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[–] 15 points 4 days ago (1 child)

It seems like slave labour gave them the freedom to do anything they wanted to do. Athens had very similar amounts of slave labour. They chose to use the free time that gave them to focus on philosophy and art. Sparta decided to make war their whole personality. It was something like boys entered military school as toddlers and didn't leave until 30.

Still, the battle of Thermopylae was impressive. Yes, eventually they lost, but they managed to hold off a force that was at a minimum 10x their size for a week.

If anybody's acting more Spartan these days, it's the Iranians. The most powerful military in the world still hasn't managed to wrest control over the chokepoint from them.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 days ago*

    1: Their particularly brutal slavery is why they had to militarize their citizens (meaning a different thing in those days btw), not why they could.

    2: The Greek alliance was expecting Thermopylae to hold indefinitely, the fortified position was considered impregnable. What was actually impressive was Persia defeating it, and the allied Greek navy fighting twice its number while inflicting decisive casualties, withdrawing in order, and then crushing the Persian fleet at Salamis and forcing the Persian army to withdraw or starve.

    Although the fleet numbers are generally assumed to be lies and historians generally think the fleets were roughly even at Thermopylae.

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