RE-AIR: Conversations: A Long and Storied History of Sparta, Modern Misuse & Misconception w/ Stephen Hodkinson
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Oh, hello there, and welcome to the last official conversation episode of this epic and mind-blowing Spartan series. This is Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! And I'm your host, Liv, who just absolutely loves getting this deep into history, even if it is so far beyond what I'm used to and definitely takes a whole lot of different brain space. Today's episode is with Stephen Hodkinson, who is one of the top names in studying ancient Sparta.

The ancient Spartan historian, basically.

Actually, Stephen approached me about being on the series, and then I googled him and realized what a fun and flattering get that he actually was. Like, half the articles I was going to use were written by him anyway. This conversation spans so much information about Sparta, from its ancient facts and truths, to its use throughout the political history of Europe and North America for the last few hundred years, to its misuse and horrifying misappropriation by the Nazis and now the far right in North America, and

beyond oh my gosh we talk a lot about the use of Sparta by the far right specifically in the United States and partially in Canada frankly I knew it was being used by the far right and like white supremacists in North America and in Europe but the extent is so far beyond we do focus on North America though because that is where Stephen's focus is but it goes it just goes so far deeper god

So much centers on that ridiculous phrase to molon labe, which I've told you about already. Come and take them. A phrase not shouted, not said with purpose by a man standing face to face with an enemy, but a phrase written politely in a letter, if it was ever even said at all, given it only appears in Plutarch. Gosh. And most importantly, the Persians did come and take them.

But then you have to reconcile this rebranding of Thermopylae as a victory. And oh my God, I'm getting ahead of myself. We get into all of these things and it's in far more detail than I could have ever given you myself, which is why I'm so thrilled to have this conversation to share. It is ultimately the reason for this series. My own desire to look at Sparta for what it was, but also to specifically look at how it is often misused today.

so that people understand the connotations of those untruths and understand the actual truths of this ancient city so we can work against these, like, modern horrifying messes, just like Atlantis. Ah! Let's go ahead and take back these ancient concepts from the racist pieces of human garbage that co-opt them for their dangerous ideologies. ♪

conversations, a long and storied history of Sparta, modern misuse and misconception with Stephen Hodkinson. Well, I'm absolutely thrilled to talk about Sparta generally. As you know, I've already recorded conversations with a number of other people on some more specifics of Spartan culture and military and sort of the general, you know, often misuse of Sparta in popular culture. But I'm

I'm really excited to hear sort of any and everything you have to say on the very specific use of Sparta by the right wing today and just any of those sort of the darker sides of the world that have sort of taken on Sparta and specifically Molon Labe and everything to do with that. How did you get into talking about this and kind of working in this part of the Spartan subject? Yeah.

Okay, well, I've been working on Sparta for an awful long time. And for the early part of my career, I was focusing upon ancient Sparta itself. And I was focusing mainly on Spartan society and economy. And I finished a big book project on that around the year 2000. And

And I thought at that stage, well, what am I going to do next? Am I going to move on to other subjects? But I thought, well, it would be a shame not to make use of all the expertise I've built up. And I was certainly trained as much in modern as in ancient history. And I thought...

Actually, yeah, there's a very interesting afterlife of ancient Sparta, all the ways in which Sparta has been used since antiquity going right up to the present day. So I devised a project whereby I combine looking at ancient Sparta with looking at the way Sparta has been used in more recent times.

And the theme I got for that was Sparta in comparative perspective. I got very interested in the question about how exceptional was Sparta or how typical was Sparta compared with other Greek states, but also how Sparta had been compared with societies at other times and places, and particularly with modern societies and the way that modern societies have used Sparta.

So that's how I started getting into what's known in the trade as Spartan reception. And I've done previous study of the way Sparta has been used in British liberal and left-wing thought in the middle of the 20th century. And then I moved on from that to looking at how Sparta was used within the US intelligence analysis during the Cold War.

So I suppose it was a natural progression, therefore, to go on from the late 20th century, the Cold War, into the early 21st century. And of course, the great stimulus for that was the appearance of Zack Snyder's film 300, which came out in 2006. And that stimulated a lot of popular uses of Sparta that...

are new and different and the far right have latched onto that. So that's really how I got onto this topic in brief.

That's really fascinating. I would have never thought about the Cold War usage of Sparta too. So I'm kind of curious about that as well now. But of course, you know, so I'm somebody who is, I was a teenager, I was 18 in 2006 when 300 came out and I was already kind of obsessed with ancient Greece. And so I definitely have that connection point. And I'm one of those people who

over the years, slowly learned more and more about the ways in which that is, you know, it's both like has bits of accuracy and then has also, you know, has so much herodotus as we know, and then, but also has all this, like these kind of implications that really affect how we think about Sparta now. And it's utterly fascinating. I will be talking about that movie in this series on Sparta afterwards.

absolutely because it's unavoidable. But it's so interesting to me seeing it that way. But of course now, and I'm going to ramble a little bit, but hearing about the usage of it in the Cold War is also equally fascinating. So, you know, that's obviously I want to talk a lot about the far right usage and sort of the really problematizing of Sparta. But can I ask for a brief idea of how Sparta was used during the Cold War in that way? That just sounds really interesting. Yeah.

Well, Sparta was often used as an analogy for the Soviet Union. And there's two broad phases in this. In the early Cold War, so we're talking about the late 40s, 50s, 60s, there's often great interest among political figures in comparing the Cold War with the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.

And in those comparisons, they don't particularly identify Sparta with the Soviet Union and the USA with Athens. That comes rather later. But that forms the backdrop to what happens in the 1980s.

And the critical context for this is that during the late 60s and 70s, there'd been a thaw in relations between the USA and the USSR, what was known as detente. And that started to collapse in the late 70s. And then Ronald Reagan came into power in 1981 with a much more antagonistic approach towards the Soviet Union,

At least initially. Eventually he got on quite well with Mikhail Gorbachev, but initially he was very harsh on the Soviet Union, called it the evil empire. And it's in that context with this new antagonistic phase of American thinking that the intelligence community is scrambling around trying to work out how to adjust their thinking about the Soviet Union.

Because during the era of detente, they had often thought about the Soviet system as not too dissimilar from the US system. They thought they could educate Soviet leaders to Western ways of thinking about inter-power, great power rivalry. But with this new antagonistic policy, they were trying to find ways of thinking about the Soviet Union as being very different.

And this is when they picked on Sparta and they started to use Sparta as an ancient exemplar of a militaristic but economically fragile society. And this tied in with Reagan's policy of building up the US arms and military.

in order to force the Soviet Union to devote more of their expenditure on defense and to collapse the Soviet economy in that way. So if you read quite a number of intelligence community documents, you'll find these comparisons between Sparta and the Soviet Union. And it even got into congressional testimony.

Robert M. Gates, who was at the time the Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA, even said in congressional testimony that the Soviet Union is very much like Sparta. Virtually the entire society and economy is geared in a way that in which the military receives first priority.

And then going on from that, the Department of Defense even commissioned a 40-odd page paper, which is called Soviet Defense Spending, the Spartan Model.

Wow. Now, all that thinking came to an end with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But for those few years in the 1980s, it was really very prominent in U.S. thinking about the Soviet Union.

That's so interesting. I mean, as I'm a Canadian and so, you know, we have our own opinions on the States, but it's so interesting to hear that because it just I mean, even the idea of military spending, it's like, well, which country is particularly well known now for for its, you know, absolutely absurd over the top military spending? Yeah.

Yeah, it's certainly not Russia. Well, I mean, certainly Russia as well, but more so the States. So that's just, that's fascinating. And Sparta, one, two. So there's so many different reasons why that feels like an odd connection to make, but I suppose it's not out of the ordinary for them to connect to ancient Greece in that kind of way. Yes, and part of the reason for that is that

If you're going to compare the USA with any ancient Greek state, you're going to choose Athens. You're going to choose democracy. Yes, precisely. And that fits very well with the opposition that Reagan tried to create between Western democracies and the Soviet evil empire.

And so Sparta becomes the natural focus of attention. And at the time in the Ministry, in the Department of Defense, there were quite a lot of thinkers who had strong historical interests. So it wasn't at all odd for them to go back to ancient Greece and start thinking about sort of possible analogies between Sparta and the USSR.

Well, it is, you know, such a common habit to connect any kind of like Western ideas to pull it back to ancient Greece in those ways. So, yeah, it's not surprising, but it is an interesting way of looking at it. And that's something I'd never, never thought of. And then sort of an interesting...

transition then to the more modern ideas, a lot of which, like you're saying, have sort of not necessarily fully come out of the movie 300, but I think really been exacerbated by them, particularly the use of Sparta as a kind of standing up to tyranny idea and things like that in the way that these kind of groups in the States have used it as a sort of model of freedom, which is

fascinating in so many ways based on an actual Spartan history. But I'm trying to form a question around that, but I'm more so just generally really interested in it, in it broadly. So, you know, is there, is there kind of an aspect of that usage of Sparta that you, that you look at closely or that you're, you find most interesting yourself? Yeah.

Well, the aspect that I've been working on the most is the way that the idea of Sparta as a military state

or even a militaristic state, has been exploited by the right and particularly by the far right in recent years. And this is a global phenomenon. I've worked mostly on the USA, and I'll talk about that in a moment, but it is a global phenomenon that you'll find far right groups around the world making use of Sparta. So, for example, the Reclaim Australia nationalist movement is

have had a demonstration back in Sydney in 2015, in which several of the demonstrators are wearing the helmets and cloaks as worn by the Spartans in 300, and they're carrying their shields with the inverted V, lambda symbol on it. And then within Greece, the Golden Dawn political party, Chrysostom,

used to invoke Sparta as a model they'd have their annual celebrations at the site of the battle of Thermopylae and in their extreme attacks on immigrants they would often call that the cryptea which as you probably know is the

institution that some sources claim the Spartans went out, young Spartans went out purposely to kill helots. So within Greece, Golden Dawn identified itself with the Spartans. And then within Europe, more broadly, the identitarian movement

has adopted the lambda symbol in a stylized form as its basic logo. The identitarian movement exists in several Western European countries and they're typically anti-immigrant, very strongly nationalist.

And I was giving a talk in Lyon in France a few weeks ago, and it was in France that the identitarian movement was founded back in the early 21st century.

and it has its headquarters in Lyon and the Farank group there opened a boxing gym attached to their bar and they called the boxing gym 'La Gauguet' in other words the supposed name for the public education system for Spartan boys

So it's a global phenomenon. But I think the American appropriations of the Spartans have been particularly interesting because it's been quite diverse. There's been various different groups on the right,

both the moderate right but also the far right that's been using Sparta and if you like I can go into a few more details but I would love that yeah

Okay, fine. I don't want to bore our listeners with too many details, but the phenomenon that I've been looking at mainly starts during the 2010s. It starts in the early 2010s, so a few years after 300 has had its opportunity to penetrate the public consciousness.

But it also follows on from the election of Barack Obama as president. He comes into office in early 2009. And that seems to be the dual trigger, 300 and then the election of the first African-American president that formed the trigger for the far out groups to start becoming very active in using Sparta.

and the three main strands which happen roughly sequentially. The first strand is the appropriation of the phrase 'monon nabe' - 'come and take them', the phrase supposedly spoken by Leonidas at Thermopylae when Xerxes supposedly demanded the Spartans lay down their arms. Now,

In reality, as you may have been told by Ruel or by other colleagues, Bala Nabe is almost certainly a later invention. It only appears in one ancient source 500 years after the event. And even in that source, it's not a shouted response as in the film, but it's in a formal written diplomatic exchange.

But anyway, the strong belief is that in response to Xerxes' demand that Leonidas said, you must come and take our arms if you want to. And that has long been a rallying cry of the gun lobby.

In the early 10s, this use of the phrase intensifies. So, for example, there's a 2013 documentary called Monon Nabe and subtitled How the Second Amendment Guarantees America's Freedom. And the documentary's pre-release trailer includes a clip from 300 showing Leonidas brandishing his sword.

And the documentary features several established right-wing intellectuals, quite respectable people, but it was also produced in association with the far-right organisation, the Oath Keepers, which had only recently been founded in early 2009, very early on into Barack Obama's presidency. So you can see the far-right being behind this film.

And then looking at the firearms industry, there's a host of newly founded firms in the early 2010s that incorporate Molo & Lave into their name. So one example is Molo & Lave Industries based in Florida, which was founded in 2012.

And then also in 2012, the firearms manufacturer Sig Sauer introduced a Spartan range of semi-automatic pistols, which proved so popular that they even produced a Spartan II range in 2019. And

These handguns were decorated with spars and symbols. On the hand grip, there's a stylized Corinthian helmet as worn in 300. And then there's the phrase molon nabe in Greek lettering. So it's obviously so familiar to ordinary handgun owners that it doesn't need to be put in normal transliterated form.

And Molon Labe is also engraved on one side of the barrel slide. So, and this range, as I said, was so popular that it was a second range came out in 2019. So that's one strand that starts in the early 2010s, the use of Molon Labe. Then a second strand emerges during the 2016 presidential campaign.

a number of Trump's online supporters start using images from 300 in their promotion of Trump's campaign. So, for example, on Twitter in October 2016, there's a user called TotalFratForum

who posted an image of Trump standing next to and applauding the ranks of Spartan soldiers, as depicted in 300. It's a scene from 300. And the treat itself proclaims, from Sparta to Yorktown to America, from Leonidas to Washington to Trump, people fighting tyranny. Wow.

So that's very interesting. And then there's an even more dramatic example. I'm just picking up one or two examples. Back in May 2016, another Trump supporter who bears the white supremacist name Aryan Wisdom, he posts a YouTube video which goes on for about six minutes and it's called 300 Making America Great Again.

And it contains scenes from the 300 adapted to contemporary politics. And Arian Wisdom does this by superimposing the heads of modern Americans on the bodies of characters from the film. So he actually has action shots from the film, but with modern political figures imposed upon the bodies of the film characters.

So Trump, of course, his head is superimposed on the body of Leonidas and the heads of his opponents on various evil characters from the film. And so Barack Obama is depicted as the Persian envoy at the start of the film who visits Sparta, demanding a submission and whom Trump slacks Leonidas kills by kicking him down the well.

Hillary Clinton has given a rather minor role under George Soros, who's the real villain, the Hungarian-American philanthropist. And he's depicted, of course, as King Xerxes. And the video ends with Trump slash Leonidas throwing the spear that raises the face of the financier slash Persian king.

And this video was so popular that in the six months between May and November 2016, when the election took place, it had been viewed over 2 million times. And it reached over 6 million by the November 2020 election. So we have here the imagery from the film actually being used to boost Donald Trump's election campaign. So that's the second strand. Wow.

Yeah, it's quite crazy. Just taking it all in. Yeah. I was certainly aware of bits of it, but that level of taking the movie itself is so interesting and I can't help but think, and of course it's like, you can't apply this level of logic to what these people are doing, obviously, but I just can't help but think like,

The Spartans lost. They lost in history and they lost in the movie. Why is this a thing? Like, it's just, it's such an interesting choice to do that when they so explicitly lost. Yes. And of course, this goes back to antiquity, the way the Spartans themselves converted Thermopylae into a triumph. I suppose, the answer is partly within the film itself.

At the very end of 300, the film switches to the Battle of Plataea the following year, which, of course, the Greeks, led by a Spartan general, win. And in the story of 300, Laenidas orders one of the Spartans not to stay at Thermopylae,

but to go back to Sparta to tell the story. And this man is shown just before the Battle of Patea, rousing the Greek troops with the story of the Spartans' heroic self-sacrifice. And that inspires the Greeks in the year after Thermopylae to win the Battle of Patea and to crush the Persians.

So that sort of is how the film itself sort of converts the monopoly into the basis for the ultimate victory. Right, right. One thing I might have said earlier, but I'll just say it now, is that the film is more a shot for shot adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel.

From 1998. And Frank Miller was one of the consultants and executive producers of the film. And it's Miller who has this idea of introducing this character who will tell the story and therefore inspire the Greeks. That's very interesting. Indeed, yes. It is highly interesting. But that's, I think, how the circle is squared.

Right, right. That's the way they kind of make it work in their heads. That's one of the things that I found most interesting learning just doing all of this research and speaking to people is the way that even in antiquity, it was kind of turned into a victory in its own way, you know, transformed into this great thing that they could kind of hang their hats off of for the next few hundreds of years, you know. Yes. And of course, in antiquity, an honorable death in war, even in defeat,

is something to be proud of. So, for example, when the Spartans meet their ultimate comeuppance, just a century after Thermopylae at the Battle of Leutera in 371, where they're defeated quite heavily by the Thebans. When the news comes back to Sparta, Xenophon tells us that on the day after the battle,

you could see the relatives of those who died going about Sparta with their heads held high, looking radiant at the self-sacrifice that their fallen relatives have made, even in a defeat, where she says the relatives of the survivors are...

stay indoors or if any are seen outdoors they're looking gloomy and despondent even in defeat it is glorious to have given your life in that defeat also interesting I tend to just say that a lot taking all of this information and it happens every time but I'm just sort of yeah it's

all these different things of, you know, how they've sort of then been transformed into what we think of today, or even just these ideas from, from antiquity itself. And yeah, it's just, I'll just say it's interesting again, but I am, I interrupted your, your, before your third strand to talk more about 300. So I, yeah, I'd love to make sure we circle back to the, the X additional pieces of how this works in, in modern America. Yeah.

Indeed. Well, the third strand then developed during Trump's presidency. And it's the invocation by the far right of Spartan symbols and the Spartans themselves to mobilize violence against leftist opponents, particularly the loose coalition of leftist opponents of Donald Trump known as Antifa.

And the back story to this is that many of these far-right groups are anti-government originally. The Oath Keepers start as an anti-government organization opposed to the government of Barack Obama. When Trump comes into power, they do a partial rethink. Some of them are initially quite suspicious about Trump, but gradually they warm to him and come to regard him as their man.

and therefore they turn their opposition away from the federal government, at least while Trump's in power, and towards this loose coalition of leftist protesters called Antifa.

And there starts quite early on in Trump's presidency a series of pro-Trump rallies, which are often opposed by Antifa activists. And many of the pro-Trump rallies are marked by the far right wearing Spartan symbols. And it starts as early as April 2017, so just three months after Trump has got into power in January 2017.

There's a series of protests in Berkeley, California, and in one of the protests, there's images of a man carrying a black flag showing in white lettering a Corinthian helmet.

And then the words, the familiar words, molonabe. Although in this case, they're misspelt. They're misspelt, molonaps. They do love to use a sigma as an E, don't they? Yes, yes. Well, yes, the sigma is used in the E and the nu, the N, somehow becomes a pi, right?

Oh, right. Weird. I mean, to be fair, most of the flags are correctly spelt, but this is just one notable example that a lot of people have picked up on, partly because it was the first in a series. And then there's one very interesting demonstrator who appeared at a number of rallies throughout 2017, 18, and even into 2019. His real name is John Turano.

And he subsequently became known as based Spartan because he always appeared at these rallies wearing Spartan gear, and in particular, a replica Corinthian helmet. And this helmet's particularly interesting because he seems to adorn it with different symbols on different occasions. And the symbols often don't

at first sight don't seem to cohere very well. So, for example, in one of the April 2017 Berkeley demonstrations, his Corinthian helmet is wearing a Star of David symbol. It's also bearing a LGBTQ peace symbol. And then in contrast, it bears the words Lives Matter, which is purely a repost to Black Lives Matter.

And one might think that these are mutually incompatible symbols, but it's worth bearing in mind that the far right does include a segment of LGBTQ activists, even if they're not there by far from the majority. And Chirara seems to be a rather complex man who has very strong far right beliefs.

but has a streak of tolerance in him. Therefore, he can show Jewish symbols and LGBTQ symbols as well. So that's one strand. And then in August 2018, the Oath Keepers, we come back to the Oath Keepers again, they announce what they call an Upcoming Spartan Training Group Programme.

And their website has a lot about it. It appears on the website for a good 18 months between August 2018 and January 2020, just before the pandemic. And they say that their aim is to form a pool of trained volunteers to serve as the local militia under the command of a patriotic governor loyal to the constitution or a

if called upon by President Trump to serve the nation. So they're obviously envisaging a sort of a conflict in which Antifa will rise up and challenge Trump and this Spartan training group militia will be there to support Republican governors and the president himself.

It's not clear how far they got with this training group programme. They keep mentioning it for 18 months, but always in terms of, you know, we're building up these training groups. And its last appearance comes in January 2020, just before the pandemic, when they aimed to deploy a leadership and training team in Virginia,

in connection with a gun right lobby day against the Democrat Governor Ralph Northam's planned measures of gun control. And then the pandemic hits and things go rather quiet for obvious reasons. And then, of course, the Oath Keepers get wound up in the Gang of the Sixth insurrection.

So the Spartan training group disappears at that point. But it's interesting that they were building it up for so long and who knows what would have happened but for the pandemic and the lockdowns that resulted. And then all this feeds into January the 6th itself.

in the capital insurrection, and you've got men showing Spartan symbols there. There's at least two men who are, that there are shots of, who are wearing replica Corinthian helmets, again modelled upon the Spartans in 300. And there's another man carrying a black flag bearing the Le Moulin Labé slogan.

And then six days after the insurrection, on 12th of January, the extreme right-wing Republican congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, she wore a Molo Nabe face mask in Congress. And then she tweets about it provocatively the following day. She says, I don't think the fake news media likes my mask.

So going right up then, up to the Capitol insurrection and following, you've got these displays of Spartan symbols in public displays and often quite violent rallies in support of Donald Trump. So that's the third strand. So on the basis of the Capitol insurrection, I've got an article coming out in November, which will be called Spartans on the Capitol.

I saw that listed. I was, I was interested in that as well. Yeah. It's, it's just so, I mean, it's hard to, I mean, it's hard to take in and form any kind of like real thoughts around it beyond just sort of shock and, and general interest in, in kind of how it came about this way. Um,

learning the real background behind the Spartan military and how they actually handled everything and how Thermopylae became what it did has been one of the most fascinating things for me just in the little research that I have done up to this point, which is that I'm still in the really early stages of this series of episodes. And I've still sort of had my mind blown at every turn of

of how much Sparta like, you know, did actually interest themselves in their military and how, how Thermopylae turned into the sort of mythologized idea that it, that it is now. And it's been very fascinating, but then specifically to see it, I've sort of now honed myself to seeing Molon Labe wherever it might appear, you know, through obviously having my associations with ancient Greek generally, but it sort of,

It seems to pop up more and more than the more I seem to know about it. There is oddly, and this is, I assume not right wing, but there, there is a business near my house in Victoria, BC. So just this silly little town. And, um,

they it's a loan company that specializes in marine loans for like boats and jet skis and they're called spartan loans and they have molon labe written in enormous greek letters inside it's the most bizarre thing that i'll never understand they've just themed themselves around sparta in this way that it just makes absolutely no sense um and it's unrelated but very odd in this way so i'm like i'm

I assume you don't have these bad leanings, but I don't know if you know what you're doing by using these symbols for boats too, which is what's so funny. Not a group well known for their Navy. Well, that's strange. And I'd be very interested to know when that firm was founded, when it was founded in 2010, looked like these firearms firms in the USA. Yeah.

I know, I'm curious as well, because it's just, it's very odd all around. And I mean, there are other Canadian uses of mononavig. I mean,

Molo Nabe has become wound up with the anti-vax movement. So a lot of the protests in Canada, the truckers convoys, the so-called freedom convoys, a number of their supporters have been wearing Tunisian helmets and Molo Nabe slogans.

So I think this is continuing. And Catherine Bluin at, and I've forgotten what Canadian university she's currently at. U of T.

She's at UOP. Yes. Of course, you know Catherine. Yes, we're Twitter friends. Yes. And you'll have seen her Twitter feed where she lists all the people who donated and all the historical things and the connections. I'd forgotten she did that. It comes up frequently. Yes, yes. I read through that religiously when it was happening and I'd forgotten about that. So thank you for that reminder as well. Yeah, because of where I live.

the convoy that hit Victoria because we're the capital of BC they went past my apartment every week to do that nonsense and I did try to avoid looking because it was also horribly loud at all moments of the day but I didn't see any Moulin Labe here in Victoria but I do remember all of Catherine's posts and then also seeing some photos myself of the flags and things in Ottawa even so silly. Well you were asking about you know

the origins of all this and in my opinion although the particular uses I've been talking about have their own distinctive characteristics and they've been boosted enormously by the film 300 there was a much longer tradition of seeing Sparta in very militaristic terms as you rightly said earlier I mean Spartans were very efficient at war and had a very strong army in reality

they didn't devote all their time to training for war as many people think. And if you look at the way that the Spartan military characteristics are portrayed in early modern thought, say by thinkers like Machiavelli and by other thinkers in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries,

They normally depict Sparta in quite balanced ways. They acknowledge its strong martial discipline, but they're equally interested in Sparta's what they call good laws. And from their perspective, looking back at ancient republics, they think that good arms and good laws go together.

And in part, it's that if you have a strong citizen militia, you can defend yourself against foreign tyrants. But your citizens will also be invested in your republic. And therefore, you have to have a good civic structure with good laws. And so the military and the civic aspects are balanced. And that seems to be the view of Sparta today.

roughly until the 18th century and Sparta is generally seen as the arch-type or the model Greek city-state. At this period Athens is still regarded negatively because democracy for early modern thinkers is a negative phenomenon, it's mob rule. But then you get this change around the end of the 18th century

And in the context of the American and then the French revolutions, where you've got these massive political changes and the formation of self-governing, non-monarchical societies. And both in America and France, there's a turn of thought away from Sparta.

So, for example, the founding fathers in the USA, they reject Sparta as a suitable model for their new federal republic. John Adams, for example, characterizes Sparta as producing warriors and politicians and nothing else.

And Alexander Hamilton says that Sparta is little better than a well-regulated camp. For Hamilton, Sparta is a symbol of all the wars between small Greek states that would happen to the American states unless they form a strong federal unity. So Sparta is decisively rejected by the founding fathers and portrayed in very militaristic terms.

And a similar thing happens in France too. Sparta becomes associated with the excesses of the terror in 1792-1793, such that when the terror comes to an end and its leading proponent, Robespierre, is overthrown, there's a reaction against Sparta. And there's a very interesting man called Constantin-François Volnyi,

who had been imprisoned during the terror had luckily escaped the guillotine and he becomes a professor of history at the new ecole normale in paris in seventeen ninety five and in his lectures he castigates the spartan as equivalent to the iroquois of the old world

and he says the modern lycoguses lycoguses the legendary spartan lawgiver the modern lycoguses have spoken to us only of bread and of iron the iron of pipe produces nothing but blood

So he's portraying Sparta in these very martial, violent terms. And this becomes Sparta's legacy in liberal French thought after the revolution. And there's a famous thinker called Benjamin Constant who gives a major lecture comparing ancient and modern liberty. And in it, he describes Sparta as a monastic barracks.

which combines republican forms with the enslavement of individuals. So there's this decisive turn away from Sparta and then it enters British thought,

Britain is undergoing a sort of a liberal phase. There's various formats which are extending the franchise to ever-widening groups. And this is where the idea of Sparta as a military state enters classical scholarship. And you've got the liberal Ancon scholar Thomas Arnold describing Spartan institutions as chiefly military institutions.

more suited to a beleaguered garrison than to men united in a civil society. And this is repeated in very similar terms by the man who wrote a massive 10-volume history of Greece, George Grote, a history that was enormously influential within British thought. And in a history of Greece, George Grote described Lycurgus, Sparta's lawgiver, as the founder of a warlike brotherhood

rather than the lawgiver of a political community. So you've got America, France, Britain now viewing Sparta negatively in very militaristic terms. Then in the 1860s, the concept of militarism is first developed. The word first appears first in French and then in German and then in English.

in the 1860s, and Sparta becomes one of the states that's associated with this new term, alongside modern Prussia and modern Prussia, Russia, and I think it's Dahomey in Africa. So you've got all these negative ideas of Spartan militarism. And then in Germany itself, you've got Spartan martial law

values being used as a positive model within the Prussian cadet schools. There's a marvelous book about this written by Helen Roche called "Sparta's German Children" where she looks at the Prussian cadet schools and then at their Nazi successors and how she shows how Sparta was integral to the values and upbringing of these Prussian and then Nazi cadets. So

Already by the start of the 20th century, you've got this ingrained idea that Sparta is a militaristic state. The Nazis then develop that. They pick up on Sparta as a model. They even believe that they're racially descended from the Spartans. The Spartans were the first ancient Aryans from whom the modern Germans had descended.

And the very first textbook in the new Adolf Hitler schools is a textbook on Sparta. Wow. Yeah, that's right. Written by a classicist-cum-archaeologist, a man called Otto Wilhelm von Vecano. And the subtitle of this book captures the essence of how the Nazis viewed Sparta. The subtitle is The Lifestroll of a Nordic Master Race.

Wow. Indeed, yes. And then that in turn prompts a reaction in contemporary Britain during World War II, because for British liberal thinkers in particular, and this is Gristerdermil, they accept the Nazis' self-identification with Sparta, but portray it in very negative terms.

So, for example, in 1941, Gilbert Murray, who is the retired professor of Greek at Oxford, he gives a lecture in London where he compares Britain's world wars against Germany to Athens' war against Sparta, the Peloponnesian War.

And of course, Britain is Athens and Sparta is Germany. And he reviles Sparta as a reactionary militaristic land power, which sacrificed most of its earlier culture to stark efficiency in war. So you've got this idea intensified by these international conflicts. And then, of course, you've got the Cold War U.S. analogies that I mentioned earlier, which simply intensify this idea.

So by the mid to late 20th century, the idea that Sparta is a militaristic society whose citizens do nothing other than sort of fight is ingrained in intellectual culture, but also in popular culture too. And you find it in all sorts of popular histories and general popular accounts of Sparta.

And it's these accounts that Frank Miller was reading when he composed his graphic novel 300, which was the basis for the subsequent film. And his recommended reading at the back of the graphic novel draws upon a number of, recommends a number of works who all portray the Sparta in these very militaristic terms. So I think you can draw a rather circuitous line, but a line that hangs together

between this long-term change of thought that starts in the late 18th century and is very much tied in with politics and continues to be tied in with international relations in the 20th century through to Frank Miller and then to Zack Snyder and then on to the far right in the early 21st century.

Yeah, yeah. I'm fascinated by that history of it. Thank you for sharing all of that. One thing that came up when you were talking about it in my mind is the question of like when these, you know, America and France and everything, when they were

this idea of Sparta as a negative, as a militaristic society that they didn't want to model themselves off of. Do you know if there was anything that came in in terms of the practice of slavery? Because that's the thing that comes to my mind, of course, with the states and this negative idea of Sparta. And of course, you know, all of ancient Greece, for the most part, had in

enslavement, but Sparta, you know, and the helot population is obviously like a huge difference in that way. So, I mean, given that US didn't stop slavery for some time after their founding, I'm assuming it didn't come into their minds, but it's something that sort of immediately came to my mind. Do you know if there was any, if there's any recognition of that in what we know of that history? Not so much as far as I know in American thought, but it is

prominent in British thought. And again, the 18th century, and particularly the late 18th century, is the key turning point. I did a bit of work on this some years ago. And if you look at early modern accounts of the Spartans and the Helots, they are very unsympathetic to the Helots. They

portrayed the Spartans in very positive terms and in particular they take one anecdote that appears in Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus it's the anecdote in which Plutarch says that Lycurgus used to the Spartans used to get the Helots drunk and bring them into their common messes in order to show the boys what an awful thing drunkenness was and

early modern thinkers in general used this as a kind of an improving educational tale against alcoholism. They're saying to their young men, don't become drunken like these awful helots.

And that, of course, to modernize is extraordinary and really quite vile, given that the helots have been forced to become drunk. But in sort of 16th, 17th century writings, there's little sympathy for the helots. This changes dramatically.

in the late 18th century when there's this general growing revulsion against slavery per se and you can see the helots becoming regarded as an oppressed people rather than as a group to be viewed negatively.

So there's a number of groups who call themselves the helots in order to express their oppression. So you even get a situation where the small coastal town of Leith, which is dominated, this is in Scotland, it's dominated by its larger neighbour, Edinburgh.

And the citizens of Leith call themselves the Helots of Leith as a mark of their oppression by people from Edinburgh. And more seriously, in Ireland, the Catholic peasantry often adopt the term Helots for themselves as a symbol of their oppression by the Protestant landowners.

But the most interesting thing of all actually is what happens in the 1790s in the British Parliament when Wilberforce and others are bringing parliamentary motions into Parliament to try to get the slave trade prohibited. And quite a number of the parliamentary debates and those outside Parliament reflecting on the debates bring in the helots into the debate.

And the helots are used in quite different ways, but always negatively. The opponents of the slave trade will argue that the treatment of slaves in the West Indies is as bad as that of the helots. And so the helots are a negative example, but they're used in order to show how bad the current slavery is.

the defenders of West Indian slavery say our slavery is far more benign than that of the helots. We give our slaves privileges of various kinds and we don't have the crypteo going out killing our helots. Now, of course, a lot of this is

entirely fake news. It's an apologia. And the reality was, was, was far more vicious and brutal. But it's interesting that whether used by opponents of slavery or defenders of slavery, the helots have now become a negative thing. Right. And so there has been, there has been this change of thought and the,

It doesn't feed through immediately into negative views of sport as a whole, but that comes shortly afterwards in Britain in the 1830s and onwards. And of course, that's a time when not just the slave trade, but slavery itself is abolished in British dominions. Right, right. Wow. That's, yeah, taking it all in again.

Yeah, it's interesting to see it that way, especially just thinking back to the States of not wanting to model themselves off of Sparta, but also just kind of not seeing that one little little aspect that is pretty closely connected with with that group. Yeah.

oh, gosh, this is how I always find myself towards this part in a conversation is like just taking it all in and trying to figure out how to form further thoughts. Well, the stuff is pretty mind blowing, isn't it? Yeah. And obviously I've become used to it. But I remember, you know, when I first encountered this material, when I was doing my archival research, I was really as astonished as you are now, Liv.

Well, yeah, I mean, it's also something, you know, I'm sort of just slowly diving into more historical aspects on the podcast, because obviously I've been focused on mythology for a long time. And so it also uses totally different parts of my brain to take in all of this information of like, oh, this is all, you know, real historical ideas and facts. But especially I've always had a fascination with mythology.

with history broadly, but like either ancient Greece or sort of 20th century history has been my interest points. And so this, the, all the connections you've been making on that front as well as, you know, as, as further back than that is, is,

just connecting all of the forms I've, I've always, or the fascinations I've already, I've always had in terms of history, putting it all into one place. And the one thing we, we, you sort of just touched upon and perhaps we don't need to necessarily go into too much detail, but I have always been interested. And I think it makes a strong connection to, to how, how far Sparta has come in terms of the general usage of, of them as a people in their militaristic society. But I,

But the way that they were used by Nazis, you know, you hinted at or you mentioned that the textbook and everything. But but it went pretty deep, didn't it, in terms of the way that the Nazis and Hitler specifically used Sparta to sort of further their aims? Yeah.

It did indeed, yes. And I'm not by any means the expert on this. Helen Roche, whom I mentioned earlier, and the German scholar Foucault-Losemann have really investigated it in great detail. But in brief, as I mentioned earlier,

The Germans, well the Nazis, generally did think there was a racial and even a blood connection between themselves and the Spartans. They picked upon this idea of the Spartans as being Dorians who'd come down to Greece from the north, therefore they'd come from Northern Europe, loosely defined,

Therefore, they're Aryans and can be seen as the ancestors and progenitors of the modern Aryan Nordic race. As we've been discussing, they very much majored on Sparta's martial characteristics. And you may already have heard about this, but even when Germany is losing World War II, they're calling upon the image of Thermopylae,

as a sort of an image of noble sacrifice, even losing cause, obviously in the hope that, as in Thermopylae, it will turn into a victory. So when the German 6th Army is surrounded by the Soviet troops at Stalingrad,

Goering makes a radio broadcast. It's actually also coincidentally the 10th anniversary of Hitler's accession to power. And we're talking about 1943 here. He makes a radio broadcast, which is also broadcast to the troops besieged at Stalingrad, evoking Thermopylae and urging the German 6th Army to fight to the death like the Spartans did at Thermopylae.

Of course, ironically, many of the commanders of the German Sixth Army, who were often trained in classics, they were not taken in by this appeal. And they, in fact, surrendered the following day.

So the military aspect and then the eugenic aspect too, the Spartans' supposed killing of helots is often used in justification of the Nazis killing of various groups, of course Jews above all, but sort of the disabled and they bring in of course the

sparse and supposed rejection of weakling children and the story that Plutarch tells about weakling infants being exposed again probably totally unhistorical but it's in Plutarch's Lycurgus and therefore it's believed and so this and the killing of the helots supports the Nazis violence and murder of various groups

And then even on the level of agricultural policy, there's a very interesting character called Walter Darre who wrote this book called Blood and Soil. And he wrote it before the Nazis came into power. But he later on became the agriculture minister. And he introduces a new law of land tenure

which he models on Sparta's supposed Zantenia. So again Plutarch's Lycurgus talks about

farms being fixed in the family and you can't sell your farm, it has to pass down through your family to your son. And Walter Darre's new law as Reichsminister for Agriculture tries to impose a similar fixity of land tenure upon the German peasant landholders. The idea is to just stabilize German agriculture.

So even throughout all the different spheres, and there are probably other spheres too that I've never studied personally, Sparta is sort of an ever-present model of how to go about things. The only sphere where I can think off the top of my head where Sparta isn't followed is in the sphere of homosexuality.

One of the German schools ministers is actually dismissed from his post because he'd been found to be having a gay relationship with another man. And he objected. But this is what the Spartans did. The Spartans had homosexual relationships with

But his argument there didn't wash and he was still dismissed. And so that was the one aspect of Sparta policy that the Nazis couldn't tolerate. But it's also worth stressing how Sparta penetrates through German popular culture too. So there's some lovely newspaper adverts for a sun cream called Sparta Creme.

and it's made by the manufacturers of the famous eau de cologne,

And they develop the Sparta creme and they show images of a Spartan mother on the beach with her young son and she's putting the sun cream on her son. The son is sitting there wearing a helmet, a shield with Sparta creme on it and holding a sword. And so Sparta is very much sort of, you know, it's a brand name.

name too that will sell and will appeal to the public in general. How very odd. Yes, indeed. Yes. And the most frightening thing of all really is that, as I mentioned earlier, Sparta was used as a model, role model in the Nazi elite schools. And Helen Roche has noted in one of her works that had

Germany won World War II, Europe would have been governed by modern Spartans, by Germany's Spartan children, who would have been the next generation of rulers of a Nazi-controlled Europe. Mm-hmm.

Oh, that's so it's so interesting the way these things permeate. This whole idea of mine to do this series on Sparta came out of the series I did on Atlantis, which I suppose not coincidentally also included the Nazis utilizing Atlantis for their bizarre Aryan nonsensical aims. And and so, you know, these things come out of my wanting to share my

accuracy from these ancient world ideas but also specifically accuracy to counteract the modern ideas that tend towards things like Nazism and so it's yeah it's just so additionally you know

Again, I'm just I need another word, but I just keep using it to hear all of these really explicit connections. Like I certainly knew, you know, the broad idea. But I mean, going as far as the agriculture is fascinating and just the ways in which they would connect to this, this culture and so many things about it that are, you know, based in Plutarch entirely, who's writing so many hundreds of years after Plutarch.

what he purports to be explaining, you know, there, we know so little about what was actually going on in Sparta then. And everything we know is based on his, you know, whoever knows what was accurate and what was not in, in Plutarch, but certainly a lot of not accurate. So it's just, it's fascinating to see the ways in which it's been sort of

taken and utilized when so little of it is accurate to begin with. And of course, I do feel make sure I say in terms of the whole Aryan idea of Nazism and all those connections are nonsensical and based entirely in racist ideas and them wanting to connect to this ancient idea of Greece. So

uh yeah it's just oh gosh again it's so much to take in but i'm absolutely thrilled to have all this information now and all of this knowledge because i think i mean obviously i can listen to ancient history when it comes to greece forever uh but but yeah it's just there's so much here wow and i mean the other thing is uh the modern scholarship how

for so long Plutarch has been the go-to source, you know, writing so many centuries later, whereas we have this, you know, marvellous accounts by Xenophon and often neglected. And in particular, his history of Greece or Hellenica has some lovely vignettes of Spartan life in which Spartan life is, the military is not mentioned anymore.

So, you know, I don't know whether Rule or any of our colleagues have mentioned this, but there's an episode called The Conspiracy of Kynadon, or that's the modern name for it. It's the story of a conspiracy or a planned conspiracy. It never actually gets off the ground, where the lead conspirator, a man called Kynadon, takes a potential recruit on a guided tour of Sparta

in order to show the recruit how outnumbered the Spartans are. So in effect, it's a kind of guided tour of Sparta. And first they go into the agora, the marketplace, and they see the main Spartan officials and a number of 40 other Spartans doing business in the agora, political business or perhaps market business, we don't know. Then they go into the streets of Sparta and see the Spartans wandering around in ones and twos,

and then they go out to the country estates of the Spartans and they see on each estate a single Spartan master supervising the labour of a much larger number of labourers and these are obviously the helot labourers who are working in the Spartan estates. Well that image of Spartan life is very different from the image of a

a group of men who always group together and do military training. These Spartans are going about their own private business with their own independent schedules, some doing business in the agora, some going between business in the streets and others out on their estates supervising the agriculture. And that image isn't just that episode, but there's a later episode that Xenophon recounts where he

There's a certain Spartan general who's been put on trial for a military misdemeanor. He flees Sparta rather than face trial, but his son tries to intervene on his behalf. And I shan't go through the whole story, but there's a scene in the early morning in Sparta where

the king's son is trying to intercede with his father on behalf of this young man and the general who's about to go on trial. And what we see is that the king, King Agislaus, comes out of his house in the morning, goes down for a bathe in the river Eurotas, and there's

other Spartan citizens along with foreigners and even various servants who are lined up to have conversation with him or to petition him for various things. So again we've got Spartans who are free in the early morning to go about their personal business talking with the king.

And then later on in this episode, you've got this young man whose general father has fled and therefore he's got no guardian to look after him. And it's evident that the general's friends are keeping an eye on this young man, watching who comes to his house and who doesn't. And so these friends are clearly not spending all their time on military training. They're simply socialising as a group and watching

as it were, acting in loco parentis for this youth who's in his teens, given his father's absence.

So for these episodes, we get the idea that Spartan life is as much about socialising and about going about one's private business as it is about military training. It's very far from the image that we have of the Spartans spending all their time sort of on practising training for war. And yet this marvellous source has been neglected. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's just such a good example of just everyday life, just absolute normalcy in the most interesting way, especially when it comes to the ancient world, because so often we don't have evidence of what normal life actually looked like, because it was so normal that people didn't write it down, you know? Precisely.

all of these ideas that make us think that everything revolved around this military. And it's like, you know, no, they did their regular business, you know, just as much as anyone else. And they just also happened to have various other things, you know, that led them to have

the military that they did, you know, time and a lot of helots being the main reasons. And that's been so interesting for me as well to learn all of this about Sparta. It's just, there's so much more to the world. Yeah, and the important point is that the Spartans had to devote all this time to their economic and social affairs because to remain a Spartan, you have to contribute a monthly quota of foodstuffs to your common mess.

and if you fail to do that you lose your citizen rights you get chucked out of the mess and lose your citizen rights so every Spartan has to make sure that his farm is working efficiently that the produce is growing well you have enough food stuff and they need to do market business selling surplus produce and so on and they also need to socialize too because

one of the most efficient ways of stabilizing your wealth is to get good marriages for your sons and daughters and to marry into other wealthy families so that you know the wealth will come in because i don't know whether you've covered inheritance rights in sparta but basically as in other greek states and the parents properties divided among their children

And in Athens, it would be mainly among the male children. But in Sparta, it's also among the women to the daughters. And it seems quite likely that daughters have a lesser share, but they still have a share and probably at the rate of a half a son's share. So, for example, if you've got two sons and two daughters together.

each son will get, let me do the math, each son will get a third of the property. That's two thirds. And then each daughter will get a sixth of the property. That makes up the other third. And therefore, for a Spartan family, you know,

if you have children, your children are going to be poorer in the next generation than you are unless you can get them good marriages. And therefore the wealth will be coming in from, particularly you marry a wealthy heiress. And so you've got to keep up the socialising to get in good terms with men of the right sort. And that's why all these groups of friends and comrades that we see in the

uh in that trial episode i mentioned earlier uh that's why it's so integral to spartan life that's really interesting no i hadn't heard that and so that's a great addition to to all of this because i mean especially it's of course it's based on everything about my show it's very nice to hear that women got something it'd be nice if they got an even amount but something is a lot in ancient grace so that's lovely um but yeah and i know sparta too like it

it wasn't a huge population of people who were officially Spartan. So I imagine you're also working with not a huge, you know, pool of people that you can, you know, marry your children off to because you'll, you'd certainly want them to be a real Spartan if you're a real Spartan. So that's a, yeah. And an additional, it's really, it's like a lot of work to make sure that you're going to match them off with somebody worthy enough.

Precisely, yes. I mean, even at their peak that we know of, the Spartans are only 8,000 citizens and they rapidly decline so that by the time of the Battle of Lutra in 371, they're barely more than 1,000, maybe 1,500 at most. And Aristotle says they even drop below 1,000 because 400 Spartans are killed at Lutra.

So the numbers decline quite rapidly. And the main reason is probably that there's an increasing concentration of land. The rich Spartans are marrying rich Spartans. They're cutting poorer Spartans out of the land. And many poorer Spartans get to the level where they can no longer afford their mess contributions. And therefore, they cease to become full Spartans.

So there's an intensifying need to keep up with the Joneses, to socialise like mad, to get the right connections and so on, so that most of your time is spent on these essential social and economic matters.

Right. Yeah. Wow. Spartan culture and that whole side of it, they're political or if it's if that's the right term to use, but just the way that the society functioned, you know, in all those ways that it is so unique compared to other Greek city states has been one of the things I've found most interesting as well, like.

All of these things that make it, I mean, their helot population, how small the official Spartan population was, everything you're saying about land ownership and all of that, it's just, it's so fascinating because it is just so unique compared to the other city-states. And you can kind of see why, like, I mean, the way you're describing it now, it's not surprising that they would fall to such levels when there is such stricture involved in just keeping up with being an official Spartan citizen. It feels very difficult. Yeah.

Yes, and of course, that's a difference from Athens, which doesn't have a property qualification for being a citizen. In Sparta, you know, although that's not a property qualification in terms of you must own this much land, it is in terms of you must produce this much produce. So it's a much more exclusive group from which you can easily drop out.

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like it'd be very easy to drop out, just have too many kids and you're slowly, you know, weeding them all out by just volume versus how much there is to produce or how much land to produce it on. Wow.

And that partly explains some of the rather strange, or strange to our eyes, marriage customs, that they practice polyandry, whereby several brothers can marry one woman. And we don't know how that works out in terms of sexual relations, but as an economic thing, it means that the brothers keep their property intact,

and then they get the property coming in from the woman that they marry. And it will therefore reduce the number of children that those multiple brothers produce because there's only one woman. So that will help stabilize property, at least to a certain extent. So...

That's interesting how the marriage customs are adapted to mitigate some of the dangerous effects of the inheritance system. Yeah, I did not know about that. That is really interesting that multiple brothers could marry one woman. Wow. And...

While we're on the subject, there's also a system which you can either call wife-sharing or man-doubling, depending on your perspective, whereby a Spartan who doesn't want to get married can approach another Spartan and ask to borrow his wife for purposes of procreation.

And it's Xenophon who tells us about it. Well, Plutarch mentions it as well, but Xenophon is the first source, so it's a contemporary source. And he says that the men are kingless arrangement because they get extra brothers who form, or half-brothers we would call them, who form part of their kin, but don't have a claim on their property. So each child can only claim on...

their biological father. They can't claim on the other man as well. And he says the women like this because they get to control two households, their original husband and their second partner. Yeah. And this ties in with something we know from another source, namely that the Spartans permitted the children of the same mother,

but different fathers, they permitted them to intermarry. So you get the situation where the woman has produced children by her husband and then by her second partner, and those children are allowed to intermarry. In anthropological terms, they're uterine half-siblings. And this is another way of contemplating the property because it sort of...

it concentrates the property of the girls and boys produced by the two different men. So you can see how it all makes sense. Once you understand the logic and the demands of the inheritance system, you can see why all these marriage customs are adapted to mitigate the danger that you might encounter.

your landholders might dissipate and reduce over time. Yeah. What interesting practices. Wow. Indeed. Those are really something. But before you think it's so odd, the same source that tells us about the Spartans allowing uterine half-sibling marriage also says that in Athens, the Athenians allowed it the other way around.

so that children of the same father by different mothers could intermarry. Now, we don't know why that's the case, and I don't know of any Athenian historian who's explored it. But the Spartans, although it's different from Athens, they're not totally exceptional in allowing a form of half-sibling marriage.

Wow. You know, different times. I suppose it can't, can't be just the one. Wow. That is, that is just generally, I mean, as always, every episode I do with these conversations is just the most interesting thing. And I always learn unexpected things like turning this into this, these intricacies of land ownership. I'm thrilled that it turned that way because that's,

fascinating and it hasn't come up in my other conversations so perfect this is thrilling and the weird things they did I'd already known Sparta was pretty weird just generally in comparison to the rest of Greece but I I love hearing these additional daily life pieces or familial levels of oddities I guess

Yes. I mean, that's what makes Sparta so interesting. And that's why I'm still studying Sparta some 40 years on from when I first started. It's nearly 50 years now. I'm getting older. Well, I can see why. Like, really, there's just there's so much and they are just so interesting. I'm thrilled that I am moving into history on this show because I just want to learn more of it all the time. So it's just and I get to speak to brilliant people like you. So thank you so much for doing this. This has been fantastic.

So interesting on so many different levels. I really appreciate it. It's been very fun. Well, it's been great fun, Liv. And thank you for inviting me on. And it really has been a great pleasure talking about Sparta to someone who has a genuine interest. And I really do love the concept of what you're doing, first with Atlantis, and now I'm glad you're turning your attention to Sparta because it's

We really do need to work hard to dispel all these myths about Sparta.

Yeah, I'm, well, thank you for asking to come on because that was a real thrill, but I am so happy to be doing this. And even just your use of the word myth there, I'm like, oh, that's how I'm going to turn it into, this is fine. It's on brand for my show is, this is a different type of myth that I'm covering. And I'm actually, you know, talking about why it isn't true, but it's still a myth. So, you know, it still counts in the show that I've built up around mythology, but suddenly want to talk about history or in the case of Atlantis, not history and not mythology. Yeah.

Indeed. Well, that's right. Yes. You're probably aware that normally Spartan historians call it the Spartan mirage, but myth is an equally good term for it, I think.

Yeah, yeah, at least one of the episodes is absolutely going to have the title of the Spartan Mirage because it's a wonderfully beautiful phrase that really well describes kind of everything going on, you know, in so many different ways. There seem to be so many different types of Spartan Mirages depending on kind of what you're looking at in this culture. It's fascinating. Yes, and...

When I was in Lyon last month, I was giving a plenary lecture and I was giving it in the same university and the same lecture theatre where the inventor of this phrase used to teach. François Ollier was a professor of Greek at the Université de Lyon. And

The lecture theatre I was lecturing in was built in the 1890s and it was the main lecture theatre where he would have given his lectures and the thought that I was standing on the same spot as François Ollier, who invented the term Le Mirage Spartiate, that was really quite awe-inspiring.

Yeah, that must be a wonderful feeling, kind of pulling it full circle and talking about it. And I imagine a very different way from how he would have, but the same general idea. And it is such a beautiful term and it

It really just does describe everything so well, you know, be it the modern Spartan mirage of 300 and all of that, or, you know, the mythologizing of Thermopylae in antiquity or everything kind of in between. You know, there's so many different ways you can use that term. And it just so well describes everything about Sparta and the, you know, the examination of it, the study of it. It's fascinating.

I think the main difference between the way that Ollier and I would use the phrase is that Ollier saw the Mirage purely in terms of the idealisation of Sparta. That's the subtitle of his book, whereas I see the Mirage as only being partly about idealisation. It's also about the way that Sparta is often viewed negatively by ancient writers. So, yeah, I think...

we need to come to a more balanced balance between idealization and over negative views of SWATA.

Yeah, well, that's certainly my intention with this series is I just kind of want to talk about what, as far as we know, what was actually going on there versus these ideas that we have about it now, particularly the modern pop culture ideas and just sort of what was actually happening there. You know, there was good and there was some bad. That's certainly all of ancient Greece. It's not not specific to Sparta. And it's just...

It was sort of just one place out of many. It just happened to be quite unique and then get quite famous comparatively. So, yeah, so much. I'm thrilled to be covering all of this. But I feel like I've kept you long enough. Thank you so much for doing this. Is there anything you'd like to share with my listeners in terms of where they can read more or learn more about Sparta broadly?

Or this specific subject, obviously? Yes. There's a book due to come out in November. It's called Classical Controversies. The subtitle is Reception of Greco-Roman Antiquity in the 21st Century.

edited by Kim Bearden and Timo Epping, and it will be published by the Sidestone Press in the Netherlands. And the great thing for your listeners is that the Sidestone Press is an open access press. So publication date is the 16th of November, and the volume will be open.

open access on their website to read online. You can buy a PDF or you can even buy a printed copy, but if you just wanted to read it online. And the volume has three articles about the reception of Sparta in the 21st century. There's my article called Spartans on the Capitol,

There's a very interesting article called "Leonidas Goes North" about the way Sparta has been appropriated in Swedish politics and literature.

And then there's an essay called Pop Culture Against Modernity, which is about the new right-wing movements, the agitatorian movements in France and Germany and the way that they use Sparta. So that volume has three essays and a lot of other interesting essays on other aspects of Greece and Rome and the way that they're currently being used.

Yeah, that sounds wonderful. I'm excited for it as well. I'll make sure that I provide a link to it in the description as well. Well, thank you for listening to me for so long, Liv. Thank you so much for doing it. Oh my God, it's my favorite thing to do. Good.

Oh, nerds, nerds, nerds. What a conversation to cap off this series. I can't even tell you. It's just so interesting. As I said a hundred times in this episode, but which is still always true. It's just so interesting. I am so taken in by Sparta for what it actually was. And looking at it, it's just this like weird Greek city state with weird laws and practices. Like rather than this militaristic society of super soldiers, God, the real Sparta was much more interesting.

Interesting. Okay, I'll stop using that word. You've heard it enough. If you've been enjoying this series on Sparta, I would love if you'd consider giving the show a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really means the whole world to me, and it helps the show immensely. And if you've found the show through this series, welcome. Thank you for coming. I have got so much other content for you. Typically mythology, but I do like to talk about the mythology in its ancient context.

So you are not totally lacking history there. And my God, the guests I have had on this show, just enjoy and welcome. Thank you. Remember to, if you have any questions that have arisen from this series, things that you'd like explained further, clarifications, whatever, really, please submit your questions at mythsbaby.com slash questions. I want to hear from you.

Also, not to worry, we are not totally done yet. Tomorrow, there will be a special bonus episode dedicated to talking about the elephant in the room. The movie mentioned so many damn times in this series because it truly is either, like, the cause of so many misconceptions about Sparta or simply, like, exacerbating so many existing issues. It's also, like, sad as it may seem...

what most people in North America think of when they think of Sparta, if not beyond North America. That's right. I still haven't said the title. 300. We're talking 300. So stay tuned. Also, as I say this, I realize I've already added on another episode next week on women in Sparta because I had too much to say. So we are not done yet.

Let's talk about myths, baby, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Smith, oh my god, the Hermes to my Olympians. She handles so many things. For this series especially, Michaela was absolutely invaluable, providing so much research and helping me with scripts and just everything. Stephanie Foley works to transcribe the podcast for YouTube captions and accessibility. Help me continue bringing the world of Greek mythology and the ancient Mediterranean to you by becoming a patron where you'll get bonus episodes and more.

Visit patreon.com slash mythsbaby or click on the link in this episode's description. Thank you all so much. You're very cool. I am Liv and I love this shit.