Spartan Culture Essay

Who are the Spartans? If someone were to look at popular movies, books, or comics that mention or include Spartans then they would think they are an ultra militaristic tough as nails ancient Greek city-state. One such movie is 300 directed by Zack Snyder and is arguably a very popular depiction of ultra militaristic Spartans grossing $456,068,181 worldwide. When someone watches or reads one such depiction of Spartans they would likely understand that it is somewhat an exaggeration but not to the extent that it truly is. Looking through Spartan history and culture many of these ultra militaristic myths can be swept away.

A good place to start when trying to find out what Sparta really was is to look at its history. Early Spartan history is

There is endless debate among scholars as to when this change came to be. One version, suggested by Matthew Trundle is that Spartan conquest brought them against the strong Peloponnesian state of Tegea in the middle sixth century, and their initial defeats forced them to change their ways. Herodotos' account of this period makes it clear that the Spartans' neighbors to the north gave them a few nasty shocks around this time, and it is not unthinkable that they would have responded by gearing their entire state for war. Another view is championed by Stephen Hodkinson among others has the Spartans gradually take up the “Spartan” institutions through the latter part of the Archaic period in line with other Greek states. Hans van Wees has shown that there were plenty of Greek states that also had a class of serfs much like the Spartan helots and Greeks saw so many similarities between Spartan systems and the systems on Crete that they assumed Lykourgos traveled to Crete to gather inspiration for his reforms. Only during the Classical period, Sparta began to look strange, not because they had these systems, but because it had held on to them for so long when every other state eventually abandoned them. Once all of that is known it is clear that Sparta was not necessarily special just backward. Instead of moving on from old ideas, the Spartans doubled down on them, gradually developing more and