Were the Spartans so bad? Have we just been brainwashed by Athenian propaganda?

>Were the Spartans so bad?
Were you Spartan or Perioikoi? No.
Were you literally anyone else? Hell yes.

>based Athenians
>let prostitutes advise important members of government
>women so ugly Pericles needs to make a law that forces Athenians men to marry them or they lose their jury bucks

Tell that to the citizens of Melos, Samos, Amphipolis and every other city state that got to enjoy Athenian hegemony. There's a reason the Athenians spent as much time fighting their own "allies" as they did fighting Sparta.

i by no means like sparta, but tbf all our sources on them are from later sources that repeated accounts from past writers or are derived from athenian accounts. I think its safe to say some features of their society were probably misunderstood and exaggerated by contemporaries, even if we can't deny what their political system was pretty exclusive. just look at polybius' misinterpretation of the roman republican constitution. for all we know, aristotle's provision of the constitutions of carthage and athens are also tendentious to emphasize his political theories. we just don't know whether the spartans were as hardcore as it said, or maybe just something of an authoritarian monarchy with a feudal system (conjecture on my part desu)

I'm not sure how oppressive athenian institutions and control were, though undoubtedly there was some sort of forced tribute, but maybe they revolted because the greek poleis tradition (or the idealized version of it that emerged after the Persian Wars) emphasized freedom from domination and independence. Was Spartan control considered more humane before the peloponnesian war, or did their methods only become apparent after they gained ascendancy over athens? as far as i know sparta really just wanted to preserve the status quo and favored oligarchic constitutions in other poleis b/c of how their political system was constituted.

This last point leads me to wonder why the spartans didn't expand their territory, or promote similar spartan constitutions instead of just oligarchic ones. in thucydides and the kagan book i read my impression was that they only wanted to establish oligarchies. is this a clue that the spartans were just some sort of oligarchy, except a little more authoritarian? or is it an example of spartan sense of superiority and their doubts that others could follow their rigorous system?

>Have we just been brainwashed by Athenian propaganda?
They're the ones who lost though. If anything we'd think the athenians were shit.

>They're the ones who lost though.
they did lose, but they weren't eviscerated like carthage was. they recovered from the peloponnesian war and even regained their empire for a time, before the macedonians came down.
what it comes down to, though, is that the athenians had a culture of literacy and writing and the spartans didn't (or if they read and write it was out of necessity not an end in itself). maybe another question is why so much athenian writing exists and those of other city states do not. We could argue that the athenians wrote stuff worth keeping, but there might well be another explanation, like the fact that the romans ruthlessly destroyed corinth or thebes got destroyed by philip ii (could be wrong here)

Sparta only started to introduce oligarchies to other Greek city states after they saw Athens doing the same thing with democracy.
It was all well and good to keep the tribute coming through military force and garrisons of colonists, but they realised that like in Athens itself, the best way to control the masses was to give them a say in government. It might look like a good thing, but Athens introduced democracy to the Greeks to keep them under their control, while Sparta introduced oligarchy because they knew an empowered elite with longstanding interests in their polis was the best defense against the demos co-operating with Athens for their own short term gain.

Sparta's political system was a bit more complex. They had a monarchy, but by Thucydides time their power was balanced by a very powerful aristocracy. Not really an oligarchy, but closer to Athens under the rule of the 400 than anything else.

>the romans ruthlessly destroyed corinth
Corinth was pretty much a ghost town by the end of the Peloponnesian War because of the Athenian's blockade.
They goaded the Spartans into declaring war on Athens, suffered the most for it then blamed Sparta for their misfortunes and teamed up with Thebes to take them down. Corinthian history from 421BC is pure suffering.

ty for clarifying some things..

>Corinthian history from 421BC is pure suffering.
i remember the blockade now, but surely the city recovered? and if they were so weak why did they bother to fight against the romans? i've read somewhere that corinth also had a pretty decent city state culture so theres that. why don't we see any conservative apologists for aristocratic rule outside of the athenians plato and aristotle?

also
>It might look like a good thing, but Athens introduced democracy to the Greeks to keep them under their control, while Sparta introduced oligarchy because they knew an empowered elite with longstanding interests in their polis was the best defense against the demos co-operating with Athens for their own short term gain.
i mean athenian democracy had its flaws, but to me this sounds like a smart move. what the athenians were doing was empowering one set of economic interests or elite factions against the traditional agrarian and aristocratic lineages in the cities. your argument for oligarchy is reasonable, and indeed many a greek politician would have looked with horror to athens as it executed its own experienced generals or launched impractical expeditions, but clearly conservative oligarchies had their share of problems and Athens was more than a match economically and culturally, and despite all the problems experienced in the peloponnesian war, socially resilient and resourceful

>Were the Spartans so bad?
Greeks overall preferred them to Athenians. They just had some peetty fucked up traditions but usually treated other city states pretty well. They refused to destroy Athens after beating them in the Peloponisian war for example which is what the Peloponisian league wanted

>becomes the center of Greek culture and ally with Persia to fuck them up and then let Persia control Greece because why not
This is just lying. Athens also tried to ally with Persia and Persia didn't conquer Greece afterwards

>Were you literally anyone else? Hell yes.
So why did half of Thrace joined Brasidas if Athenians were so good and Spartans so bad? Spartans were way more merciful than Athenians that just went to cities that declared neutrality and raised them to the ground and enslaved all their population. Sparta just forced Athens to destroy its walls and didn't enslave them or commit any genocide against them.

Was X so bad? Have we been brainwashed by Y propaganda?

>Persia didn't conquer Greece afterwards

The Spartans gave Persia the ok to retake the Ionian city states in Asia Minor though, who started the Persian Wars in the first place by asking Athens to help them become independent. It wasn't until Alexander that all the Greeks were "free" from Persia and could enjoy Macedonian tyranny.

youtube.com/watch?v=fpaQpyU_QiM

Those cities were their enemies at the time. Remember that Athens asked for the support of Persia multiplentimes as well

Lmao fucking niggers

True, but if we're going to play the "X asked for Sparta's help so they're the bad guys" game there isn't a Greek polis east of Sicily that isn't guilty at one time or another. Sparta's cause in the Peloponnesian war was to "liberate the Hellenes." Selling the Ionians from one master to another isn't liberating them.

The only thing Sparta had going for them was great men like Brasidas and Gylippus and the fact that they didn't attack their weaker polis and tell their citizens they're to blame because "the weak must suffer what they must."

>Sparta
More like Little Persia.
>Leonidas own nephew and regent of Sparta would ally with Xerxes and plot a 3rd invasion but the brave Athenians discovered this when he started dressing and talking like a Persian nobleman and managed to get him arrested/executed
>Admiral Lysander, aka "Lyzanderbanus" would ally/have a homosex relations with a Persian Prince so the latter would aid him in his conquest of Athens by supplying the Spartan Navy with endless tiremes to crush the crucial Athenian one and thus end the Peloponnesian War with Spartan overlordship over Greece with Persian interests
>the King's Peace, which ended the Corinthian war was heavily Spartan favoured in accordance with Artaxerxes II love for his savage little shitstarters by only meeting with Spartan ambassadors and blocking the Aegean with his ships so the Athenians were forced to accept the terms or face heavy blockades
>during Alexanders conquest of Persia, King Agis III of Sparta would travel to Anatolia to meet Alexanders Macedonian host in favour of the Persians and do a similar last stand as Leonidas did for the dramatical effect
fugging traitors

>believing Athenian propaganda
>calling Lysander a traitor when Alcibiades was doing the same thing to literally everyone, except he was such a prick even the Persians realised an alliance with him and Athens would have been a bad move
>not knowing that everytime that Athens gets BTFO is another time Greeks can sleep easy without fear of paying
""tribute""
>not appreciating the Spartans flaunting the freedom they won through the staying on at the peak of their martial prowess for one hundred years by rubbing it in the face of Macedonian barbarians.
Go back to being dead curse of the goddess.

>Sparta's cause in the Peloponnesian war was to "liberate the Hellenes." Selling the Ionians from one master to another isn't liberating them.
But the alliance with Persia was because Athens tried to ally with them and most importantly was that Athens wasn't willing to accept their peace treaties even when the lost was certainly over for Athens and were force to destroy all their power with one swift and even then they didn't raised Athens and enslaved Athenians which is more mercy than Athenians ever showed in the comflict. Most polis preffered Sparta over Athens for a reason. Don't get me wrong Sparta did a lot of messed up things but I honestly think that they were the good guys during the Peloponisian wars

>Raised to the ground

I agree, the Spartans and their allies were definitely in the right, but claiming that everything they did in the Peloponnesian War was as heroic as what Brasidas pulled off in Thrace is a barefaced lie.
In Athens' case, I can't name one good thing they did after Cimon.

>the Peloponnesian War was as heroic as what Brasidas pulled off in Thrace is a barefaced lie
Yeah but they were always more honorable in the end.At least when dealing with none slaves

Ofc they are fucking bad. Just look at those little faggots and laugh.
τ.Αθηναίος

>>not appreciating the Spartans flaunting the freedom they won through the staying on at the peak of their martial prowess for one hundred years by rubbing it in the face of Macedonian barbarians.
>mfw Sparta a hundred years after their heydey was a museum piece and tourist trap for bored Greco-Roman gawkers to come and watch all the backwards weirdos beat each other into a bloody pulp for no particular reason.

Man, what's Sparta up to, nowadays? You never hear about it, anymore. Is it gone? Irrelevant? I mean, Athens is the capital of Greece, where's Sparta?

levelled by the wromans.

Also whoever that autist is claiming we don't have original sauces for the Spartan political system what is the Old Oligarch and Hellenica? Xenophon was a Spartaboo and talked about their customs a lot you fucking Lacedaemonian loving faggot.

>chauvinistic

Spartan women had more rights and life outside their homes than Athenian women ever had.

>First Book of Maccabees 12, 6-23:
>6:Jonathan the high priest, the senate of the nation, the priests, and the rest of >the Jewish people send greetings to their brothers the Spartans.
>23:A document has been found stating that the Spartans and the Jews are >brothers and that they are of the family of Abraham

>the family of Abraham

Veeky Forums is retarded

>So why did half of Thrace joined Brasidas if Athenians were so good and Spartans so bad
Because Sparta wasn't in the position where they have the navy nor ground forces that they could send there in case they ever got betrayed by them or revolt from their rule, while Athens did.

> Spartans were way more merciful than Athenians that just went to cities that declared neutrality and raised them to the ground and enslaved all their population
They only did that in rare instances to make a point; most cases they just execute the ring leaders or exile the leading citizens. Sparta also destroyed a few cities (I think Phocis).

>Sparta just forced Athens to destroy its walls and didn't enslave them or commit any genocide against them.
They did that just to spite Thebes and Corinth who really wanted them gone so they could resume regional control.

Athenian propaganda. If they didn't fuck themselves by stunting their own growth, they would've ruled the Mediterranean, maybe even more than alexander was capable of conquering.

The eternal Attican shows his face!

>whoever that autist is
i didn't say anything autistic. i was just giving my opinion based on what i know

>Old Oligarch
lol. old oligarch was athenian, and his sperging against democracy does not qualify him as an objective observer...
> Xenophon was a Spartaboo
possibly. but polybius was also a romaboo and that didn't stop him from misinterpreting the roman political system, as I stated in my post. Xenophon wasn't totally reliable observer either

>a lot you fucking Lacedaemonian loving faggot.
read my post again.