| | If anyone really wants to know about the "real" Sparta, there was an absolutely wonderful documentary aired a few years back on PBS. I think that it may have originally been made by the BBS.
The narrator was a stunningly beautiful woman, and the tight jeans were not only worth a look by themselves, but they were totally appropriate to the story as well. Her attitude was cool, too.
I say "Real" Sparta, because in fact the Sparta of the "300," was not at all the original Sparta of Homeric legend. That original Sparta was utterly wiped out, along with most of the coastal Mediterranean civilization, in the "Thera" event, the volcano that blew up most of Crete, and also raised a tidal wave of perhaps 400 feet high.
However, the Homeric legends had been passed along and survived quite well. A new group, unrelated to the Homeric Spartans, much later invaded the area of Sparta and siezed it from its inhabitants, who they enslaved, calling them "Hellots." They were aware of the legends of Sparta, and decided to adopt them as their own history.
From an objectivist point of view, Sparta is interesting for a number of good reasons.
First, it was a nation deliberately created according to a distinct philosophy. Every aspect of Spartan life and custom flowed from its central premises, expressed in the Law of Lycurgis. Some other nations have had similar experiences, of course, including the U.S., with its constitution and China under Confucianism, for example, and, of course, the various Marxist dictatorships.
Few have been as thoroughgoing about it as the Spartans, however.
As to the movie, right away there is a gross historical inacuracy, when Leonidis calls the Athenians, "boy lovers." NOBODY took 2nd place to the Spartans in boy loving.
The part about his being taken from his mother at age seven is historically accurate, but the grief of the mother herself is probably out of character. When a boy was taken from his mother, he immediately was assigned to a male mentor, typically a young man. One of the first things the boy learned was how to sexually satisfy his mentor.
Sex mainly occurred between men and men or boys on the one side, and between women and women or girls, on the other. Such sex as did go on between men and women was generally strictly for procreation. In fact, mothers were SO harsh toward their sons that the one thing that every Spartan man feared above all else was a Spartan woman.
This was exemplified in the Spartan marriage custom of having the bride cut her hair short and wear a boy's clothing. Otherwise the groom would be so petrified by fear that sex would have been impossible.
Sparta was a matriarchy in all but name, in fact. The men were almost exclusively devoted to warcraft and had taken vows of poverty besides, eating in communal dining halls, for example. Their clothing was typically rags. The only point of vanity for the Spartan man was his body. The Spartan men and women both spent inordinate efforts on physical perfection. It was not unusual for them to spend the entire day at the gym.
The Spartan women were truly independent, at a time when women elsewhere in Greece were socially similar to the Afghan women under the Taliban. They covered their bodies completely and only left the home escorted and in groups. The Spartan women, on the other hand, wrestled nude with both men and women at the gym on a regular basis, and had no qualms about public nudity, if they happened to feel like it.
The Spartan women had it good. They owned and managed virtually all the farms and businesses and they had a lot more sex than the guys - just with other women. Spartan women were quoted in the PBS special as commenting upon going to bed at dawn exhausted after a night's "hard ride" on another woman.
At one point, a Spartan woman decided to win the Olympic charriot race. Spartan women competed in the Olympics - the only Greek women allowed to do so - and not against other women, but together with the men.
So this woman buys a chariot, a team, a trainer and wins the next year's race. Then, being a typical Spartan, she pays personally to have a monument raised of herself inscribed with a message something like, "I, Lucretia, have defeated all the puny MEN of Greece with my splendid charriot racing...."
Another Spartan woman was described by an Athenian who witnessed the encounter between her and a group of berobed Athenian women.
The Spartan woman is wearing a halter and a very short dress, sans underwear, riding her horse bareback, of course. The Athenian women see her and are awestruck at her beauty. They are saying, "Oh, how lovely she is. Look at her breasts, her hair."
To which the Spartan woman replies, "My breasts? Why don't you look at my ASS? (raising her dress as she speaks) It's like oak."
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