Roman Helmet Guy
“I suppose if Sparta were to be deserted, and the temples and foundations of her public buildings all that remained, as time went by, posterity would be strongly disposed not to accept her fame as a true account of her power.” Thucydides had you guys marked. Sparta was the preeminent power in Greece for 200 years. Their armies were almost undefeated in that time. Other Greeks wrote about them with fear and awe. Whenever a great general of the Greeks was needed, a Spartan was chosen. Would you say Prussia was never powerful? Its heyday was shorter than Sparta’s. Would you judge Napoleon’s armies by France’s surrender in WW2? The Battle of Plataea and the Battle of Leuctra are about as far apart. Sparta haters are universally people who I’d never trust on my right side in a shield wall. They’re motivated by a compulsive need to tear down the virtues the Spartans stand for in our collective unconscious: Courage, discipline, self-sacrifice, and defiance.
ChrisO_wiki
Sparta failed so hard that all is left now are a few scattered ruins. It turned out that being a hyper-militarised state in perpetual opposition to everyone else was a bad idea.
