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Comment by seer | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not one to say anything good about Sparta, as I pretty much agree with what acoup has to say in his blog about them.

What I think is going on is not that people like what Spartans actually did, people are simply enamoured by their honourable and majestic portrayal in popular culture. What youngster does not fantasise of being that small and determined band of soldiers that holds off the hordes of brutal barbarians, only with their shields, spears, courage and martial prowess? Who doesn't want to be part of that 250 men that defy a whole empire, _and succeed_, immortalised in songs and poems? (I mean they all die by the end, but they do kinda succeed in their mission).

The way I think about it is that for me there are two (or more even) Spartas. The historical "Sparta" that were brutal oppressors, like a case study how _not_ to structure a society, lots of lessons to learn from it. And the mythical "SPARTA!" one, full of honourable dudes and courageous women, that we can aspire to be, even if they were not real. No reason why they can't coexist in our minds, we just need to be careful which one we talk about.

When people say they "like Sparta" I don't immediately feel that they are silently singling that they will be ok with slavery and secret police, I think they want to be strong people fighting to protect their brethren, and that's generally OK with me.

> _and succeed_, immortalised in songs and poems? (I mean they all die by the end, but they do kinda succeed in their mission).

Battle of Thermopylae was a loss, not success.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

> Result Persian victory[a]

>Territorial changes Persians gain control of Phocis, Boeotia, and Attica[5]

The 300 Spartans and their allies' mission was to hold off the Persian army for as long as possible, allowing the Greek city-states to better prepare their defence.

And they did fail at that, leaving Greek cities to be taken by the Persian army, including Athens

Sparta didn't fall though. And anyway, surely they did the best such a small force could do, since they all perished. That's kinda the opposite of failure, no?

A 100% casualty rate is by any definition a 100% failure.

It can be a success if you fulfill your strategic objectives (see e.g. the American units that were nearly completely destroyed in the early weeks of the Korean War buying time for troops to arrive at the Pusan Perimeter). In this case, they unambiguously failed at those strategic objectives.

The UK didn't fall after losing a good chunk of their army and almost all of their heavy equipment in the Battle of France. It was still a defeat.

In the Thermopylae case, they failed at their intended objective (defeat the Persian army on land) and wasted a good-sized force. The fact that the defeat was set in stone the moment they chose the place and time of the engagement doesn't make it any less of a defeat.

(Note that "the 300" is only counting the Spartiates i.e. citizens; there were a total of 1-2K Spartan soldiers, and many more forces from other Greek poleis.)

It’s very clear in Herodotus that a delay wasn’t actually the mission, they intended to win. It just wasn’t a good plan.

Anyway, even if you grant that they were just trying to buy time (they weren’t), dying to the man in exchange for an extra day or so accomplished nothing militarily.

That was not their mission. No contemporary source says so, not even the pro-Spartan ones.

Just a nitpick but the Spartans at Thermopylae did not succeed in their mission at all. They barely slowed the advance of the Persian army.

That presumes a modern strategic intent, though, which was often absent from ancient warfare. If the mission of the Spartans was to secure kleos -- the only immortality the the Greeks valued -- then they succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings. Almost 2500 years later we are still talking about them. J.E. Lendon presents a compelling argument that this was, in fact how ancient warriors thought in "Song of Wrath".

While he Greek certainly glorified a heroic death, wars still had strategic purpose and were fought with the intention to defeat the enemy.

The battle of Salamis where the Greek defeated the Persians was definitely considered a success at the time, not a failure because they didn't get to die heroically every last man!

But in case of a defeat it is common to spin it as some kind of moral victory. Just see how the British spun the defeat at Dunkerque in the beginning of WWII. But that does not mean they didn't care about winning.

To be sure, the normative way of winning kleos was victory, to whit Marathon and Platea.

The Greeks also had very different rules awarding time for sea combat and land combat (rooted in Homer). In land combat, the model was Achilles, and stratagems and tricks detracted from the time of a victory, while in sea combat, the model was Odysseus, and metis ruled, so strategems and tricks were in bounds, hence the glory of Themistocles.

The problem with people's adulation for this mythical Sparta is that it includes ideas about causation (they were strong because they were monomaniacally focused on war!) and morality (military strength is a more important merit for a society than economic success or cultural output!) drawn from the real Sparta.

ie people who want to reproduce the mythical Sparta often advocate the social structure of the real Sparta, thinking it will lead to those mythical benefits. And instead it leads to monstrosity.

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