Were the Spartans actually great warriors or did they just have the best propaganda of all time?

Harsh disipline and training, I assume they practiced manourvering and close combat fairly extensively Plutarch says that "they were the only men in the world with whom war brought a respite in the training for war" (War was easier than training, surely an exaggeration but it establishes how hard they trained) States like Athens had citizen soldiers who didn't have much experience.

They trained all year when others trained 1/4 of the year.

But training isn't everything, they still lost sometimes.

1000 laconians vs 1000 athenians who wins?

Their leaders tended to not be very creative with some notable exceptions (Brasidas)

1000 Laconians ofc. The problem was, Sparta could only field ~3k hoplites at the time, while Athens could go up to 30k and then had another 50k rowing their galleys around the Aegean. Without allies like Corinth to provide manpower and without Persian gold to pay rowers Sparta couldn't have done anything.

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So clearly the Spartans are better individual warriors, you wouldn't argue that The Indian army were better soldiers than the Australian army just because there were more of them.

Right. Let me rephrase - while individual Spartan would be a better than average warrior, Sparta as a state was inefficient from militaristic POV, despite being so focused on war.

Agreed the political and economic system was terrible but on the battlefield they punched above their weight in numbers, they could have been even better though.

The Spartan Hoplite were the best Hoplites in Ancient Greece on an individual level, mostly because they were a professional army. They obviously still suffered defeats. Spartans can't into cavalry so they got wrecked by Thebes.

>this counted less than you would think

Because? I would love to hear some sources and an explanation on that, considering that Athens and other city states were entirely reluctant to face Sparta in direct confrontation.

How dishonest can you be to cherry pick examples, and so uncharitable as to leave out the context behind them?

Their slaves revolted and were put down, and the entire reason was revolved because the vast majority of the Spartan forces were away.

>It was propaganda and not very good one.

>propaganda
>by the enemy states that took shots at them whenever they could, mocking their stupidity and implying they're fags

Yeah, okay.

They were pragmatic and didn't go to fight unless there was a good reason to. Apart from that, there were many holidays, and Spartans were a deeply religious people.

[citation needed]

Where exactly did you get the exact 3000 number? And that ignores the fact that the Spartans were basically the entire Peloponnesian League.

They were, for a very long time, the most remarkable land force in the Mediterranean. And it's not just that they were smart, or that they trained hard. Spartans were wise about warfare in ways that others weren't, which is why they ended up winning almost every conflict they were in for centuries, including the PW. It's also why outsiders called on them for advice (like the Carthaginians).

But they were also conservative and traditional, and avoided going to war as much as they could. If they were even a quarter as enterprising as the Athenians were, they could've been the Roman Empire. But they weren't. And now you have revisionist fags like the ones in this thread that think Spartans were just parochial villagers, even though the Athenians (arguably the most incredible people that ever lived) feared them as much as they respected them.

>this counted less than you would think

Because Athenian and other state's hoplites were still pretty fucking good e.g marathon, pylos, and in particular Sphacteria where the spatans got fucked up by some skirmishing troops.

> Their slaves revolted and were put down
No? They were able to fortify a hill and successfully fought off Spartans for 10 years until the latter had to allow them to go free. They literally lost to a slave uprising.
> the Spartans were basically the entire Peloponnesian League.
What do you mean by this? They were the leaders, but not the only manpower contributor.

And that ignores the fact that the Spartans were basically the entire Peloponnesian League.

hmmmmmmmmmmm, Corinth by itself was close to Sparta's equal as part of the league.

They had A E S T H E T I C physiques though

I mean that by having so many allies, it's silly to just consider the Spartans as a single entity. Not everyone that fought from Athens was born in Attica or a resident there, either.

Are you serious? They won at Marathon because they charged people unexpectedly. And once again, all you people do is cherry pick examples despite HUNDREDS OF YEARS of these people retaining their reputation as great warriors and being respected for it.

>man they got fucked up a few times!!!

What the fuck did you expect? That they would win every time?

>you wouldn't argue that The Indian army were better soldiers than the Australian army just because there were more of them.
In modern times or WW2?

India has quite a disparity over the amount of training their soldiers have from the best to the worst.
But for a country as small as Australia India should have enough 'elites' or even more to compete.

I was specially arguing about how disipline wasn't everything e.g pylos-sphacteria
yeah but 10k of Australias best boyz vs 10k Indian Best boys Australia wins, probably I'm sure indian SF are pretty good.

But I already said that I don't think it was only discipline that made the Spartans as good as they were. It wasn't any one quality in particular.

Most of citizen population(male) were trained from childhood and fought a lot. So yes their troops were strong however they didn't admit new people to their citizenry so each conflict with another country made them weaker and weaker. Farms were worked by helots(serf kinda) under strict conditions. Because of that there was always danger of uprising in their homelands.(We know one with brutal results). One of reasons that greeks were successful against Persians is the mountainous territory and lots of passes. Persian army mostly consisted levies from satraps(vasal states with more freedom) so they werent all that good on individual level.

Source
perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0009:chapter=9:section=2:subsection=1
A Short History of Ancient Greece - I.B. Tauris

Sparta being overrated and the persians being diplomatic geniuses that pitted greece against itself are the two biggest ancient Greek red pills

there's a funny account of drunk English man charging a superior French fencer and winning because he had no regard for his own life and it totally caught the fencer off guard.

with similar equipment, the Spartans can only be so much better individually and collectively, melee combat will always be chaotic and luck-based, getting hit by a stray arrow or the spear from the guy 4 ranks down right into your blindspot, or someone tackling you and being trampled by your own men, or a cavalry charge catching you out of formation, sometimes shit happens. The myth that Spartans were invincible was just a myth, and the Spartans knew it. Their stoiv bark was inevitably worse than their bite, there's only so much a professional force can do.

When the thebans made deeper ranks and smashed through the spartan lines, they were too caught up in the old way to change, and their rigid lifestyle became their undoing when tactics became more important than individual prowess. My the time Macedon is knocking, everyone already knows the myth is a myth, because they had already been humbled by better tactics multiple times before.

Ultimately their city state model was untenable, warfare changes tactically and they couldn't change with it.

Persians had the equivalent of cardboard swords and shields vs AR-15's and bad training.
But discipline was their greatest strength and (You shouldn't dispute this), the most important factor in a battle of the phalanx

>with similar equipment, the Spartans can only be so much better individually and collectively, melee combat will always be chaotic and luck-based, getting hit by a stray arrow or the spear from the guy 4 ranks down right into your blindspot, or someone tackling you and being trampled by your own men, or a cavalry charge catching you out of formation, sometimes shit happens. The myth that Spartans were invincible was just a myth, and the Spartans knew it. Their stoiv bark was inevitably worse than their bite, there's only so much a professional force can do.

Except that there were no archers and next to no cavalry in traditional hoplite wars.

>When the thebans made deeper ranks and smashed through the spartan lines, they were too caught up in the old way to change, and their rigid lifestyle became their undoing when tactics became more important than individual prowess. My the time Macedon is knocking, everyone already knows the myth is a myth, because they had already been humbled by better tactics multiple times before.

Because Sparta's history starts in the 4th century. Boy, you must think the French are surrender-monkeys too, huh? After all, they surrendered in WW1. Let's forget that they were considered the most unparalleled fighting force for centuries.

Like, yeah. The fact that they started losing at one point totally rewrites the centuries in which the Spartans were the Astartes of Hellas.

>But discipline was their greatest strength and (You shouldn't dispute this), the most important factor in a battle of the phalanx

Perhaps, but there's more to winning a war than a single battle. The Spartans clearly showed they were more than just authoritarian nitwits during the Peloponnesian War, when they beat the Athenians at their own game.

>inb4 Athens beat itself meme

I wonder who is behind this post

I mean the Spartans go to strategy at least early on was raid Athens once a year do some fairly cosmetic damage and then go home, hardly a brilliant strategy, Athens was even winning towards the end with a string of naval victories before they threw it away. The beat themselves meme is at least partially true, the Sicilian expedition was a completely pointless and avoidable disaster

I'm actually a Frenchaboo but Sparta is meme history. They had a small period of domination of a tiny little area at a tike where the persian king of kings is ruling over the biggest empire that side of the world had ever seen. During their height they were a tiny little citystate that bullied some neighbors and then was promptly never relevant ever again, whereas other greek citystates are still cities to this fucking day. Nothing but spartan ruins. They accomplished nothing socially but a reputation for being smug assholes, none of their conquerors saw any worth whatsoever in their cities or lifestyle, and they promptly disappeared as an irrelevant experimental oddity that failed.

>I mean the Spartans go to strategy at least early on was raid Athens once a year do some fairly cosmetic damage and then go home, hardly a brilliant strategy

That's because they wouldn't come out to fight them, lol. You don't seriously think they went there just to do that, do you? They--wrongly--thought the Athenians could be sensitive enough to be triggered. In a way, they kind of were, though not in the way the Spartans wanted them too.

>The beat themselves meme is at least partially true, the Sicilian expedition was a completely pointless and avoidable disaster

Look, I find this to be a ridiculous thing to go by. There are countless examples in history of a side doing something retarded. Yet we don't go making them out to look like the victors. The Athenians LOST. It's that simple. THEY FUCKING LOST. And to say that their actions had nothing to do with Spartan mind-games and other provocations is seriously underestimating the nature of psychology in war, and also the intelligence of the Spartans.

>They had a small period of domination of a tiny little area at a tike where the persian king of kings is ruling over the biggest empire that side of the world had ever seen

You mean about 400 years? During which they also won the Peloponnesian War, despite starting out from a retarded position of a inferiority?

>During their height they were a tiny little citystate that bullied some neighbors and then was promptly never relevant ever again

They didn't "bully" anyone. They defeated the Argives an ensured peace in the Peloponnessus. If they were bullies, the others could've united against them and done away with them at any time. Sparta directly relied on the trade network established with its allies for many of its resources. So, no, they weren't "bullies" and they were very relevant for a very long time, because they were seen as the de facto leaders of the most powerful political entity in Hellas until the rise of Athens.

>. You don't seriously think they went there just to do that, do you?

They did it like 10 years in a row with nothing changing so yeah pretty sure they realised at some point that's what they were going over to do.

They invaded Sicily in the first place because, again, they didn't want to directly confront Sparta.

> You mean about 400 years? During which they also won the Peloponnesian War
Not him, but what are the other wars they had fought and won in this period tho? After the Messenian and Persian wars, they fought to a draw in the Frist Peloponnesian war, won the second thanks to Persian gold, fought the Corinthian War to a draw and lost every war afterward. I've got an impression they were the most peaceful Greek state during the 5th century, and not exactly successful at wars in the long run.

As you know there's a scarcity of resources from this period, and most of the things we know are almost always false. Like the Lelantine War, which is pieced together from totally disparate facts.

But what we do know is how the Athenians treated the Spartans (aka avoiding direct confrontation despite their numerical superiority) and how their allies treated them (with deep reverence and respect) and how foreigners treated them (like the Carthagineans that actually started winning when a Spartan came to guide them, and lost immediately once he was gone).

So, yeah... It's fucking beyond retarded to look at all these facts and think it's just a "meme." I would argue there's enough here to make a strong inductive argument that the Spartans were, in fact, as awesome as we are lead to believe.

A time during which Athens got the plague and people started going so crazy that they executed their own generals and ultimately decided to go to Syracuse.

I wonder who was right... You and other armchair theoreticians that think the most experienced and renowned war-fighting force was just an exaggerated meme and that Athens lost because it was randumbbbxddd or the people that ended up winning the war?

I'm simply fucking amazed at how many reasons people managed to find to not give the Spartans credit for winning a war, when they clearly did. This is as bad as stormfags saying Hitler was a genius, but he was fighting on too many fronts. NOBODY MADE HIM DO THAT. NOBODY MADE THE ATHENIANS DO DUMB SHIT, EITHER.

Yeah Sparta won but it was sparta and 6 gorilllion allies so it sort of diminishes their accomplishment

You realize Athens was sitting at nearly a population of 300k (according to some scholars) at the beginning of the war... And that's not counting its other allies on the Ionian coast. Pretty sure the numbers weren't so disparate; I'm not even sure they were favorable to the Peloponnesians.

All of Athen's allies hated her and betrayed her as soon as they possibly could, also the plague reduced some of that population, towards the end it truly was athens vs errybody AND Persian $$$

* I should say most, I believe some allies like Samos?, were actually fairly loyal but they were the rare exception

t. Victor Davis Hanson

>An old man wandering around the Olympic Games looking for a seat was jeered at by the crowd until he reached the seats of the Spartans, whereupon every Spartan younger than him, and some that were older, stood up and offered him their seat. The crowd applauded and the old man turned to them with a sigh, saying "All Greeks know what is right, but only the Spartans do it."

Battle of Leuctra, they knew what was right, too bad they couldn't pull it off and were never relevant again.

Inb4, PHILIP wuz scared of us, "IF"

Like allying with persians? :^)

fuck wez losing the war, Quick jamal get me somma dat Perisan Booty, i dun give a fuck if we have to sell out some of our boyzz.

I actually don't like VDH, his theories about hoplite warfare are bullshit and he unironically thinks Athens were the good guy because MUH DEMOCRACY. Still, this doesn't mean Sparta wasn't a totalitarian paper tiger.

Like allying with persians? :^)

Have to say, that made me laugh more than it should have.

the one revolt after the earthquake that killed thousands and left Sparta in ruins?

New to the thread, but in regard to , Hansen thought the the raids into Attica were quite serious, and if they got the silver mines at Larium, they could have been devastating.

At least in a War Like No Other, he throws quite a few rocks at the Athenians. The Boeotian are about the only people he's positive towards in that conflict. I don't even think he's a democracyboo, he's more of a fanboy of his idealized form of hoplite warfare of citizen militias, and once people start moving away from that model, he gets mad at them, which is probably why he likes the guys who went the least in that direction at that time.

>Romans
>the best argument for inclusivity and cultural integration

don't see the aussies maintain a military base at siachen.

With the exception of Samos, the Ionian Greeks were better off under the Persians than the Athenians.
Just look at the original Ionian Revolt compared to revolts against the Athenian Empire. They were fighting for the right to be free from foreign domination, not because they feared for their lives and the future of their city like the Melians and Cretans. It was better to sell them off to satrapy then allow the Athenians to continue to raze dissenters and take exorbitant tribute at swordpoint and ensure the rest of the Hellenes would be free. I don't think it's a stretch to say that during the Peloponnesian War more often than not the Spartans were doing something right even when they did something wrong.

Again, consider the Spartan general Brasidas. He tells the Thracian colonists that they're either with him and the liberation of the Hellenes from Athenian domination, or they're against him, in which case he'll burn their crops. What do the colonists do? After Brasidas dies in battle against the Athenians they tear down the monuments to their founder and build statues and temples dedicated to the Spartan.

>Romans, who had tne opposite position on foreigners, are the best argument for inclusivity and cultural integration
hmm

You don't need your allies to be loyal when they have no ability to successfully rebel against you.

>400 years
>only legacy is SPARTANS STORNG AND FIGHT GOOD

truly makes Athens look like shit.

Reminder that if you are too insecure to want to include and forcibly integrate foreigners into your culture, enslaving whole populations and massacring all of their men, then you are quite possibly a bigot. The Romans did it and they lasted so long they must have known what they were doing.

This is when I knew it was bait

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You guys are retarded. There's a difference between being a great warrior and winning every war you fight. The Spartans were man for man, the strongest fighters of any Greek state by a mile. Their autistic child rearing and training regimen saw to that. But the consequence of having a society built of a small number of the best soldiers you could possibly produce, and a large number of helots who were just about fucking useless, was that you can't fight a war that well.
Athens had a navy and a military where everyone served, that beats 26 really fucking good soldiers any day.

This thread is on /k/ too.

>>while Romans, who had tne opposite position on foreigners, are the best argument for inclusivity and cultural integration.
Uh..yeah. The Romans ended up getting massacred by those same foreigners.

>who was Stilicho

(((You)))

>Sphacteria
11,000 men vs 440.

With the marines of the fleet, meaning athens had plenty of their own fucking hoplites.

Please fuck off.

>look mommy, i'm projecting and strawmanning

That was never my point, retard. I'm only saying that the fact that Spartan victories aren't documented doesn't mean they were not, in fact, the greatest fighting force in the Greek world.

But the Spartans were clearly more than just that. They were defenders of freedom and decency, and were respected by their allies. They managed to form a league that brought down a tyrannical state.

Obviously, Athens is cooler than Sparta. They were a democracy, they wrote plays and philosophical works, and they almost became a full-fledged empire. They are, in many ways, what people think of what they think of Greece.

But that doesn't take away the accomplishments of the Spartans, nor does the success of one diminish the other. Quite the contrary, it's only by the virtue of the fact that they're both so remarkable and unique that the Peloponnesian War stands as the most interesting conflict in mankind's history.

You obviously haven't read Thucydides if you thought that was my point, follow that comment chain back :)

You're right, open the gates and let the new europeans come!

He is right, y'know?

>Were the Spartans actually great warriors or did they just have the best propaganda of all time?

yes

The spartans were arguably the best infantry of the greek world which was the best of the antiquity until the romans came along.

>while Romans, who had tne opposite position on foreigners, are the best argument for inclusivity and cultural integration

That's the nice way to say they enslaved them then ended up massacred by them when they began to consider those foreigners as equals.

Not really, I mean the while the Spartan system ultimately wasn't very good they were, at least by most standards great warriors. Also you cant really compare the roman position on foreign relations and "integration" to modern day states.

According to Veeky Forums everyone except Third Reich was a meme.

This, say what you want about politcal systems but during Sparta's prime only a fool would claim that an individual spartan hoplite would be more than a match for any hoplite from any other city state.

Spartans unironically fielded only 440 troops? That's very brave but also very stupid.

440 spartans = 10000000 Athenians.

T. Epitades.

Actually athens treated their ``empire`` subjects ``well``. Until they had problem, war made them lose lots of monies so they had to get it from other city states under their control. If there wasnt real there athen`s subjects were good. However I would prefer to ruled by fellow greek than persian if i was greek citizen living in that age.