Essay On The Spartans

“Either with your shield, or on it.” These were the words said by Spartan women as their men left for war. The meaning is clear: either return with your shield, alive and victorious, or return as a corpse. There are no other options. This mentality of “Spartans never retreat, Spartans never surrender,” and a lifetime of physical training produced in ancient Sparta an elite caste of warriors who dominated classical Greece for centuries. The Spartans were greatly respected during their day, causing one exiled King to say “the Lacedaemonians, when they fight singly, are as good as any in the world.” Time has done nothing to soften the praise felt for the Spartan warrior. Innumerable video games, films, and novels have represented Spartans as invincible warriors, the valiant Spartan phalanx standing strong against a horde of unending barbarians.

Invariably, the Spartans have been represented as speaking of ‘freedom’ and ‘reason,’ versus the forces of tyranny and barbarism. While most wars the Spartans fought were against other Greeks, as the fractious Greek city-states were wont to do, invariably the popular culture accounts of the 20th and 21st century depict them as being pitted against the largest contemporary empire, the Persians, who, in an incredibly short period, were able to create the largest land empire the world had yet seen. The Persians surpassed the Greeks in many ways, and yet there are no Hollywood blockbusters about Cyrus conquering Babylon, or video games of Persian military feats. Modern popular culture has raised the Spartan to the highest pedestal of adoration, producing pulp of every kind to feed his flame. The Persians, meanwhile, have been brought low and demonized, even neglected. The questi...

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This logic struck Cyrus so much that he acted on the advice of Croesus and reclaimed the booty. Here Cyrus is portrayed as a rational, just ruler, who treats conquered subjects with restraint. This is in contrast to the loser in the struggle, Croesus, who, although Herodotus represents as wise and strong, is much too hasty. When he received the prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi of “If you attack, you will destroy a great empire,” in response to his question of whether he should bring the fight to the Achaemenids, he rushed across the river to attack Cyrus’s position, eager to destroy a great empire. Of course, the ambiguity of the oracle was his undoing, as it was his own Lydian empire that he destroyed. In this episode, Herodotus is not afraid to admit the faults of his Ionian Greek brethren, or to ascribe positive attributes to the Greek’s enemy.