Can someone explain to me why the Spartans are remembered as such badasses?

Xenophon:
“He taught the children from a desire to render them more dexterous in securing provisions, and better qualified for warfare.”
“willingness to obey, prevailed among them”
“and instead of their clothes to make them delicate, Lycurgus required them to become used to a single garment all year round, the idea being that thereby they would be better prepared for cold and heat.”

Speaking of Lycurgus, his awesomeness is recorded by Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato, Polybius, Plutarch, and Epictetus.

Not Spartans.

Pretty sure there are accounts pointing to no pederasty in Sparta.

Pederasty/pedophilia was unacceptable, but men did fuck other men.

I cant remember the location but the
spartens were pushed in to an area where they couldn't escape. The beseigers eased back to make a discision on what to do because they were known not to surrender. During the council which it was mentioned about spartan heroics someone said have they ever been asked to surrender, no one could remember that in their history they ever were asked.
The spartans were sent the terms & agreed.
That said they did surrender to other greeks

How about one of you faggots gives us a source?

> Read a fucking book

Have you read Thucydides or Herodotus? They're our main sources, and whilst neither were Spartan they aggrandize the shit out them. There's not a huge amount of anti-Spartan propaganda in ancient sources actually, and most Athenian intellectuals seem to prefer Spartan oligarchy over democracy.

Actually, the Spartans were so revered as military masters in Greece because of the Agoge, depicted in 300 to some degree. Deformed/unfit infants were thrown off a cliff to purge the gene pool of such undesirables.
The actual Agoge was an intense training regiment that dominated Spartan life from about 6-18 years old, when the young men would then serve an obligatory 2? years in the military before graduating to real military service.
This made Spartans physically capable of doing things like running across an entire battlefield and THEN fighting for two hours in a heaving press of shields, shit, piss, spears, and yelling, scared men.
Spartans also held a fanatical obsession with death before dishonor. Spartans, early on, would choose to fight to the death before retreating. This was relatively uncommon for Greek soldiers, who were mostly levied hoplites from any given polis. The Spartans were among the first "professional" soldiers of Greece, and were thus feared for their ability to lay down their lives before thinking about defeat as an option.
However, after the Persian Wars, Spartan society began to divorce itself from the Agoge and eventually the institutional training and fanaticism that had made Sparta the military powerhouse it is known for today, gave out completely.

Well seeing as most hoplites in ancient Greece were members of the aristocracy, its very possible they were well educated, especially if they were Athenian.

People seem to forget that the backbone of Greek military was made up of the upper echelons , i.e those that could afford expensive armour and weapons.

>A peculiar quality of the Theban Sacred Band helps to explain this wider move toward training: the corps of three hundred was made up, we are told, of one hundred and fifty pairs of male lovers. Among the reported advantages of this arrangement was that of exaggerating competition between the warriors: lovers competed with each other and dreaded to be shamed in the presence of those they loved. Once again the competitive ethos of the hoplite emerges. But using such relationships between men as a font of military excellence is a transparent borrowing from Sparta, where such relationships were institutionalized, played a large role in the training of boys, and were thought to contribute to bravery in combat. At Sparta lover and beloved stood beside each other in the hoplite line: before battle the Spartans sacrificed to Eros, to love.

From

>Anglo
What does that have to do with anything?

An incorrect belief of ancient greek "lineage" through western culture

Did the ancient greeks differentiate between tops and bottoms?

Were pitchers seen as more manly than catchers?

>Thucydides
Of all the sources you go with him?

Really? The man who predicted the city'd disappear?

>Suppose the city of Sparta were deserted, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe a great power existed there.

>In the Corinthian’s speech, we are told right away that the Spartans are set in their ways and are unwilling to heed new advice. As it says, “Spartans, what makes you somewhat reluctant to listen to us others, if we have ideas to put forward, is the great trust and confidence which you have in your own constitution and in your own way of life” (1.68). Unlike Athens, Sparta is all closed ears; they just assume that since they have a working constitution and a way of life that suits them well, they do not have to change their ways to confront this new issue. While this attitude is seen as being “moderate” (sophrosune) (1.68) by the Corinthians, it is alternately seen as childish in a way, for it shows a kind of “ignorance (amathea) […] when dealing with foreign affairs” (1.68). In a word, the Spartans need to wake up and heed warning to the Athenians, who are going full-throttle. If the Spartans fail to see that Athens is an imperial power ready to vanquish her opponents, they will come up short and will be grossly unprepared for the inevitable war with Athens and her allies.

>In line with this thinking, the Corinthians further plug away at the Spartans for being too calm in the face of adversity. The Corinthians make the point that Spartans have the reputation of being safe and secure as a power, but they also make it clear that this way of doing things will only lead to ruin. In fact, it has almost led to ruin in the past against the Persians

The English language market for ancient History is over-saturated, as every college cunt in the world can read it and every book is translated to it, which causes writers to pursue extreme lengths in publishing "innovative" historiographies, like pretending loot-seeking, non-aristocratic, paid Roman soldiers are driven not by coin, but by motivations not unlike those of a king of Sparta.

A non-Anglo writer at least has a home market that isn't as competitive to sustain himself.

The Anglos are more expendable and easily replaceable, leading to such embarassing works.

>slave caste allows creation of professional army
>slave caste prevents deployment of professional army for long periods for fear of slave revolt

Wow, what hindsight these these homos had