Or, much less than an army of super warriors. They did not win more battles than their rivals. I think of them as Greece's FARC, distinguished mainly by their abuse of their own children and everyone they depended on for their own survival.
This reminds me of my relatively new pet peeve when watching any military element in a movie. Every time they gather in a room, the soldiers arrange themselves at attention as scenery. I get that it's mostly symbolic of how organized and dedicated they are, but having been in the military, the last thing a soldier is looking to do is stand at attention.<p>Movie soldiery (wide term to include knights, personal bodyguards, etc...) have this innate knowledge on how to form ranks and break ranks in perfect unison with no commands.<p>The professional military is relatively rare throughout history, but is somehow idealized and projected onto those factions which did well militarily. Realistically the Spartans only had to be a little better man for man than those around them in order to be the best in the world.
If you like this there's a meaty seven part blog series by historian Bret Devereaux about the mythology surrounding Sparta. It offers an account of what Sparta and the Spartan military was really like as well as how the Spartan mythos evolved.<p><a href="https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/" rel="nofollow">https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...</a>
I was surprised to learn spartan society had pedophilia built in similar to a mentor system. Will Durant wrote about it, but I never hear anything in pop culture except the warrior bit.
Fixed title: Sparta was NOT an army of super warrior.<p>From what I understand, it was a fantasy model heralded by conservative Greeks as an example for all but is as much based in reality than the golden past of the people calling to "make America great again". It is projecting into the past an ideal that never was.
I don't understand the point of the article. In quantitative terms one can say that Y was better than X. Like: Usa in the 20th century was better at creating technology. Why does the author need to emphasize that Spartans were no better than other Greeks as warriors as it's a bad thing? It's not discimination or racism or whatever. I think it's because in modern times saying Y is better than X is bad. Except for in sports. Weird.
I think a big thing people miss with the Spartans is that they didn't see themselves as the ideal warriors, they saw themselves as the ideal Greek citizens. Part of that was being a warrior, just as part of being a citizen in Athens was doing your military service. But because of the enforced equality among the (slave and land owning) citizen class, they were all expected to serve in the same manner and have time for poetry, hunting, and the other activities that a proper Greek citizen should do.