We all know that 300 is essentially just a fantasy movie, but I want to now how "based" the spartans actually were.
I know they were apparently quite formidable, but in terms of how effective they would be in a large scale battle, were they renowned or well known for fucking people up? Or just pretty tough bastards?
Socrates on the Spartans' obsession for short phrases and economy of words:
"... they conceal their wisdom, and pretend to be blockheads, so that they may seem to be superior only because of their prowess in battle ... This is how you may know that I am speaking the truth and that the Spartans are the best educated in philosophy and speaking: if you talk to any ordinary Spartan, he seems to be stupid, but eventually, like an expert marksman, he shoots in some brief remark that proves you to be only a child".
Sauce is Protagoras
Also dig up some Lycurgus quotes, we may not know how historical he was, but he knew the ways of banter.
As far as Leonidas is concerned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe
>>877373
Dramatized, yes. Inaccurate, no. They didn't emphasize the thousands of other Greek troops in support, but they appeared. Spartan culture best culture.
>>877415
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe
Love that.
"From my cold, dead hands."
>>877415
So Spartans were superior to Athenians, I take it.
autistic, self-centered elitist fucktards
>>877373
>No spartan can resist a bribe
They were only "based" as long as they were stuck in their bumfuck boring town with nothing to indulge themselves in. You have a lot of stories about Spartans leaving Sparta and starting to behave very badly. One of the reasons Leonidas went off to fight at Thermopylae is to be out of town when the investigation for his alleged embezzling was going on.
>>877373
(1)
The biggest advantage the Spartans had were their selection and training process.
Most city-states took anybody willing and able to fight, regardless of their ability, and without a good selection process, you are going to have a shitty force. Cowards, shitheads, and the weak, will ALWAYS drag down the decent dudes, and without a good selection process, you can't identify and weed those fuckers out.
The Spartan selection process started at birth, and continued until adulthood, at which point, you had to win a unanimous vote to be a member of a Spartan mess / unit. You could be a bad ass, brave motherfucker, and still not get accepted. This process is very effective at weeding out the scrubs who fuck shit up for everybody else.
>>877373
(2)
The average city-state took a lackadaisical approach to their training, compared with the Spartans. Often times, they might not train until right before they needed to fight, and some only trained annually. Regardless, they were citizen soldiers that had full time jobs doing other shit, and only trained and fought part time. This approach fails to create and maintain a high standard of proficiency at individual and group levels, and leads to all kinds of logistics, communications, and mobility issues.
The Spartans were full time soldiers, and all they did was train. So if they weren't working on individual skills, they'd work on group skills, fitness, or whatever. This approach allows an organization to not only achieve a high degree of proficiency, but it allows them to maintain it so it's available when they need it in a fight.
In Hoplite warfare, the best units were usually on the right side of the formation to help keep it on line, which means that the best units would usually be facing enemy scrubs across from them. In a coalition fight, as most fights were, this usually meant that the Spartans would be on the right, and they would be facing the shittiest troops from any given city-state, which is one of the reasons they were so successful.
Interesting to note, however, that the Spartans didn't do nearly as well against the elite units of any given formation, and they sometimes got their asses kicked.
>>877373
An anecdote has it that when Philip II sent a message to Sparta saying "If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta", the Spartans responded with the single, terse reply: αἴkα, "if"
i would say prett based
>>877373
Which Greek army got defeated and eventually annihilated in Egypt by Atarxerxes I? Athenian or Spartan?
Sparta had diarchy but who was the other king during Leonidas' reign?
>>878036
Athenian. Spartans never left Greece. Athenians also got rekt in Syracuse.
>>878048
it had both Athenian and Spartan: Lysander was his general too
>>878063
sorry, he was just one of the sponsors
but they had spartans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Thousand_(Greek_mercenaries)
>>878036
>>878048
I like how the Delian League got cocky, sieged the Persians in Egypt, eventually get defeated outside of Memphis, sieged, and then annihilated. Then the war ends with Persia losing the Ionian Greek colonies only to win it back again from aiding both sides in the Corinthian War.
Its so fucking comical how much the power plays swing around between Persia, Athens, and Sparta after the end of the Persian Wars.
Spartans were actually even more based than in that movie. Check out this list of things that Spartans said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase#Spartan
>>877373
This whole "warrior" worship of Spartan soldiers is kind of a meme at this point.
>>877501
If you consider the fact that Spartans had institutionalized pederasty to be superior to Athenians, then sure.
>>877373
>300 is essentially just a fantasy movie
It's a propaganda movie.
>>878174
Actually looking into it, since 9/11 happened Frank Miller, 300 & Sin City's creator, is apparently hardcore batshit insane.
>>877415
>you will never be part of a people known especially for being able to put up sheer amounts of banter and being able to back it up
>>877569
wew lad
>>878159
>The nature of this relationship is in dispute among ancient sources. Xenophon in his Constitution of the Lacedaimonians says that Spartan customs were unsuited to pederasty: a man might aim for idealized friendship with a boy but a sexual relationship was considered "an abomination" tantamount to incest
>>878044
>Sparta had diarchy but who was the other king during Leonidas' reign?
Leotychidas
>>878192
I meant for the Spartans.
>>878223
This.
Ancient Greek and Roman faggotry has been played up by modern faggots in an attempt to justify their affliction.
They were North Korea tier and their country got turned into Roman Disneyland
>>877569
Guys, one of your Athenian slaves are on the computer again
>>878223
>Xenophon
>the Spartaboo
>>878192
Yeah but he wrote it before 2001
>>878223
>>878276
Explain Spartan marriage rituals then.
Although I wholeheartedly agree that modern homosexuals play up pederasty. For all the wrong reasons, because even though they might have idealized love between men, they still didn't make it a "sexual orientation" and criticized men who only fucked other men.
>>878329
Yeah but look up a lot of statements he's made about Iranians for example since then. He's pretty much a blatant racist now.
>To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set a democracy in your own house."
>When asked whether it would be prudent to build a defensive wall enclosing the city, Lycurgus answered, "A city is well-fortified which has a wall of men instead of brick."
>Being asked why he had not made any use of written laws, he said, "Because those who are trained and disciplined in the proper discipline can determine what will best serve the occasion."
>In answer to some of the citizens who desired to know, "How we can keep off any invasion by enemies," he said, "If you remain poor, and no one of you desires to be more important than another."
>[...] their first king Leotychidas, dining at somebody's house and observing the construction of the ceiling, which was expensive and embellished with panels, asked his host if timbers grew square in their country
>King Demaratus, being annoyed by someone pestering him with a question concerning who the most exemplary Spartan was, answered "He that is least like you."
>Responding to a visitor who questioned why they put their fields in the hands of the helots rather than cultivate them themselves, Anaxandridas explained, "It was by not taking care of the fields, but of ourselves, that we acquired those fields."
>After the Greeks ended the threat of the second Persian invasion with their victory at Plataea, the Spartan commander Pausanias ordered that a sumptuous banquet the Persians had prepared be served to him and his officers. "The Persians must be greedy," he remarked, "when, having all this, yet they come to take our barleycakes."
>Polycratidas was one of several Spartans sent on a diplomatic mission to some Persian generals, and being asked whether they came in a private or a public capacity, answered, "If we succeed, public; if not, private."
>>878403
>After Leonidas was enclosed by the enemy at Thermopylae, desiring to save two that were related to him, he gave one of them a message and sent him away; but he rejected it, saying angrily: "I followed you as a soldier, not as a postman"
>When told that Persia had more gold than any other nation on earth: "Ares (the god of war) is lord: Greece has no fear of gold"
>When someone promised to give fighting roosters that would die in combat, the Spartan replied: "Don't give me those, but let me have ones that kill in combat"
>King Philip of Macedon, wrote to the Spartans, asking whether they wished that he should come as a friend or as a foe; and they returned the answer: "Neither." The Macedonias took the advice and didn't go
>When asked 'how far Sparta's boundaries stretched?', King Agesilaus' replied brandishing his spear: 'As far as this can reach'
>When being drawn attention to the solid city-walls with its exceptionally strong construction, King Agesilaus remarked: 'What splendid women's quarters"
>In an account from Herodotus, "When the banished Samians reached Sparta, they had audience of the magistrates, before whom they made a long speech, as was natural with persons greatly in want of aid." When it was over, the Spartans averred that they could no longer remember the first half of their speech, and thus "...could make nothing of the remainder." Afterwards the Samians had another audience, whereat they simply said, showing a bag which they had brought with them, 'The bag wants flour.' The Spartans answered that they did not need to have said 'the bag'
>they resolved to give them aid.
>When someone from Argos pointed out that Spartans were susceptible to being corrupted by foreign travel, Eudamidas replied "But you, when you come to Sparta, do not become worse, but better."
>When an Athenian accused Spartans of being ignorant, the Spartan Pleistoanax agreed: "What you say is true. We alone of all the Greeks have learned none of your evil ways."
>>877373
Due to the Spartan Mirage bamboozling dozens of ancient writers we cannot really know. They must have been pretty good since they did have a reputation at the time.
>>878497
Macedonian kicked the shit out of Sparta.
