How the hell do you justify that statement? They fought for the preservation of their nation and way of life, concepts I doubt you would break a sweat much less die for.
Look through the eyes of an existentialist
How the hell do you justify that statement? They fought for the preservation of their nation and way of life, concepts I doubt you would break a sweat much less die for.
Look through the eyes of an existentialist
No, he's partially right, although to the best of my knowledge, Sparta did not have slaves, but they were definitely not free in the sense that we know it. The Athenians were free, they had a democracy, but Sparta was ruled by a military oligarchy, so yeah, not EXACTLY free.
shareActually, Sparta had the most slaves of ll of the city-states. Every enemy conquered was put to slavery so the true Spartans could fight in wars and train, while the slaves worked the fields and farmed.
shareNot exactly free? What about the helots? The Spartans didn't know anything about "freedom" as we know it. They didn't even fight at Thermopylae to save the other city states. They just didn't want the Persians to get to them.
shareTrue: The Spartans had slaves. Yet what you think of slavery and what they think of slavery are two totally different things. To them slaves captured in battle were treated honourably. A slave in ancient Sparta could very well free themselves much more easily then you may believe.
And second, who cares if they did it to save themselves. What they did saved ALL of Greece, their reasons for doing so are irrelevant. World War Two was not fought to save the the people of Jewish descent, but for revenge against those killed in Pearl Harbor, and to ensure that no warfare was brought upon US soil. Does that make the US involvment in World War 2 any less then what it was?
EDIT: Some spelling and grammatical errors.
Exactly Gomorrah! Sparta and Athens were fighting the Persian wars to preserve their own freedom as city states, instead of having them subject to a broader empire. Their inner systems were their culture.
It's fine for people to sit in the comfort of the early 20th century's values (as if these are somehow universal or natural or set in stone) and shake their heads and claim others from thousands of years ago, with a different set of values altogether and a different civilisation, are less moral than we are today (as if we are the natural inevitable endpoint of values), when anybody born in any other age would have significantly different values.
Having said this I think the original poster was just poking some fun, but some other people do have that air of moral superiority, which needs correcting, no matter how bad past practices seem in today's light. (Just like future eras should give us an open mind no matter what things we are doing now in perceived natural fairness that they find abhorrent re their values.)
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I think the spartans would be disguisted with most of the west today. My point is: though we should respect their dicipline and bravery, who knows what they would do if they could foretell the future? Would they even bother?
It's good they existed though, since (as some of you say) they saved democracy. But who knows how the future would be if they hadn't existed. One can never know..