RE-AIR: Very Extravagant Rich People, Ancient Sparta & The Spartan Mirage (Part Two)

This episode originally aired in January 2023 as part of the research series on ancient Sparta. We're talking all things Spartan culture: all the things made them Spartan, set them apart from the rest of the Greek world. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content! http://www.patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. Sources: Constitution of the Lacedaimonians by Xenophon, translated by Xenophon E. C. Marchant and G. W. Bowersock; Spartan Women by Sarah B. Pomeroy; The Public School of Sparta by T. Rutherford Harley; Spartan Education in the Classical Period by Nicolas Richer. Bad Ancient articles of interest: Spartan infanticide myth https://www.badancient.com/claims/spartans-throw-babies-mountains/, Molon Labe https://www.badancient.com/claims/molon-labe/,the 300 at Thermopylae https://www.badancient.com/claims/did-300-spartans-halt-persian-advance-thermopylae/. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com grouptrip.

• 0:43Speaker 01

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• 1:30Liv Albert?

  It occurred to me one day that Sparta, though among the most thinly populated of states, was evidently the most powerful and most celebrated city in Greece. And I fell to wondering how this could have happened. But when I considered the institutions of the Spartans. Today's episode is brought to you by Quince. You know the ones I've been raving about them for ages. But now is the time of year when you might consider gifting Quince to the people in your life. There's nothing quite like having pieces in your closet that you love and you know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that same feeling. So this This holiday season, think Quince.

• 2:12Liv Albert?

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• 2:57Liv Albert?

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• 3:32Speaker 01

  Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department, ever, so carve up turkey and spiral-cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like Stuffing Mix and Cranberry Sauce from 365 Brand. And guess what? All their delectable pies are made with no high-fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.

• 4:03Liv Albert?

  I wondered no longer.

• 4:30Liv Albert?

  Oh, hi, hello, and welcome once again to the special series on ancient Sparta. One of the most famous parts of ancient Greece, the most famous of ancient cultures and practices, the one we all think about when imagining ancient warfare, the one with so, so many misconceptions in the modern world, oh, Sparta. That quote at the top was from our man Xenophon, one of the best sources for ancient Sparta, even if he wasn't Spartan himself. Sparta is one of those places that I personally didn't think too much about, mostly because I'm more concerned with mythology than anything else, and while there are a few very important mythological figures that were Spartan, the region itself doesn't come into play all

• 5:14Liv Albert?

  that much, or at least as much as one might expect. Like, sure, Helen and Menelaus are from Sparta and the Daiscore, and we have their stories, but in those stories, we don't get much in the way of Spartan mythology. It's just a place like any other. Meanwhile, when you're in the history, and particularly if you're a non-expert, coming to the history and learning via, say, pop culture or popular history, then you're gonna get this very different view of Sparta. And one of the things that comes across most when you're coming across Sparta in the world today is this idea that they were all about their military, that Leonidas and the 300 at Thermopylae was an example of how their society functioned broadly, like it's the

• 5:58Liv Albert?

  perfect way of understanding most things about them. Add to that the things that people quote-unquote "learn" from Zack Snyder's or Frank Miller's, for that matter, their 300, and you've got even more of this oddness on your hands. And don't get me wrong, much of 300 does come from ancient sources, Herodotus and Plutarch, but that doesn't necessarily make it a great indication of actual ancient Sparta. And while the primary thing you get from that movie, or graphic novel, or generally understandings that are kind of based in that, which is more widespread than you think, like, I think a lot of people are gonna be laughing, like, "Oh, 300, you take your history from that."

• 6:39Liv Albert?

  I don't, but it has become like this cultural emblem, at least in North America, of like, what Sparta was. This militaristic nature of Sparta ties in with the Agoghi, their training process, and so much more. And so through all of this, you get this pretty obvious idea that Sparta was just all about military, or all about training and fighting, all about honor, all about defending their homeland. And that just isn't particularly true. We're gonna talk so much more about the actual military practices of Sparta, particularly during the Classical Period and the Archaic Periods, i.e. the time during and around the

• 7:22Liv Albert?

  Persian and Peloponnesian Wars and those 300 at Thermopylae. But that's coming in a conversation episode, because you all just know I could not do that topic justice myself. I simply do not care enough about ancient warfare. Or at least, I didn't before I spoke with upcoming guest, Dr. Ruel Canonendike, about this. And honestly, if I was ever gonna be convinced to be interested in ancient warfare, it was through this conversation. Because it was so fun, I learned so much, I just can't wait for all to hear it. But that's for Friday. Today, we're gonna talk about everything else Sparta had going for it. All those ways that made it weird. Yeah, I'm not letting that term go. It just fits them far too well.

• 8:07Liv Albert?

  They were exactly that: weird, in so many ways. And how those things, those ways, contributed to what's known about Sparta today is fascinating. A reminder that the purpose of this series is not only to give you a generally good overview of Spartan history, culture, myth, but also to break down certain ideas about the ancient city-state. It is inherently bad to buy into the idea that they were all about war and honor and the like, but what it has done is become a kind of rallying cry for the alt-right, their messaging and general white supremacy, so it's even worse than you think. Poor Sparta has become a kind of icon for that realm of humanity.

• 8:51Liv Albert?

  And even words spoken, or rather, written by Leonidas are used today for those purposes. And that's why I'm here. Because isn't it always why I'm here? To claw back ancient grace from the darker parts of humanity through educating all of you wonderful nerds on the truth and history of these people and their world? Plus, we have fun along the way, because the ancient world is seriously fun, particularly when you know the truth of it and not the stuff that, that western supremacists wants you to know. Bleh.

• 9:37Liv Albert?

  This is episode 195. Very extravagant rich people. Ancient Sparta and the Spartan Mirage.

• 10:00Liv Albert?

  Before we get too deep into this episode on the culture of ancient Sparta, let's once again look at what exactly the so-called Spartan Mirage is. Because it's the basis for this series. So what on Gaia's earth was it?

• 10:15Liv Albert?

  The Spartan Mirage is a both ancient and modern concept. Phenomena, even. Broadly, it's the idea that so much of what we think we know about ancient Sparta is based in a number of misleading factors. Things like what the ancient Spartans wanted the other Greeks to believe about them. What they wanted outsiders to see. And then, what those outsiders saw. And what we now understand to be broadly misleading. Ancient writers who are either taken in by Sparta's intentional wiles, or determined things on their own, things that weren't necessarily true about this ancient city. Like exaggerations and false ideas about what they were all about, what their priorities were. We can thank the Spartan

• 11:00Liv Albert?

  Mirage for this idea that Sparta was a militaristic society at all. That they were better than everyone else at warfare. It also alludes to more modern notions of Sparta. Some of the same ideas, particularly around the military and warfare, but from a modern standpoint. And it all comes back to the same basic problem. Most of what we know about Sparta didn't come from Sparta, but from its neighbors and even its enemies. And all of those things were influenced not only by what those people saw from the outside, but what Sparta wanted them to see.

• 11:36Liv Albert?

  And so what does that say about the information that we now have? And how much can we or should we believe? And does that mean that today's episode is definitely 100% accurate? When it comes to the very real ancient Sparta? No, because again, we don't know everything. But since recognizing the existence of the Spartan mirage, historians have become way better prepared to look at the evidence and sourcing that we do have, and consider what may or may not be part of this mirage. Regardless, it's all fucking fascinating. Because how cool is it to be an ancient city that's so intentionally mysterious? That 2,500 years later, no one really has any idea what was going on?

• 12:22Liv Albert?

  I mean, we have a good idea, but still, so much mystery.

• 12:28Liv Albert?

  Last week, we were introduced to the long and storied history of our dear Spartan friends. Those mysteriously weird people in the south of the Peloponnese, tucked away in that Erotaus Valley. We looked at the basics of their history, Bronze Age beginnings, the half mythical, half historical establishment of specific laws that would begin their ongoing quest to be the weirdest of all the Greeks. We looked at the basic idea of helots, the population they enslaved, so that the everyday Spartan not only didn't have to work, but legally couldn't in order to remain an official citizen, a Spartian. I mentioned it briefly, but we're going to talk more about it. But you can imagine how that could go downhill fast.

• 13:11Liv Albert?

  These like severe limitations on how to be an official Spartan. And it did go downhill. The Spartans were always worried that their helot population would rise up in a rebellion. They never wanted to be away from Laconia for long, because there were so many helots, like they could do some real damage. And so their own population was so specific, so limited, that it had a very, very tough time sustaining itself and remaining large enough to enforce those laws and to keep the helots in line among literally everything else it takes to run a successful civilization. But what I hope stuck from last week is that learning about the Spartans is a really

• 13:51Liv Albert?

  difficult task, and it comes back to that mirage. They were an enigma, even in the ancient world. The fascination that we feel for them today in modernity is very much present in antiquity as well. None of it is new. The Spartans were bizarre people, and I think that that is what makes them so intriguing. They were the Goth kids that no one fully understood, and yet everyone was still endlessly intrigued by them. The usual themes we would expect to see from ancient Greek polis, like Athens, Corinth, or Thebes, are not as prevalent in Sparta. In fact, Sparta at first glance, like, appears almost to be the opposite of what we would expect from a Greek polis. And one of the

• 14:34Liv Albert?

  most striking differences is how they handled rulership. Pretty sure I've drilled that into your heads quite a bit, like, how the Greeks saw certain types of kings in their history. Like, for the most part, they weren't big on kings. So much so that one of their words for kings, tyrannos, literally goes on to mean tyrant. Of course, much of those ideas come from Athens, where they had had the most trouble with kings, and where they'd attempted their own version of democracy for a time. But when other ancient Greek city-states were avoiding kings, Athens with its democracy, and Thebes with its, I'm gonna call it, I'm gonna forget the political structure, but it came up in that fascinating conversation I had with Michael Furman at the end of the

• 15:19Liv Albert?

  last year. Were they, no, they weren't a republic. Guys, we're not gonna try. Regardless, when so many other major polis were looking at options for rulership that were not kings, Sparta just continued on as they always had. And for a very, very, very long time, Sparta actually had two kings, plural. Multiple kings, co-ruling, based on this original mythology of their people. And they were happy with their kings. And that isn't to say that they only had kings and were super different from the rest of the Greeks. Like, they weren't. They had other similar political structures that I won't try to fully explain because

• 16:00Liv Albert?

  I'm simply not a historian. But the interesting bit is the two kings that were at the top. That's where they were entirely unique.

• 16:09Liv Albert?

  But also, like I mentioned, it's hard to dig out truth about Sparta. The Spartan mirage has plagued us all and we are reliant on outsiders' perspectives for what typical life looked like for an average Spartan. But that's okay, because again, like I said, we are aware of this bias now, and that means that we are packed and ready to venture forth and dig through our sources to find the shiny, shiny gem of truth that we all want. The piece of Spartan history that I most want to talk about, and that today's episode is based around, is their culture. What made up their culture? What made it unique amongst the other Greeks? And how is it actually very, very different from what those of us who learn about Sparta

• 16:53Liv Albert?

  from primarily pop culture and popular history might think?

• 16:58Liv Albert?

  First, though, what are we talking about when we talk about culture? It's sort of a weird concept to define, kinda like, I mean, you just know it when you see it. But in this case, we're talking about what we know about daily life, practices, habits, beliefs, and particularly where those things differed from the rest of the ancient Greek people. Like, what is it about Spartans and their lived experiences that made them Spartan? To put it the most simply, what were the things that made them Spartan with a capital S? Lacademonians, descendants of Tyndareus himself, children of Helen, Leonidas's brethren. You get the idea, I was just having fun there.

• 17:37Liv Albert?

  But of course, culture is not stereotypes. And often, that's what we have for Sparta because of that damn mirage. But actual culture isn't shown through another people's views or misconceptions or ideas about what makes one Spartan. Fear not, though, we will get into those misconceptions because they are many and they are juicy. Hence why they remain the main ideas that we have about Sparta today. Just like Canada isn't covered in snow year-round and we don't all speak French, love winter and hang out with polar bears, Sparta wasn't obsessed with war and did not single-handedly save the Greek world from a Persian invasion. Those, my friends, are stereotypes.

• 18:34Liv Albert?

  So as we've already talked about in detail, sourcing for Sparta is difficult because of this lack of written record by actual Spartan people. The people who were writing and talking about them from the outside are what we have left. It was an outsider's perspective on their life. But thankfully, not all sources are created equal, and some are actually pretty great. Enter Xenophon, our main source for Spartan culture. Yes, Xenophon was an Athenian, but he had some really interesting ties to Sparta and is generally considered to be the most reliable and unbiased source. Plus, with a name like Xenophon, you just know I'm gonna talk about him as much as I can. I'll even tell you that technically, it should be pronounced more like Xenophon, but I won't say that

• 19:18Liv Albert?

  because it's weird on my English tongue, as much as I do really like it. During the early 4th century, Xenophon served with some Spartan armies in Anatolia, modern Turkey, and through this experience, he gained so much respect for the Spartans that he served under, and then later, he was exiled from Athens because that's what Athenians like to do, and he actually went on to live in the Peloponnese and continued to have Spartan connections for most of his life. And best of all, he wrote a lot of shit down. Thank you, Xenophon. Supposedly, he actually even had his sons educated in Sparta, which really suggests how he felt about the Spartans. But we can't forget that he is still an Athenian, and an Athenian who, like other young aristocratic men in the late 5th century, was connected

• 20:03Liv Albert?

  with Socrates, which is interesting. He has a bias, folks, and we will not forget that moving forward, but he is still our absolute best bet because basically, he liked the Spartans, and therefore was not judging everything that they did. Now, obviously, one of the big elephants in the room when it comes to Sparta is not just that during the city-states' height of importance, the Greeks did not know what elephants were. No. It's the big question of how did they treat their women?

• 20:32Liv Albert?

  Was that a half decent joke, by the way? No? Okay, I'm gonna try to do better. I liked it. This is my podcast and I'm me, so I'm obviously seriously interested, though, in how Spartans treated women. You might be tempted to say, or possibly have heard others say, that Spartan women had power and freedom, even maybe equality. It seems to me that that's a general idea that floats around, that the Spartan world possessed some kind of more modern feminist viewpoint towards women and unfortunately, I would like to just tap the brakes on that real fast. They have a reputation for being better for women, better than the rest of the Greek city-states, and certainly better than Athens. And that's like, true?

• 21:14Liv Albert?

  It's definitely true broadly, but I don't want you all to believe that this was some kind of feminist utopia, or that women were equal or even close to that. That is not a thing now, let alone then, gods. This is still the ancient Greek world. Like, women are not people in the way that men are people at this time. Just because Sparta's viewpoint towards women is like, slightly less restrictive than the other city-states, does not mean that they were a feminist utopia. It's like, "Oh, thank you for bestowing upon me the marginal humanity and not seeing me entirely and completely as property? You only see me mostly as property, mainly as a baby maker?" Like, no, they were slightly less shitty to women, but still shitty. I'm going on too long, I'm sorry. We're not gonna sing too much praise for a group

• 21:59Liv Albert?

  of people not being as shitty as another, though. All to say, yes, women were absolutely treated differently and marginally better in Spartan society, so let's talk about it. But also, there will be an entire episode on the details of how women lived in Sparta. This is more for an introduction. So what was expected or normal for women of Sparta compared to the other cities of the Greek world? What we know of women in the Greek world, again, though, is pretty centralized around Athens, where most of our sourcing on this issue comes from, and things certainly could have been better slash different elsewhere. So a grain of salt, I'm mostly talking about Athens in this comparison. And in Athens, there was a hyper-focus on their purity and their value in society, being tied to such purity.

• 22:42Liv Albert?

  And of course, they were property. They were property of their fathers and then of their husbands. A woman in Athens could achieve purity by staying inside, by being invisible, getting married young, and quickly having as many babies as possible. Fun times. She would weave and do all her domestic tasks quietly in the eunuchon, the women's apartments of the home. But in Sparta, life was a little bit different. Now, remember when we spoke about helots last week? You know, the entire population of enslaved people, thousands and thousands and thousands of enslaved people? A lot of the freedoms that the Spartan women get comparatively are because of the enslavement of the helots. So again, not singing a lot of real praise here.

• 23:25Liv Albert?

  Because the helots could do all the housework, all the weaving, all the domestic tasks that we generally see as being the responsibility of Greek women in other city-states. Once again, that part of Sparta that makes them so odd, so weird, comes into play. This horrible enslavement. I just, it's only sometimes I can say it. But this left women with so much time to just like exist and do what they wanted to do. And what did they do? Well, everything they did had to do with raising and ensuring that girls would become excellent mothers to little Spartan babies in the future and that they would have lots of Spartan boys. So one of the ways they did this was exercise. Yeah, that's right. Spartan women exercised.

• 24:09Liv Albert?

  And what's more, they exercised outside, where anyone could see them.

• 24:16Liv Albert?

  Horror. And if you know anything about the standard of how the ancient Greeks exercised, you might know that they invented the Olympics after all, and they loved to wrestle in many forms. But you might also be familiar with what they wore during their exercising, which was nothing at all. How freeing and non-restrictive and not supportive in the slightest. In Sparta, it seems like women could have exercised in the nude, or at least with like a very little clothing, like maybe Cassandra style, A.C. Odyssey, you know? They could have worn maybe a tunic even, maybe revealed their thighs, because they did have a nickname of thigh flashers.

• 24:54Liv Albert?

  Because fun fact, in Aristophanes' Life's Strata, Lempito is described as doing an exercise where one kicks their behind with their heel, throws their leg back. And I mean, Lempito is very much an Athenian stereotype of a Spartan woman, and like, in a comedy, no less. But all the same, it gives us a bit of confirmation that like, at least exercising was a thing that Spartan women were understood as doing. The Athenian Aristophanes might have at least, he might have just leaned into the stereotype, but it was grounded in reality, which is interesting. Now, you might be wondering why this is something that happened only in Sparta. Like, why did they treat their women differently? Why were they allowed to do a little bit more?

• 25:37Liv Albert?

  So here again, I will remind you, once again, all of the issues that Sparta faced constantly throughout their history. Their problem of legitimate citizens, Sparta's official body, Spartiates, being official citizens of Sparta versus, there are also perioikoi, who are people who lived in the region but were not official Spartiates. And Spartan women, were Spartan only to the degree of passing that title down to their children? We, we see this in antiquities, in other places as well. Like, you can think of Pericles' citizenship law, that the role women played in society directly responded to the status that their future children would hold, and little else.

• 26:20Liv Albert?

  So we don't see women partaking in like civic life in the way that men do. They certainly aren't official citizens in that respect, but there is a distinction between Spartan women and non-Spartan women. It's, yeah, it's confusing. Their population of citizens was in constant decline, though. And their way of fighting this decline was to really emphasize the making of babies. This was the job of Spartan women, making Spartan babies. And because they were always so threatened by their population, it was a supremely important job. So while it was the same job as Athenian women, they were considered more important in Sparta, I guess?

• 27:05Liv Albert?

  This emphasis on physical exercise too, has backing in the Lycurgus myth. Now, Lycurgus, as I mentioned last week, is this mythical lawmaker, kind of founder of what Sparta became. He's semi-historical, semi-mythical. Most of what we know about him was written by Plutarch, like hundreds and hundreds of years later. But Xenophon does say that Lycurgus, quote, "believed motherhood to be the most important function of free-born women. Therefore, in the first place, he insisted on physical training for the female, no less than for the male. Moreover, he instituted races and trials of strength for women competitors as for men. Believe that if both parents are strong, they produce more vigorous offspring."

• 27:51Liv Albert?

  So yeah, I mean, personally, as a woman who has never even for a moment wanted to even imagine having children, the idea that Spartan women get a reputation for being so much better treated compared to other Greeks, but ultimately all it boils down to is like, "they make babies", I really don't want to give them that much credit. Like, way to go Sparta for recognizing that people with uteruses are the ones you need to make babies, and maybe a good way of keeping that happening is to have them healthy, like, well done on the absolute bare minimum for human rights. And fine, in their defense, having babies was dangerous business. In antiquity, there was like a 1 in 5 chance of death during childbirth for mothers, and like 30% of babies died before the age of 1. Not good. Needless to say, having babies was a risk, and the

• 28:35Liv Albert?

  more prepared a woman was, like, the better. I'm using the word "woman" here because back then, obviously, that would have been their understanding. I do recognize that other people have uteruses. But the emphasis on physical exercise, on having a strong body, probably helped these women in childbirth more purely from like a health perspective. Their bodies were better prepared for the strenuousness of pregnancy and then childbirth. Add on to that the higher age of marriage at Sparta, with women getting married around the age of 18 or 19? Compared to like Athens where it was like 14, uh, goo- good for them. And it meant that Spartan women were more prepared for childbirth than their contemporaries, simply because their bodies were better prepared.

• 29:19Liv Albert?

  Again, it's like, okay, it's great that things were marginally better. They weren't marrying off literal children, but it wasn't because they had any kind of empathy to the plight of women, or they wanted them to be happier. It was just that they were going to be better prepared to make boy Spartan babies to keep that population going. I'm going to get so much deeper into marriage and women because honestly, it's fascinating. Like there's an entire book written about it. So there's going to be an entire episode dedicated to that now. But until then, let's talk about Spartan babies and what is generally assumed happened to some of those tiny bundles of Spartan joy.

• 30:02Liv Albert?

  Do you know the reference I'm going to here? Because it's a really big old myth about Sparta, a really well-known and prolific myth, but very much a myth.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department ever, so carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And guess what? All their delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.

• 31:13Liv Albert?

  Let's not mince words. I'm gonna go into detail, but let's be clear upfront. Sparta did not regularly throw babies off of mountains if they determined something was wrong with them. This may be one of the biggest misconceptions about Sparta, hell, about the ancient world. I know we are all familiar with this idea of exposure. I talk about it all the damn time in, because in myth, it's always used as a plot device to allow a character to come back when everyone thinks they're dead, like Oedipus left out in the wilderness, uh, Paris was left on Mount Ida, Atalanta was raised by bears. Because of this and some Spartan stereotypes by non-Spartan sources, there developed this idea that there was a regular practice in Greek history and specifically in Sparta.

• 31:57Liv Albert?

  Even more detailed myths around this idea arose.

• 32:03Liv Albert?

  See, people believe that the Spartans practiced a form of infanticide that is, it's just eugenics. So this is the myth, myth as in something commonly believed that is not true and not the usual stories of mythology that we all love so much. It was thought that when a Spartan baby was born, they were brought in front of this council of elders, the Gaurusia, to be inspected. You're gonna start picturing scenes from 300 here, and that's good, because it has perpetuated this myth, and if you can picture it, then you're better prepared for me to tell you why it's all bullshit. So the story goes that all these old men would inspect this new little Spartan baby and make a decision. A decision of whether or not this baby was

• 32:46Liv Albert?

  healthy enough to eventually become a big, strong Spartan citizen. If the baby was deemed acceptable, like off home, they would go eventually to join the Agoge and, you know, become an adult, which we're gonna talk about more, about the Agoge more, don't worry. Uh, and they'd learn how to become a proper Spartan. Or, if this little Spartan baby was deemed unacceptable, like not fit to bear the title of a true Spartan, then they would be brought up to Mount Tygettos and thrown from a cliff. Just forgotten, abandoned, just like Cassandra and Alexios. Well, more than abandoned. I mean, those two surviving was a bit of a video game fluke. Dead, the baby would be dead. So as I said, this is a myth, one of the most prevalent little thektoids that people

• 33:30Liv Albert?

  carry around about Sparta. It is simply not true. And it comes down to where we get this information from, and thus where the movie 300 got this information from, and generations of people, including, um, well Nazis. Uh, the sourcing of it all. This baby getting tossed from a mountain idea is found in Plutarch. Remember him? Good old Plutarch, the biographer, not the historian. Not only was he a biographer concerned with paralleling notable men from Greek and Roman culture, but he was also writing during the first century CE. Somewhere between 500 and 700 years after this so-called practice was supposed to have been happening. This is after Rome had come in and did some strange like Disneyfication work on Sparta.

• 34:15Liv Albert?

  So we need to take it all with a grain of salt. Many grains, really. You know, when you're shaking the salt shaker and the lid falls off? Like that much salt we should be putting into this situation. There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for it. None. Like, there would be archaeological evidence, let alone other sources saying that this was ever a thing. Cause we're, we're talking a whole lot of dead babies. There's no evidence for it at all, outside of Plutarch. Now, okay, like, is it possible that it was like a much older or even like an archaic practice? I mean, maybe, but no. Uh, it's notable that it, it just does not show up in any other source, like even Xenophon. For all his Spartan-loving ways, he never mentions it. And hell, like other Athenians who definitely didn't love

• 34:59Liv Albert?

  Sparta, they could have mentioned it, or like a playwright would have mocked it, or, or made Sparta look bad, made it into a joke, something. And this brings up another interesting thing, like this idea that ancient people were more ambivalent towards their children than we are today. Certainly the, the frequency of child death was way higher back then, but really children making it to adulthood is, is pretty recent. It's not just back then. And just because this is something that happened, doesn't mean that it wasn't like absolutely devastating to the parents of earlier times. They were people just like us. They loved and cherished their children, like every one of them, just like we do today. The death of a child wasn't any less horrible than it would be today. I think it's often

• 35:40Liv Albert?

  forgotten in the conversation of exposure too. Like that, that would, it would take a lot for a parent to do this. And it, it is purely mythological. It's a plot point, right? Like it allows something else to happen later. Archaeologist Debbie Sneed has written about how there is actually evidence that ancient Greek people took extra special care with disabled children, like the opposite of this idea of them just being worthless. They took special care to care for these children. They mourned them when they died, or if they died. Basically, they treated them exactly the same way as their other children, possibly much better due to their disabilities. Not to mention, remember,

• 36:22Liv Albert?

  like, translations of sources and motivations. All the people that have interpreted ancient texts in the few thousand years since they were written. Like, remember Atlantis? What could possibly be the motivation for a modern society spreading this idea that even the most ancient and revered culture could have deemed children unfit for life? Could there possibly be some dubious motives? Yes, there could be, because you see, some modern people, the Nazis and other eugenicists, for example, they could maybe choose to latch on to these ideas to give their own some historical

• 37:05Liv Albert?

  backing. Yeah, that's where it gets dark. We're not going to dwell too far on this. We're going to talk more about the Nazification of Sparta later. There's too much to say for right now, but basically, the Spartans did not practice this type of eugenics. They did not do all the creepy things that you imagine from popular history. They just didn't. They were shitty in a lot of ways, for sure, much like the rest of the ancient world, but they weren't shitty in this specific way. And the idea that they were is actually based in much more modern and equally dark views. Because, again, there's a reason that I'm giving Sparta a similar treatment to Atlantis.

• 37:45Liv Albert?

  And speaking of fucking nonsense perpetuated by popular history accounts and things like 300, among whatever other pseudo-historical nonsense when it comes to Sparta, let's talk about the Agogae, shall we? I will go into this in more detail in a conversation episode. It certainly comes up when I'm speaking about not only their military practices, but also just generally debunking a lot of the wild, dark shit that comes up about Sparta. But thankfully, those guests know more than I do. For now, we're gonna talk about it just briefly, because while most of what you might imagine with just a cursory knowledge of Sparta is bullshit, the Agogae itself did exist in some form. Just like the idea of babies being thrown off mountains, though, it wasn't half as fucked up as we might think.

• 38:30Liv Albert?

  The Agogae was pretty much the name given to their general education system that was present in ancient Sparta. So in itself, it's a less foreign and fantastical thing that we might think. It's just school. Spartan boys would go through several years of education that culminated in them moving on and joining this thing called a systion, that was happening when they'd entered adulthood. Systion, meanwhile, these were these big banquets that took place every day, and they were mandatory for Spartiates. Imagine it bonded them all together pretty strongly. The standout quality of the Spartan education system, though, is that it removed the responsibility from the father and the household, and instead, put it into the hands of the state.

• 39:14Liv Albert?

  Essentially, the Spartans had their very own public education system, which, to a degree at least, differentiated them from much of the rest of the ancient Greeks. From birth to the age of seven, the children, like, huh, boys, we'll talk about women later, but boys, would stay home under the close eye of their mother, and then at seven, they would go off to the wonders of the Agogae. Throughout their education, the boys would be separated into different age groups that then helped differentiate them between different stages of development. The youngest, who were just entering school, were called the peides, and then around the age of 14, they would be called the peidescoi, and finally, around the age of 20, they would be the hebantes. At least, we think so. Xenophon mentions all these terms, and it's possible that these are the terms that Spartans themselves used,

• 39:58Liv Albert?

  but we're not totally sure. Because as always, our sourcing comes from not Spartans. But at least with Xenophon, we know that he spent a lot of time there. He befriended Spartans, and he appreciated them as like a people and a culture. So his word is pretty well accepted in cases like these. But one of the biggest things that made Sparta different was that the girls actually did get formally educated too. So like, score. So for once, we get to talk about women in a bit more of a substantial way, but this is still ancient Greek patriarchy, so we know a lot more about what the boys did. So we're starting with them.

• 40:32Liv Albert?

  Now, when it comes to understanding the Agoge and what it was and was definitely not, we need to ask the question of what did these Spartan boys do at school? What did their curriculum look like? Well, yeah, I mean, by now you know, at this point, we don't have the most clear picture of it, but we have some ideas. There's a general theme of athletics that never seems to leave the Spartan picture. It's kind of always there. They were active. It's probably that they learned how to write and like do arithmetic to some degree. There probably or possibly was a tradition around stealing, actually, where the children were encouraged to steal, to subsidize their daily food, and then they were punished if they got caught. But not because they were stealing, but because they got caught. They weren't good enough

• 41:15Liv Albert?

  thieves, and so they had to be punished? Fascinating. We learn this again from Xenophon, and he really stresses that this is like a good learning experience, that has educational value. I think that's interesting in itself, but it also suggests that it's probably true, because there's no judgment attached to this. He's kind of just stating it as if it was a good thing. We also see this in context with this altar of Artemis Orthea, where the younger children had to sneak past the older ones who were armed with whips, and they had to steal cheese off the altar. Just let all that sink in. Like, Sparta was wild. Regardless of the specifics of what happened at the Agoge, the purpose of Spartan education

• 41:57Liv Albert?

  system was to create this unified Spartan identity. By putting all the male children into the same program and surrounding them not only with their peers, but those older than them, in like these common eating areas, it served to teach them what it meant to be part of the male Spartan citizen body, to be a Spartian. What the ideals were, like who they should aim to be, how they should carry themselves throughout life. It also explicitly prepared them for this Sistine, where they would go do something similar, like every day of their lives. All gathering together for big meals with the same men every single day. The end aim of the Spartan school system was to strengthen their like, ideal citizen

• 42:39Liv Albert?

  body, and this overarching concept of what we call eunomia, which means "good order", and it's basically the official Spartan motto.

• 42:50Liv Albert?

  Now, given everything I've just said about what the Agoge actually was, you might be wondering where in the actual fuck did something like 300, let alone our general modern notions, get the details, like of kids fighting wolves and basically being left to die in the wilderness? Well, we do know that they have some kind of wilderness training involved, but it wasn't fighting wolves, it wasn't being just like, left to your own devices, it was pretty reasonable wilderness training. At least, it was during the archaic and classical periods, but it probably didn't change drastically. These details come from much later writers who were piecing together different bits and pieces and then sensationalizing the hell out of all of it, whether intentionally or otherwise. Generally, the Agoge was just education.

• 43:35Liv Albert?

  It wasn't military training and it wasn't fighting wolves, it was like, somewhat wilderness-based, but more so just in the sense of like, a general ability to survive, to become a adult Spartan man and create more Spartans. It wasn't some wild test of strength against, I dunno, wolves?

• 44:12Liv Albert?

  But now, the ladies? Yes, women were educated too! Huzzah! Honestly, like, what a win! But why were they educated? Yeah, don't get too excited. Women were explicitly educated in Sparta so that they could, again, produce more Spartan boys! Yeah, basically everything about their quote-unquote "education" was to make them both good Spartan mothers, those who held and passed on their culture, and to prepare their physical bodies for pregnancy and birth. Good times. So what we know what their education was, again, like I mentioned earlier about women: exercise. But in the case of education, both boys and girls, one thing was also true of Sparta, and it isn't something that has made its way into this popular imagination. They had

• 44:55Liv Albert?

  a huge respect for poetry and storytelling, like art generally. This was really high on the list of importance, and the Spartan poet that we do have surviving, Alcmen, makes that super clear. Like, they didn't learn these things in the form of reading and writing. Literacy was pretty sparse and confined to like the very fanciest of Spartans, but they did all learn to recite Alcmen's poetry. And all of this, poetry and art included, comes back to this most important thing for ancient Sparta: tradition. They were a very conservative, tradition-centered society. So we've been using this amazing book by Sarah Palmeroy for this bit. It's in this episode's description, and it's gonna contribute to

• 45:39Liv Albert?

  my whole episode on women. But here she is talking about this idea of tradition and how poetry ties in. And she says, quote, "By repeating poems like those of Alcmen at festivals, successive generations of Spartans learned both their content, including mythology, religion, courtship, and etiquette, and musike, this repetition of material tended to create children who thought and behaved as their parents did. Thus, Spartan society remained conservative and conscious of its traditions."

• 46:16Liv Albert?

  And one of the things that really solidly exemplified Spartan tradition and conservatism is this idea of eunomia that I just mentioned briefly. This very Spartan idea of good order. There's a bit more we should cover there, so here I am to give you a quick TLDR of this very important and kind of all-encompassing concept found in Sparta, because as if this episode isn't long enough. So eunomia, good order, is what Sparta was ostensibly striving for in all of their weird and strange policies. This concept flows through every decision that they made when it comes to how their polis operated and how they constantly strived for this ideal of perfection.

• 46:59Liv Albert?

  The end result of all their policies like the Agoge and the Sistea was Eunomia, and thus was connected to the ever-important Lykorgus. Again, we're gonna get into him a bit more, but needless to say, like, if you can tie a practice to Lykorgus, then you're tying that practice to Eunomia, good order, this Spartan ideal. Like, he was the person who they thought introduced it all to them. And so it all ties back together to this, like, just looking back on your history and tradition. The goal was to essentially make their society function at, almost as like a well-oiled

• 47:40Liv Albert?

  machine, which leaves no space for that wonderful thing that we come across time and time again, you know, human infallibility. This endeavor to create a perfect, a good order, good society, was the reason that the Spartan city-state worked so well, until it didn't.

• 48:01Liv Albert?

  Because, and we'll get into it in future episodes, but Sparta was like really, really successful for a long time. And then finally, they just really, really weren't. And both of those events, not fully events, but both of those things from their history are completely tied to the same issue. This tradition, this conservatism, worked really well for them until their population declined to such a degree that they just could not still be around. And they kind of just crumbled. Everything they'd built, the way they'd become, this absolute powerhouse in the whole of the Greek world, just fell apart. But, obviously, that is for another day.

• 48:46Liv Albert?

  Sparta was intricate and mind-blowing as a place, and there is still so much to say about them.

• 49:09Liv Albert?

  Oh, nerds, nerds, nerds. Can you believe I have so much to say about Sparta? Like, because I can't. These episodes, they're so long. This one was 7,000 words. What am I doing? We have so many of them. Like, actually writing this episode led me and Michaela to realize that we have to do an entire episode dedicated to women in Sparta, which means, at least at this stage, there's going to be another episode of the series. Because women in Sparta, it's a really interesting group and one that's both special to the ancient Greek world, unique, but also, as with so many things in Sparta, totally misunderstood and misrepresented in the modern world. Like, just like I said earlier, like, women were treated differently in Sparta and maybe marginally better, but they weren't actually treated well. They didn't have any kind of real equality.

• 49:53Liv Albert?

  A feminist or matriarchal state, Sparta was not. And while this episode again is long enough, so I will just finish it up as usual by reminding you all that there will be also a special Spartan Q and A episode to answer any and all of your burning Sparta questions. So make sure to submit those questions at mythsbaby.com/questions. And as always, here is a five-star review by one of you amazing listeners. Please consider leaving me a five-star rating or review. They mean the whole world to me and seriously, absolutely help to keep this podcast going. Without downloads and reviews, I am nothing, which is why I love them. Plus, they're nice and they make me smile. Sometimes they pull me out of a bad mood. They mean a lot. This one is from Kara Mia D. in the States.

• 50:35Liv Albert?

  "Love this podcast. I'm a big fan of mythology, especially Greek myths, and this podcast is simply amazing. I love the humorous way each episode is told." Straight into the point, Kara. I love you. Thank you. "Let's talk about Myth Baby, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians and handles so many podcast-related things, but for this series, Michaela gets the biggest extra special shout-out because, again, she always helps me, but like this one, oh my god, we've been working on the scripts together. I would not have been able to handle all the history without her, let alone all of the research that she did and just had access to because she's going to university. Lifesaver." "Stephanie Foley works to transcribe the podcast for YouTube captions and accessibility. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the ancient Mediterranean by becoming a patron,

• 51:20Liv Albert?

  where you'll get bonus episodes and more. Visit patreon.com/MythBaby or click the link in this episode's description." I am Liv and I love this shit quite a bit if you couldn't tell.

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