It’s Not Men Who Think About the Roman Empire that Concern Me—It’s Men Who Revere the Spartans

A somewhat-belated take on a viral internet topic that is nonetheless all too relevant to the present moment.

Much has been made recently in the media sphere regarding the amount of time men spend thinking about the Roman Empire. I don’t know much about it or its implications because I honestly haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to it. (I, for what it’s worth, think about the Roman Empire all the time. I also think about the Babylonians.) Be that as it may, the frequency with which men think about the Roman Empire doesn’t fill me with any particular concern, largely because to ponder the Roman Empire on any meaningful level is to grapple with complexity and ambiguity—things we should clearly recognize and consider in our own societies. Put simply, Rome is best contemplated philosophically. It rose. It evolved. And then one day, at different times in different places, the people who used to call themselves Romans didn’t call themselves Romans anymore. It leaves a complicated legacy.

Rather, it is the infatuation of the American far-right with Spartan imagery that fills me with a certain sense of unease. Let me explain. I, while in the States, recently pulled up behind an oversized pickup decorated with all of the standard right-wing flags, stickers, and accoutrements—but one of the items on the window struck me more than the others. It was a decal in the shape of a Spartan (i.e. Corinthian-style) helmet with a Blue Lives Matter American flag superposed on it. Now, I know Spartan culture has been in vogue over the past ten or fifteen years among the tough-guy (or wannabe tough-guy) crowd, and for a number of them, it simply means, “I value toughness and physical prowess.” It is largely an emotional identification, much as a child identifies with action heroes. However, along with Punisher paraphernalia (which is a matter for another article), the deliberate association of Spartan imagery with law enforcement, nationalism, and civic identity has implications that exceed a mere emotional attachment, and this evocation is perhaps more on the nose than even those who are embracing it actively understand.

If the only thing you know about the Spartans comes from their caricaturish and two-dimensional portrayal in the “historically-inspired” blockbuster 300, it is first necessary to engage in a brief history lesson. See, the Spartans weren’t just the “tough guys” of the ancient world. Everybody in the ancient world was tough. Survival required it. People who weren’t tough were dead, and usually sooner rather than later. Even the comparatively genteel Athenians were no strangers to toil and the plough. Moreover, on the whole, the Spartans weren’t especially more effective in battle than other Greek city-states. They had their moment in the sun when they helped to repel a Persian invasion of mainland Greece in the early-5th century BCE and in the subsequent decades when they headed an alliance of Greek city-states as a counterbalance to the expansionist-Anthenians’ Delian League. But what really made Spartan society unique must be understood within the context of its formative early history.

Initially a fairly unremarkable Greek polity, perhaps the defining event in Sparta’s evolution was a series of wars that occurred between the Dorian Spartans and the indigenous-Achaean Messenians in the 9th century BCE. In short, the Messenian Wars constituted a protracted struggle for the Pelopponesian Peninsula that resulted in the full-on absorption and enslavement of the Messenian people by the victorious Spartans. This conquest gave rise to a subclass of people called the helots, which were entirely responsible for agricultural production in Spartan society and required that the Spartan citizen class adopt a military identity in order to maintain its hegemony. (The goods that Sparta was unable to provide for itself were sourced from the neighboring perioikoi, literally “those who live around”, who were not oppresed to the extent of the helots but were denied the rights of full citizens.) Those belonging to the helot population were liable to be degraded, terrorized, and murdered by Spartans with absolute impunity (and indeed encouragement). In a particularly macabre example, a Spartan coming-of-age institution called the krypteia required adolescent Spartan boys to ambush and kill a helot as part and parcel of their military training. As the helot population outnumbered the Spartan population roughly ten to one, this relationship of oppression and domination was necessarily systemic, entrenching itself deeply in the Spartan ethos.

Indeed, it would be a mistake to consider Spartan society apart from this key association—just as it would be a mistake to consider the culture of the antebellum American South without due attention to the plantation slave economy that lay at the heart of it (although American conservatives are trying their best to do that too). What many view as Spartan society was in fact a stratum within a larger society—specifically a warrior caste at the top of an authoritarian police state. 

This society did not run on toughness or even machismo; it ran on coercive labor, arbitrary brutality, honest-to-God eugenics, and above all, fear—the fear instilled in the helots in order to keep them at bay, and the perpetual fear of revolt that their oppression and mistreatment instilled in the Spartan psyche. (It should be borne in mind that an oppressor lives in fear that the treatment he inflicts upon others will one day be inflicted upon him. He cannot imagine concord and harmony because his actions perpetuate discord and disharmony.) Inasmuch, Spartan society was inward looking to the extreme. The Spartans, a “stay at home” people if ever there was one, were not so for the sake of being wary of the world (although they were often that too) so much as living in constant fear of internal revolt. In short, an occupying police force cannot afford to go on many field trips.

Consequently, Spartan society was fundamentally antidemocratic and was only largely egalitarian within the confines of the exclusive and insular Spartan caste. Even among the warrior elite, however, Spartan culture was brutal and thrived on agonism and shame. A Spartan boy was raised from an early age to embody the warrior ideal in every aspect of his life. Should he fall short of this standard in any way, he could be confident of receiving the harshest punishment in order that he might be made a public example. Deviation from the established norm was not to be tolerated. Spartan boys were deliberately underfed so that they had to steal in order to secure adequate nutrition for themselves. If caught in the act, a young Spartan would be beaten severely—not because he stole, but because he allowed himself to be caught. The failure of Spartan boys to fulfill the expectations and requirements of Spartan manhood resulted in their disenfranchisement, ostracism, or even death. Even for the privileged few, life in Sparta was a gruelling ordeal.

It might be rightly argued that Spartan women enjoyed a status within Spartan society that set them apart from other Greek city-states. They could own property and conduct business transactions. They were educated to a certain degree and were encouraged to maintain a level of physical fitness to rival that of the men. This allowed Spartan male citizens to focus on being soldiers and largely left the women to see to the daily affairs of the polis. The Spartans also believed that regular exercise made their women suitable candidates to bear strong male children. This is all to say, more concisely, that women in Sparta were valued inasmuch as they contributed to the preservation and propagation of Spartan society, especially through the production of future warriors. Even within the citizen class, this was not an enlightened egalitarianism.

Spartan society was also deeply resistant to change. As opposed to a written constitution to guide civic affairs, Spartan life was subject to a strict code of conduct descended from a quasi-mythological lawgiver named Lycurgus. While reputedly temperate, calm, and rational himself, the code attributed to him became a blueprint for a stodgy, overly rigid society that was loath to evolve or innovate, instead finding comfort and identity in unwavering conformity and blind adherence to tradition. Rather than the free thinking that defines much of the legacy of the Greek world, Spartan education was an exercise in inculcation and indoctrination.

Indeed, if not for its role as a historical counterpoint to the neighboring city-state of Athens, Sparta may not have left much of a cultural legacy at all. Spartan society did not produce art, writing, or an efflorescence of new ideas. (I am conveniently omitting Athens’ own conservative streak here. After all, they did sentence Socrates to death for “blasphemy” and “corrupting the youth”.) Rather, the primary goal of Spartan society was to perpetuate itself through the enforcement of a strict and brutal social order that stifled precisely the cultural developments that defined the other Greeks and the subsequent Hellenistic world, including the Greek-influenced Romans. Accordingly, Spartan society left little to posterity beyond a vague notion of martial prowess and some SAT words associated with brevity and austerity. (I am often reminded of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If a society is a pyramid, Sparta channeled all of its resources into the foundation of the pyramid and neglected to build anything on top of it. It’s the difference between survival and flourishing.)

Ironically, much of the current romanticization of Spartan society comes via Rome. By the time Rome came to conquer Greece and Macedonia in the late-3rd century BCE, Sparta was a dried-out husk of its former self. After burning itself out in the protracted Peloponnesian War with Athens, Sparta found itself dominated by the rising power of Thebes. (Thebes had become the regional hegemon primarily through military innovation, the brilliant generalship of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, and not having knocked itself out during the Peloponnesian War like Athens and Sparta.) Once Macedonia had become the major power in the Balkan Peninsula under the Theban-raised Philip II, Sparta was an also-ran, almost unworthy of notice. (Their inherent obstinance was seen as cute rather than threatening.) The Romans of the late-Republic and Empire, however, were intrigued by the martial legacy of the Spartans and classical Spartan society was viewed as something of a cultural curiosity. Subsequently, the Peloponnese became almost a sort of theme park, where Romans could go to visit the mythical land of the mighty warriors of Sparta. There was little left of it to prove otherwise.

So what’s the takeaway? I must admit, it’s a tricky question. I suppose it can serve as a historical warning of sorts—that closed, inward-looking societies that are deeply resistant to change tend literally not to go anywhere. Rather than growing, adapting, and evolving to meet the challenges of a changing world, they stagnate and ossify, preferring to fall victim to deterioration and decay rather than to “lose their identity.” And while it is perfectly reasonable for a society to embrace its roots and traditional culture, those roots must exist as a foundation for further growth. In a world that is constantly changing, societies must demonstrate the capacity to change as well. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.