loved to Sing & Dance, Ancient Sparta & The Spartan Mirage (Part Four)

Published Jan 31, 2023, 8:00 AM

We're talking more of Sparta's history and culture including a (very brief!!) overview of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars and just a taste of Sparta during the Roman period, Lacedaimonia Land. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!

CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.

Sources: Thucydides translation by X; Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period by Nigel M. Kennell from A Companion to Sparta, Edited by Anton Powell; Pre-Classical Sparta as Song Culture by Claude Calame; Reconstructing History from Secrecy, Lies and Myth by Anton Powell; Spartan Religion Michael A. Flower; Spartan Cultural Memory in the Roman Period by Nigel M. Kennell. Find some fascinating Bad Ancient articles on Sparta here.

Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.

Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become deserted, and that only the temples and foundations of buildings remained. I think that future generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that the place had really been as powerful as it was represented to be. Yet, the Spartans occupy two fifths of the Peloponnese and stand at the head not only of the whole Peloponnese itself, but also of numerous allies beyond its frontiers. Since, however, the city is not regularly planned and contains no temples or monuments of great magnificence, but is simply a collection of villages in the ancient Hellenic Way, its appearance would not come up to expectation. If, on the other hand, the same thing were to happen to Athens, one would conjecture from what met the eye that the city had been twice as powerful as in fact it is. Hi, Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of Let's Talk about Miss Baby Sparta edition, or rather just the episodes where I tell you as many things about Sparta as I can physically fit into a script. I am live your host, and I almost forgot to say that. We've talked about Sparta broadly. We've talked about Spartan cultural practices, all those things that made them very different, very weird. And we've talked about Spartan mythology. That is, myths that often span most of the Greek world but featured Sparta, or better yet, explained how the Spartan people got to Sparta in the first place, those darned children of Heracles. So with all that talk of Sparta as a place and the people, it's now time to talk about Sparta and its history, or some of its history at least, it's a very long time span this place has been around. You know, Like I've mentioned before, I will not be trying to give you all a deep lesson on Spartan military. That is for the guests on conversation episodes to handle the people who really know what they're talking about. So while we will be touching on some of their military history today for so much more, make sure you check out not only the amazing episode I released with Rule Canonadike, but also last week's episode with Owen Reyes. And today's history is going to cover like as much of Sparta's varied centuries of histories we can handle, but truly there is an four months and months of episodes which I just will not be doing. So we are doing our best today and there are future episodes to come, not only conversations on God's Everything on Friday, but also another episode covering Spartan women and everything in that realm. That quote I read at the top of the episode is from Thucidities himself, the ancient Greek historian who wrote about the Peloponnesian War, that is, the war that happened between many ancient Greek city states, but most importantly between Athens and Sparta. Now, Thucidities was an Athenian, but regardless of any bits of bias that might be inherent in his work, this is just the most perfect quote when it comes to understanding ancient Sparta. Fucidities was prescient as fun with that one, like, even if he didn't foresee all the modern people seeing Sparta as a military centered culture. But the comparison to Athens these twenty hundred years later is just still so brilliantly accurate. Because I'll remind you, for all, we consider Athens to be like the center of ancient Greek culture, to be the most important and long lasting city state, to be basically everything we imagine of ancient Greece. Now, Sparta was considerably more powerful than Athens for quite some time, and when they weren't, they were pretty evenly matched. It's just that Sparta didn't write as much down, they didn't build temples that we stood the test of time. They didn't create a legacy for themselves in the way that Athens did. Doesn't make them any less influential or important in the ancient world, though, So let's talk about it. Let's talk about Sparta, you know, like we haven't already been doing that for the past three weeks straight. This is episode on They really just loved to sing and dance Ancient Sparta and the Spartan Mirage. The geography of Greece is something I haven't really discussed too much. It's not as important to myth as it is to history, but it does highlight why why some of those odd things about ancient Greece are the way they are. Greece back in the day was not overly connected. It was a collection of city states that shared some of their cultural practices their language between them. But even that differed quite a bit, with lots of dialects of ancient Greek and cultural specifics across the varied groups of people. There was no such thing as Greece or even Hellas as it is now called. In well Greek, the groups considered themselves Hellenes. They understood their shared history and culture, and certainly their mythology, but it wasn't like what we think of now. And then there was the actual logistics of it all. It's hard to move around the ancient Mediterranean, whether we're talking about the Greek mainland or otherwise. There are lots of mountains and hilly areas and low plains, and then there's the whole hundreds of islands thing, and the super narrow strip of land the i Smiths that connects the enormous Peloponnese Peninsula to the rest of the mainland. So you know, it's not something you can take an easy stroll across, even if you've got a nice hippo to bring you around. That's an ancient Greek joke, because hippo means horse. I do not mean to imply they actually rode hippopotamus. It was definitely horses. All the best jokes need you to explain them, right, Okay. Because of this, all of this, often the police the cities of Greece were super disconnected from each other. Hence why we see such distinct personalities from each of the major city states, cultural differences and language dialects, all of that. As I've already mentioned briefly, Sparta was is actually still in the Peloponnese, in an area called Laconia. This is sort of the southern bit of the pelopon says, the area with the thick fingers, not to be confused with the area in the north that's got the thin fingers. If you don't know what I'm talking about, checkota map. You won't regret it. There's lots of fingery areas Laconia and Sparta within It was tucked in between the Taigetus Mountains and the Eurotas River and actually started as a series of smaller villages nestled around each other. Sometime in the late Iron Ages, these villages sort of morphed into one, and thus we had the beginning of the city of Sparta. But as Thucidities told us in that quote that opened the episode, even when Sparta was a unified place, a unified place with a very very unified culture. They still didn't set out to leave a long lasting impact on the land. Not that this was intentional, but they're building practices just didn't result in something like Athens, where we have such long lasting temples and buildings. The land around the Eurotests was quite fertile, but it was limited, and this often proved to be a big guest issue for any newly established Greek polis because of the geography of Grace. Land is a precious commodity, and as a population grows, you need more arable land in order to support it. Can you tell these bits of the script are things Michaela wrote for me because she knows how to use words like arable, whereas I, if you might recall, I am not a farmer. But this is interesting and it's important stuff when it comes to understanding the history of Sparta, So thank you, Michaela. In ancient Greece, the wealth comes from the land. This is clear not only from the obvious standpoint of like it's how they survived and thrived, but it also manifests in the gods that gain importance, like Cathonic of the Earth gods and agricultural deities. This connection to the land, both for people and their myths, it was vitally important to the broader culture of Greece. Everyone loved Demeter, her and wanted her favor. Demeter's favor means food and wealth from that food. So the solution to this land problem for Sparta was to expand. This was done in multiple ways, like for other cities, that you could send out a new colony to somewhere, maybe like the hell Is Spawn what we now call the Dardanelles, that bit of land that connects European Turkey to Asian Turkey. They could send out a group to colonize an area like that give them access to trade route to resources in another region. Or they could simply expand into surrounding territories. And this is what the Spartans did to Missennia in the eighth century BC. But we'll get there first. Let's talk about the broader region. If there's one thing that I am perpetually trying to drill into all of your brains, it's that ancient Greece did not exist in a vacuum. People love to think of it that it like kind of sprang up from the ether, just inventing what we now know as Western civilization all by itself. And not only is that deeply wrong in a historical but it also has some major racial issues attached to it, because like the whole of the ancient Mediterranean, can tru Me did the whole of the ancient Mediterranean, and it absolutely was impossible for places like that to exist in a vacuum because they had constant contact with other cultures and civilizations around them, just constantly all the time. Even more, ancient Greek gods weren't entirely invented by the Greeks, but instead we're influenced by other cultures that came before. In this case, not only is Sparta no different and a part of this like enormous mixing bowl that was the ancient Mediterranean, but even more importantly, the Sparta that I've been talking about and will continue to talk about, it's just like one version of Sparta throughout history. I'm always most interested in the archaic and classical period of Greece, that is, like the eighth century BC, too, maybe like the fourth century. That is the Greece I care about, and for our purposes, it's also the Sparta. That is most interesting because it's the absolute height of Spartan influence and power in the Greek world. It's also when Sparta was developing this image for itself that it was a military powerhouse, that those so called three hundred Spartans stood at Thermopoli to single handedly defend the Greek mainland, that they were the best at being warriors, at warfare broadly, that they were the ones to be feared. This was almost certainly an intentional invention by Sparta to give them the upper hand, and like I've said, it worked for a while. This idea of a highly militarized city that we've been so deeply fascinated with throughout time that the modern world still imagines when they think of Sparta. It was not always like this, and honestly, it was barely even that. At least in reality. The Sparta that we think of is the Sparta that briefly existed after the Persian Wars and into the Peloponnesian War, but then fizzled out until Sparta became just like a husk of what it once was. That version of Sparta just wasn't sustainable. It's almost like establishing your culture on this. Mass enslavement of an entire group of people and then creating a mythologized version of what your culture is is not such a great idea, weird, I know, who would have thought? You know? I got my first bad review of this series, and the guy was most angry about the fact that I didn't tell you guys about Sparta's helot population without adding the context that you know, like enslavement was bad and happened across ancient Greece. Apparently I should be talking about mass enslavement without adding my own quote unquote opinions. You know that enslavement. It's not good anyway. As always, the men and my bad reviews are giving themselves away. They want to hear that Sparta was perfect and amazing, and that they had an incredible military that they had all by themselves with absolutely no help by the enslaved population that greatly outnumbered the actual Spartans, and are absolutely to thank for all of their successes. Obviously, this is not the show for them, because I am here with the facts and morality, we and and will look at Sparta as it was, and we can appreciate their successes and their accomplishments. We can respect what they did, who they were. We can enjoy learning about their history and generally think that they were a pretty cool people worthy of interest and respect. We can do all of those things while also not ignoring the fact that they had practices that were not only abhorrent but also unique amongst the rest of the Greek world. We can do multiple things at once. It's called nuance. I know it sounds bitter complaining about a bad review, but it's a topic I think should be brought up. Sometimes people listen to me and they think that I must hate this culture and it's people because I'm willing to criticize them, And that is just wild thinking. But it's very human. So here's a reminder that we can do both. I fucking love ancient Greece, the Spartans included, So let's get back to them, shall we. Let's talk about this spart up before the classical period and before the Persian Wars, before they got famous for Thermopoli. If the Spartans weren't always this highly conservative group of people devoted to keeping their culture as limited and genetically pure as possible, who were they before this period? The Spartans during the Archaic period, before the Golden Age of Athens and the Big Wars in the fifth century. They were not quite what we would expect coming out of the Bronze and Iron Ages. We get an idea of a group of people that are not too distinct from the other Greeks around them. They lived in a typical way, They had the same cultural and religious ties all around. They were just another Greek city state in antiquity, at least before the whole Helot population thing, which we're gonna get to. One thing that is prominent during this period is the emphasis on choral poetry that arises in the Peloponnese and most of Greece. To be honest, by this, we mean poetry that isn't epic, that isn't things like the Iliad and the Odyssey, those hours and hours long songs telling stories. We mean more traditional poetry, the rather songs still because they were songs. Think Sappho and Pinndar, neither of which were in the Peloponnese. But the point stands it was popular all over, and it was popular in Sparta. Choral poetry became popular, but especially so in Sparta, where it manifested as not only a main factor in their education system, but also in the form of choral competitions in the archaic period. In this like pre militaristic Sparta of the past, they had a big tradition of choral competitions. Generally interesting but also isn't it kind of adorable for a place like Sparta. Just another reminder that the popular idea of Sparta today is not only one based in a specific time period, but also want an invention by the Spartans themselves. In truth, they just liked a nice song competition Spartan idol, if you will. So these choral competitions, basically they were groups of men or women who would perform a poem to the accompaniment of music. They were really just singing songs. But it's helpful for us to understand it in this way, because anything that survives survives in the form of poetry and can be enjoyed that way, but originally it always had music accompanying it. These competitors did this well. They did it for many reasons, I'm sure, but one of the main reasons being this competition who could sing these songs the best? Again, Spartan idol. This is not even a timely reference. That's still a thing, right. These competitions were featured in the celebrations of the main Spartan festivals, the Hyacinthia, the Gym No pad I, and the Carnea. I wish I could talk about all of these festivals in detail, but I will just say that the Gym No paid I it's a horrible pronunciation was super interesting and unique, and it was basically five days of singing and dancing competitions that sort of formed like what it was to be a Spartan it and it included choruses of young boys and men in their prime competing in song and dance with choruses of old men. Frankly, it sounds beautiful and just a little adorable too, but it was unique to Sparta, and so it really emphasizes how their culture was ultimately about tradition and song and dance and not even remotely about war or being a warrior. Like old men singing and dancing competing with young men, that's what they were about. Well, competition was important, I mean, like this is ancient Greek world. They love to see who was the best at what. But other than that, these choruses also served to help solidify this common identity among the participants like it was unifying and of course one of the most exciting aspects of this is simply that women were allowed to take part in it at all. So I will remind you of what I brought up in the episode from a couple of weeks ago. Women were educated in Sparta, and choral poetry was a big part of that education. Not only was it generally cool that this was part of the education system, but it was used to instill this Spartan cultural beliefs into the younger generation, thus ensuring that their cultural ethos continued on the songs that they would perform as part of these choruses and competitions did just that, they imparted cultural belief systems upon those performing and those watching. In less beautiful but equally historically important aspects of Spartan pre classical history is the Messenian Wars. Remember Helots, Yeah, this is when that happened very early in the Archaic period. Sometime in the eighth century BC is believed to be when the annexation of Messennia took place. This is when they basically conquered Missennia, the region to the west of Sparta and enslaved their population, turning them into this Helot population that Sparta would become so famous for. And then later in the seventh century there was a major Helot revolt that took place. These two events are called the First and Second Missennian Wars, respectively, and they served to project Sparta upwards within the wider Mediterranean world. They put Sparta on the map, so to speak. After these events, Sparta isn't just some city in the Peloponnese. They are now that one city that took over an entire area. The rest of the Greek world is suddenly thinking like, hey, maybe we should keep an eye on them. They seem like they've got something going on over there. I mean that, or they're all just panicking and thinking, let's make sure Sparta never does to us what they did to miss Senia, which brings us to the fifth century, a time of war. Don't seriously so much war, and not just for Sparta. We're talking all of grace here, but as we might expect, and why I'm talking about it. In this episode, Sparta played quite the role. First, we had the Persian Wars, where Athens was put in quite a pickle over and over. They really could not catch a break. Now, I'm not going to go too deep into the Persian Wars or the Peloponnesian War for that matter, because well, not only do we not have the time, but frankly, I just do not care enough. Like it's interesting, Yes, it's interesting for other more knowledgeable people to talk about people who are not to me. So instead we're just going to really lightly touch upon them and look at the way that Sparta handled things in the broader sense of Sparta. I'm sure you've all heard of Marathon, right, it's a pretty big deal. But have you heard of theta pts. It'll come to you. Don't worry. He was okay, he was supposedly that guy who did the big long run from Athens to Sparta and then back to Athens and then to Marathon and then back to Athens, where he announced their victory and then promptly dropped dead because it was simply too much running, no matter the amount of time that it took. As you might imagine from hearing that, the idea that he ran all of that and that it inspired the modern marathon is exaggerated, to put it kindly, And actually this name of his doesn't actually get assigned to this story until our man Luction, many hundreds of years later. Do you remember Lucian, He's the one who wrote that epic with the war on the moon. Yeah, there's like bugs and stuff involved, but there's a war inside a whale. Yeah, I've read it to you. It was the best anyway, Surprise, surprise. There's also a bad ancient article about this that is linked in this episode's description. But regardless of this one man Fata pities. Whether he did or did not do anything, the point remains when he or whoever really doesn't matter. It matters that someone went to Sparta and it was to ask for Spartan aid at the Battle of Marathon, and the Spartans were down to help, but they said they had to wait a bit first, something about the full moon. Well, they didn't actually show up at Marathon. And whether this was because the excuse they gave or that they were uninterested in helping Athens, it's not it's not really the question, but it links to some things we'll talk about soon. Either way, we're not interested in the intricacies of political relationships during the Persian Wars. We are interested in Sparta. I will say it again, smarter people than me can handle the political intricacies and intrigue of classical and archaic Greece. I am just trying to get you through the basics. The nature of the Spartan excuse is what is much more interesting, because it becomes as common theme throughout their history, this reluctance to go against tradition. It's very conservative of them, and I mean that quite literally, because it's pretty fair to describe the Spartans as like this conservative people. They often chose to stick to their tried and true traditions instead of like branching out and exploring or even just like going to defend people that would then benefit Sparta. But they couldn't or wouldn't because they would have had to give up a festival that was tradition. It was just always always about retaining that Spartan way of life, that structure around Spartan citizen re and everything that both of those things entailed. It made for a very conservative and traditional group of people. And then we get to Thermopoli, that one battle that everyone seems to be familiar with, it is the most popular. There's something about it that just tugs that our hard strings and sticks in our memories, and honestly, most of that is based on the fame that Sparta itself gave to Thermopola. After the fact, I mentioned Thermopola last week because, as I said then, much of what we think of Thermopola is in itself Spartan myth making. There's certain details about this pivotal event that are often left out. They're forgotten purposefully by the Spartans because it makes them look better. They really just took control of the narrative on this one. I mentioned it even more briefly last week just to link it to with the mythos broadly. But let's look at Thermopola in a bit more context, this time as just one really small battle in the broader Persian Wars. Once again, this is the t l d R of Thermopoli when it comes to the Persian Wars, just as concise as I can manage. There were two manion Persian invasions of Greece, or rather attempted invasions, though the one time they did funk up Athens pretty good. But this particular invasion was the second one. The redo the Greek's news erk Ces was coming. If you've seen three hundred, then imagine it not as much as a messenger getting kicked into an absolutely baffling architectural decision, but rather nice letter written back and forth where the Greeks kindly declined to bow to the Persians. Instead, they all teamed up and determined that Thermopola was a good place to defend themselves against the Persians. It was a long standing location for this, they had done it before. It was a narrow pass by the sea, and they knew it well well enough to be able to utilize the geography to their advantage. They keep it though, is that the Greeks, all the Greeks together, not just Sparta, decided to meet the Persian forces at Thermopola. And when I say all the Greeks, I really mean that there were hop Light's soldiers from Sparta, from Arcadia, from Corinth Pleas, there were Thespians, Phocians, Thebans. They came from all over the place, neighbors of Sparta and the Peloponnese, and then also Greeks from the regions surrounding Thermopola itself. It just so happened that Sparta was like heading the front, because that's what Sparta like to do, and it was one of their two kings that was there, Leonidas Leonidas. We've all heard of him, Cassandra's grandfather. That he was one of two kings though is key. I know. I've emphasized the dual kingship of it all, but it was practical in addition to being a very spartan thing. Remember, they always had two kings. In this way, only one of their kings was ever away at war. It was a way not of not only securing their political leadership, but also keeping those darn helots in line, because truly, that was always what was behind Sparta's decisions, keeping their slave population controlled. In fact, they tended to avoid war and battle as much as physically possible. For exactly this reason. They had a habit, both of both before and after Thermopoli, of sending others to do their dirty work. At Thermopoli, the Greeks fought hard, but according to the ancient sources, they were betrayed and part of xerxes forces were led through this little path called the Nipia Pass that allowed them to flank the Greek forces, ensuring that they're pretty fucked. That's too much detail. A war Council was called. It was decided that the best course of act and would be to just retreat. But for some god forsaken reason, it was decided that some Greeks would remain, and we are left with this myth of the three hundred Spartans, when in fact there were a couple hundred Thespians and Thebans as well. That's right, it wasn't. It was not just three hundred Spartans. There was something around fifteen hundred Greeks left over after everyone else left, and they are the ones who remained and died at Thermopoli. They were swiftly taken out by the Persians. Before we move on from that, though, I want to emphasize that not only were there many more than just the Spartans that remained at Thermopoli to fight, even though they knew that they would all die in this attempt, it was also more than three hundred Spartans that went there in the first place. The idea of three hundred sounds catchy, but it's just straight up wrong. No, technically, they were probably either three hundred or five hundred official Spartay it's that is, official citizens of Sparta. There were absolutely countless helots that were there with them, like maybe in the thousands, and then there were also a ton of perioioi, which were free people who lived in Sparta and Laconia but who weren't officially Spartans or Sparta. It's the most important thing to keep in mind, though, is how many enslaved people would have been brought with them is like basically fodder. They're never mentioned, they're never thought of, they were absolutely there. I'm thinking about these things very specifically because I've recently rewatched three hundred for a bonus episode coming this Saturday, where I will be breaking it down with Ben of the classical studies memes for Hellenistic teens. He's been on the show before and is generally fun and knowledgeable, and we talked about how problematic that movie is, both in terms of people using it to misunderstand history and just generally how broadly imperialist and racist it is. Because wows uh. As much as I want to say, it's just a movie, and most movies about the ancient world don't actually influence people understanding of history in like a tangible way, I do think three hundred is an anomaly, not only has it influenced people's understanding of the historical aspects of that battle, but it's also become a pipeline to the right wing and white supremacy broadly. We're going to talk about it, of course, but I want to mention it here because if any of you are imagining three hundred as I explain all of this, I need you to know that bit. As for the rest of that particular Persian invasion, the big win for the Greeks, in comparison to the big loss at Thermopoli, was the Battle of Salamus, a naval battle where they won pretty cleanly. It didn't totally throw off the Persians, though, and then the following year they won again definitively at Plataria in Beosha near Theves. The Persian War was not the only war that Sparta was involved in, though during just the fifth century it was a big one. It was definitely important for Sparta, definitely for Hathens, and also just the wider Greek world. They had stood up against a bigger power were and they won. Good for them while they grew up so fast. But this unity in the Greek world does not last long. Like it's honestly ridiculous how short it all is, because within a few decades Athens and Sparta are at war. They just cannot get along. Because while we think of Greece as this unified place, it really, absolutely and most violently was not at all. So before long, all in this one century, Athens and the Peloponnese and the rest of the Greek world are at war. See, Athens had started reaching for power and kind of went off the deep end a bit, rightfully, other Greek police were not happy with the way that Athens was going, and so they decided to do something about it. This is where the image of Sparta as a militaristic state does not line up with what is actually in the ancient sources, and that's because of the image itself. It was being slowly invented by Sparta as they realized the clout that they had gotten from making such a big deal about being the ones who stayed and died at Thermopali. The more they could suggest the idea that it was all about them sacrificing themselves for all of Greece, the more intimidating they would be to their enemies. And little did they know at the time, like also to people learning about them years later. What a propaganda coup on their part. Honestly, in truth, like I said earlier, the Spartans were actually very hesitant to run out of the Peloponnese and into battle because they were under constant threat in their own homeland from the Helots. I guess they just like to ignore the fact that it was all their own doing and enslaving an entire group of people. But whatever. Like hey, guys, ever wonder why the rest of the ancient Greeks aren't always so paranoid about what's going on at home. It's because they had a basic ancient level of enslavement, and not an entire enormous population of enslaved people that outnumbered the actual Spartans. So in fact, the Spartans often took the place of mediators between the other Greek police and they, or they'd influenced their allies to fight on their behalf, like anything to stay out themselves. When it comes to this war, we have Thucidities as a source. He literally wrote a book called the History of the Peloponnesian War, or at least that's what we call it now, and he tells us about moments when the Greek states meet at Sparta and their Athens and Corinth and Sparta argue back and forth about, you know, each other's Hellenic grievances. The point is that everyone tends to meet at Sparta because of this habit of Sparta of not wanting to leave because it inherently is risky for them. We're really going to stay surface level here for so many reasons, not least because I don't want to know more. But basically it's clear that Sparta really prefers to mediate between city states. They are not often the initiators. They happened into a position within the Greek world and they found their way to stay in it. By this point, they were they seemed so powerful to everyone else, and they've taken hold in various ways of so many bits of the Peloponnese that they can get away with having most things done for them, even war that directly involves them. Long story short, all of us worked really well for Sparta because they won the Peloponnesian War. But this power was not to last. You see, the Spartan system just did not have what it took to hold on to this power long term, so it all comes to a head in the early fourth century BC, during a period where the top power in Greece is like bouncing around between all these different city states. Once again, I cannot and will not get too deep into the intricacies of the fourth century and how everything fell apart. Is it in large part because I've forgotten what I learned during my degree, and this is history and thus deeply not my specialty. Now, yes, of course, I am only here so you can understand Sparta broadly, and we still have to look at the Roman period. God's basically one of the biggest issues during this time is simply that all the Greek states could not work together. They weren't able to find a way to unify that, and Sparta has allowed its official population to diminish to the point where their power is largely for show. It's largely just what others think of them, rather than anything that they can actually do themselves. Because they were so strict about who could be Spartan and what they had to maintain in order to remain a Spartay it, their population just dwindled and dwindled. You're going to hear more about it in Friday's episode and we've talked about in the past conversations, but a taste. In order to try to avoid exactly this, Spartan men actually shared wives and vice versa because it was just all about making babies with other Spartans, an official Sparta it's but then their land got spread out between all the other kids, and then they had less land to maintain all the rules that it took to be a Spartan. There's a lot to it, smarter people than me. But eventually Sparta essentially loses its position in the Peloponnese at this Battle of Luctra in three seventy one, when the Spartans met Thebes on the battlefield. Thebes, you guys, you know how I love Thebes and like as much as this episode is deeply not about Thebes, and one of these days I will have someone come on to discuss this particular aspect of them that I'm about to tell you. But this is the case where the Sacred Band kicked Spartan. But what is the Sacred Bands? You ask? Thank you for asking this mostly off topic question, but I would love to tell you. The Sacred Band is a group of elite Theban soldiers who to put it very simply were lovers and fighters, and they were absolutely badass. And also they were buried together, and they were found holding hands and cuddling in death. And after many years of people saying that they were bros pals, nice straight dudes who like to hold hands, we have as a people finally accepted that no, they were lovers sexually and otherwise, and that was part of what made them so powerful. And even in saying this, I want to remind you of the first conversation in this series where Maria and I discussed how actually Thebes kind of fits right into the stereotype that Sparta invented for itself. Like where Sparta wanted everyone to believe that they were elite soldiers always kicking ass, there was actually a time when Thebes had this elite group of soldiers who trained and we're basically career warriors and actually were some of the best of the whole time and region. And that is these sexy gay dudes. Gee, I wonder why they haven't become as famous as the Spartans. Hmm, what could it be? But I digress. After this, the Sparta that we have come to know just kind of falls apart it's not immediate, but it happens more and more, and before long, Philip the second of Macedon, you know, Alexander's dad, he heads to the varied cities states from Macedon and just kind of like sweeps them all up. And that's basically the end of Greece under the original city state form of Greek rule for well until the nineteenth century, when it becomes Greece. That country has had a whole last time. Those fucking parsons on Marbles better make their way back to Athens this year, or I will personally send theseus up to the UK to funk up the people making those decisions, and to really funk up the people who continue to call them the elkin marbles. Can you tell this episode of six thousand words so far? And it's all history base, and thus I am slowly losing my marbles. You just know I'm not going to leave you without talking about what Sparta was during the Roman period, though, because God I and others have hinted at it, and I am simply obsessed with the very notion. The opening line of the article that we're working off of for the section says, simply, quote the Spartans of the Roman period were famous. I think that in itself really says a lot. Obviously, the Greek people were well known to the Romans, not least because Rome had conquered Greece and so they were just well part of the Roman Empire. Fun fact, the word Greece is Latin. But there was something special about the Spartans, and it had a lot to do with everything that we've talked about in this series. They were weird, they were traditional, they were locked into these cultural ideas and what it was that made them Spartan. And then there was all the myth making they'd done around their mapoli and their own military prowess. But all together it made for a place that wealthy Romans were very keen to visit. But a quick timeline reminder here we're talking about not just the Roman Empire, but also the period of the Republic to I'm not going to try to get too deep into Roman history gods, but Cicero wrote about the Spartans and their famous traditions. Regardless of how spread across the Roman period this was, it's still hundreds hundreds of years after the height of Sparta. We're talking like four to five hundred years after say, the Peloponnesian War, and even longer since the Persian let alone the Archaic period that we talked about at the top of this episode. So it's been a while and Sparta has cone through a lot, But with all they've gone through the changes in power throughout the Greek world from Alexander to the Romans, the cultural memory surrounding the Spartans remained very very Spartan and very very famous, even if there wasn't really much left that actually resembled the Sparta of that past, or rather that was true until it wasn't. There was a period under Roman rule when Sparta went through a kind of state sanctioned revitalization. It seems like the Sparta of the Archaic and classical periods, the Sparta we've just talked about propaganda included, was so famous to the Romans that they actually sought to, in a way bring it back for their own kind of enjoyment and appreciation. They brought back the ago gae and promoted it as a training program. They brought back festivals and competitions that were based on earlier spara and traditions. They even intentionally brought back the language of those earlier periods, using forms of the Doric dialect that, as I understand it, had become less and less common across the region, and certainly not common at all and the rest of the Greek world. But by using that more ancient dialect, they got to like further revitalize this idea of what Sparta once was. And this wasn't something that was happening across the Greek world. This was unique to Sparta and deeply tied to its reputation and general cultural memory and identity. It was this place of tradition. It was the place where those three hundred had come from. It was the place that the Romans were most keen to bring back in their own way, to kind of cosplay the idea of ancient Sparta now, as much as we want to call it kind of a Sparta themed theme park. Obviously this oversimplifies the whole thing, but I do think it gives a good image of what's going on. The things they were bringing back were real and actively utilized among the people who still lived there, but it was a kind of intentional resurgence of an earlier time and tradition, all very purposeful in a way that makes it feel very theme park like, very much like a living museum. That said, the article I'm using for this bit says very explicitly that it wasn't those things, but still I think the comparison is a good way of just getting a taste of what's happening. Yes, it wasn't a theme park or a museum, but it was a place that was unique in the Greek world during this Roman period where wealthy Romans could visit and view this intentional resurgence of cultural tradition and memory of the past. They could view the Sparta of an earlier time, could imagine themselves among the Spartans of the time of Leonidas in a way that they couldn't do in the rest of Greece, and that in itself is just absolutely fascinating and really emphasizes everything we've talked about when it comes to Sparta. They were a place of tradition and strict cultural rules. They were a place where everything was done just so, just the same way that it had been done for centuries, and that was sought after. It was respected to the point of being recreated when it had died out. In this effort to return to those earlier times. This is also generally when the writer Plutarch would have written his biography of like Cargas, something that became one of the few ancient sources for Sparta broadly, except that, as I've just made pretty clear, he wasn't writing it during the time of ancient Sparta. He was writing it during this period of Roman resurgence of Sparta, when Rome was intentionally recreating the Sparta of the past, re enacting its festivals and traditions, educational programs and more. And obviously that really influenced what Plutarch wrote, let alone emphasized how much he wouldn't really have out the means of knowing anything about the actual like Hurgus if he ever existed. That And of course Plutarch was writing this biography to intentionally compare like Urgus, this mythical slash historical lawmaker. He was intentionally writing this to compare him to Numa, who was one of Rome's legendary kings, just like how he wrote the biography of Theseus to intentionally compare him to Romulus, the mythological founder of Rome. Honestly, I didn't end up talking about like Urgus as much as I thought I would. So this might feel out of nowhere or irrelevant, but it's important in the broader sense of Sparta because a lot of what people think they know about ancient Sparta, particularly archaic Sparta, which is when like Kurgus would have lived, if he ever lived, is all based on Plutarch, and so it's important to point out not only when Plutarch was writing during this period when Sparta was an intentional recreation of its ancient self, intentionally created in this way by Rome and the broader in the wunce of the Roman period, but also he was writing it specifically to compare it to a mythological king of Rome. So there's some inherent biases that come up in that. There is so much more that could be said about this Roman period and what they did in Sparta and God's Spartan history broadly, but frankly, this episode is already three thousand words longer than my usual episode, So I'm going to leave you for now. Next week we're talking Spartan women everything related to them and Friday. Who are you Gonna Love Friday's Conversation episode? Just you wait, oh, Nerds, Nerds, Nerds. These episodes are so much fun, and also I count express how much more work they are than the usual Bology episodes, Like it is absurd, not least because the scripts are like again, like I said, three thousand words longer, purely because there's just too much to say in too little time. And God's I don't know what I would do without Michaela either, like she basically wrote all of these episodes at this point, and I just come here and add in my quippy rants and remarks. She is a savior anyway, I'll to say these episodes have been such a thrill for me, and also I will be very glad to get back to traditional myths that I understand and I know how to research my precious ease as I will call them god losing it now. I had this whole plan to also talk about modern reception of Sparta today, like how we see it all the dark white supremacists, all right ship that is attached to it, both via the movie three and otherwise because God's there's a lot. But like I said, this episode is already too long. Fortunately, Friday's episode is with none other than Stephen Hodginson, who has basically devoted his career to talking about exactly this, and he shared so much detail about how Sparta has been used politically over the last few centuries, and we talked about the usage in the US and everything in between. So I'm gonna leave it for that episode. That and the bonus episode coming Saturday, where I break down the movie three hundred into tiny bite sized pieces of Gods. This movie is so racist and islamophobic. I don't even know what else to say, except I promise we do say lots more. Does it mostly revolve around trashing American imperialism and exceptionalism? Maybe? In any case, there is still so much Sparta to come. Friday is my conversation with Stephen Hopkinson. I cannot express how much I learned in that episode. Cannot wait for you to listen. Plus the bonus episode, and then next week we have Women on Tuesday conversation with none other than Natalie Haynes about her new MEDUSA novel Stone Blind on Friday, and then another bonus where I sat down with research Extraordinair MICHAELA to talk about the process of creating these Spartan episodes. What should we have? So much content, you guys, and this is long enough, God, So I will mostly leave it here, except to remind you that there will be a queue in a episode, provided I get enough questions from you all. If you have any burning questions about Sparta, please submit them at myths baby dot com slash questions, And as always, I'm finishing off with a five star review from one of you lovely listeners. This one had the best headline, so obviously I was going to read it. It's from nineteen person nineteen in the US. Bye Bye theseis. This podcast is like really the most one of the most entertaining things ever. I love great mythology, and the way Live tells it is just perfect. I could listen to it all day and it's just amazing. Her voices are relaxing, and I love when she goes on a rant about the horrible treatment of women in ancient Greece. This is just an amazing podcast and I would really recommend this to any women who loves Greek mythology. Listen to it every night. Thank you. That's great. Let's talk about Miss Baby is written produced by me Live Albert michaelas Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians and handles so many podcasts related things for this series, Michaela gets an extra special shout out because she, while she always helps me with everything I need, she, like I said, she basically wrote this whole damn thing. She's I don't know what I would do without her when it comes to the Spartan series and generally few. Stephanie full works to transcribe the podcast for YouTube captions and accessibility. As of now today, I'm happy to say that the podcast is hosted and monetized by my Heart Media. Help me continue bringing you the whole world of Greek mythology and the ancient Mediterranean by becoming a patron while you'll get bonus episodes and more. Visit patreon dot com slash Myth's Baby, or click the link in this episode's description. Oh gods, it's almost an hour. Thank you all so much. You're the best who I am live and I love this ship quite a bit