Hail Caesar! - Rome's First Emperor

When Julius Caesar was stabbed to death during the famous Ides of March assassination in 44 BCE, he left a power vacuum big enough to suck Rome into yet another Civil War. After some initial sieges and skirmishes, which resulted in the deaths of the two sitting Consuls, this vacuum ended up being filled by three unlikely allies who were appointed to a kind of co-dictatorship in October, 43 BCE in hopes that they would check and balance each other over the course of their five-year term. What ensued should be no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to the politics of the day: a temporary and uncomfortable alliance followed by massive Civil War.

Gaius Octavius Thurinus was Julius Caesar's grand-nephew, and renamed himself Gaius Julius Caesar after his great uncle adopted him, and I assume to confuse the later students of history. In any case, Octavius, as we shall call him, proved a worthy adversary for the other members of the Second Triumvirate, leading armies to victory against both the rebel armies of Caesar's assassins and Marcus Antonius.

Like many ancient people, the Romans would occasionally deify their dead leaders, and Caesar, though he was objectively ruthless, self-seeking, and a dangerous consolidator of power, was declared by the Senate to be a patron god of Rome on January 1, 42 BCE. Octavius, capitalizing on Caesar's honor, began referring to himself as the 'son of god' and no doubt won over several followers from Rome's middle and working class through his relationship with their late champion.

After Marcus Antonius was defeated at the Battle of Actium, Octavius was in a position to increase his influence and forever alter the Roman Republic. His power as Consul increased gradually, and he was smart enough to periodically return control to the Senate, as he did in 27 BCE. However, this Oligarchical body was made up of mostly sycophants and Caesarians, since the civil wars purged most of the old Republican guard. Plus, the soldiers in the provinces, over which Octavius had been named governor, were loyal to him personally and cared nothing for an ineffectual Senate that could not deliver on land reform or veteran benefits.

In January of 27 BCE, the Roman Senate bestowed the title of Augustus upon Octavius, a name which he would carry long after his death. The word Augustus comes from the same root word as Augur, a diviner who observed the flight of birds. The title was much more than a simple political office: it meant 'illustrious one,' and carried implications that Augustus Caesar not only held power over the politics of Rome, but over nature itself.

It is from these roots that all future Emperors of Rome would reign. And though Augustus Caesar's example was full of concessions and the avoidance of appearing supreme, his descendants would of course focus on his title, which implied that the Emperor was not merely a man, but a god.

Pax vobiscum

A Kinder, Gentler Paganism

One of my favorite video games, as many of you have probably guessed, is the Rome: Total War series. In the expansion Barbarian Invasion, the game begins with the announcement that Paganism is the most popular religion in the known world. This always gives me a good chuckle because it is similar to saying that Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. While it is technically true, it doesn't mean that fans of rival teams are united in their love for soccer and agree on everything. The term Paganism is a bit misleading because there were so many different deities and forms of worship that to group the Roman practice of sacrificing bulls to Jupiter or Mars with the Germanic practice of sacrificing people by drowning them in a bog seems a little bit uneven. Thus, even the label Pagan itself becomes somewhat fluid, under the proper microscope.

The Gauls were a constant thorn in Rome's side, always pillaging and competing with the northern Italians for food, water, trade, and money. The Romans never really forgave them for sacking their fair city around 390 BCE after the crushing defeat of their Phalanx at the Battle of the Allia, and many young politicians would cut their teeth by campaigning against the savage barbarians to the north. When they finally conquered most of the Gaul territory, as seen in the image below, they syncretized their religion to match up with the Greco-Roman Pantheon.

Yellow=starting point

Light Green=furthest expansion

Dark Green=areas where languages

descended from Gallic are still spoken

Because we have few written records of the Gallic religion before the Roman conquest in the 50's BCE, it is difficult to assess their exact rituals and procedures. We know they engaged in human sacrifice, and Julius Caesar himself would have us believe that a funeral for a Gallic noble involved his family and slaves being burned with their deceased patriarch inside a large wooden man. However, the Romans are fond of exaggeration, and since they were hostile to the Gauls, we can't completely trust their historians to shoot straight.

We do know that there were some gods who were 'national' in the sense that Gauls from Spain to the Balkans would worship them. These included Toutatis, Esus, and Taranis, who were transformed into Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter after the Roman conquest. However, they also had regional deities and familial patron gods to choose from as well. At its core, this religion was animism, but it evolved over time to include anthropomorphic gods as well, largely thanks to Roman influence.

Taranis Jupiter, holding a Gallic chariot wheel in one hand

and a lighting bolt in the other - syncretastic!

After Rome conquered, the Gauls submitted and ceased their human sacrifices. Druids, the mysterious oracles of the Gallic religion, fled to Germania and Northern Britannia to continue their strange and unrecorded practices. The conquest of the Gauls and the destruction of their religion marked the end of the old days of Western European nomads and the beginning of a more urban, administrative era. At least, until the Eastern tribes migrated toward the Atlantic, bringing with them a similar form of Pagan animism and mysterious ceremonies.

Pax vobiscum

Women in Rome

One of the more famous Roman myths is the story of the Sabine women. Romulus, Rome's founder, gathered outcasts from neighboring cities to Rome to populate it. Unfortunately, they were mostly men and had been exiled from the other cities for fraud, theft, and other bad behavior. If Rome was to have a future, they would need to find women and reproduce. The nearby tribe of the Sabines had plenty of women, but they were unwilling to allow their daughters to marry the scoundrels that lived in Rome. So Romulus hatched a nefarious plot.

He invited the Sabines to a massive feast just outside the city gates. Since it was an all-you-can-eat affair, they brought their children, daughters, wives, and sisters along for the party, and it carried on for some time. When the Sabine men had become drunk, the Romans seized every unwed woman they could find and carried them into the city, locking the massive gates behind them. There was war with the Sabines, and the story goes that it was the abducted women who prevented all out slaughter on both sides, agreeing to live in Rome. Since they had been raped, they were considered ruined for other men, and they knew that their best bet at survival lay in submission to their newfound Roman companions.

This story seems so repugnant to modern sensibilities that it's hard for us to imagine how any culture would place it in their oral history and public record. However, it certainly helps to shed light on the position of women in the Roman world. For the most part, women weren't permitted to hold office, own property, or choose a husband. Their family structure was such that the father or Paterfamilias held legal power over life and death for all his children. At least for the young boys there was an age of independence, but a girl might live in her father's house all the days of her life.

It was assumed that marriage would eventually lead two people into a deep romantic friendship, but first and foremost, marriage was duty. They needed to continue their family line, and they were very often betrothed from birth. As a result, marriage became a burdensome chore and many soldiers and aristocrats started putting off, visiting prostitutes and keeping female slaves and concubines instead. Augustus Caesar, desiring to preserve Roman culture despite helping to destroy its Democracy, passed a series of laws and regulations governing betrothal, marriage, and success.

He promoted soldiers who fathered many children, fearing that Rome was becoming dangerously underpopulated. He gave the best seats in the Coliseum to married men, and granted some say in property disputes to married women who bore three or more children. He penalized wealthy bachelors and single women by heavily taxing their inheritance, and made it illegal for husbands to murder adulterous wives, preferring that they divorce them instead.

Despite all these reforms, women were a far cry from men in terms of power in almost every measurable criteria. Though they could sue for divorce themselves, the courts often ruled with the father, giving him custody of their children. And if their husband was involved in a war, there was always the chance that he would return with a German or Phoenician slave girl whom he would take as a concubine. However, since the earliest Roman wives were brought to Rome in a similar fashion, it was hard to argue that things should be any different. After all, only barbarians allowed their women to have the same rights and privileges as men.

Things That Archimedes Made

Following in the footsteps of other great eccentric Greek mathematicians, Archimedes seems to have gone about his life by trying to learn something new every day. To make an exhaustive list of everything he discovered, invented, or improved would take far more space than what should be contained in these virtual pages, so today we'll take a look at just a few of his mind-boggling creations.

The pulley itself is so ancient that its creator's name has been lost in the mist of time. Archimedes experimented heavily with pulleys and created the world's first block and tackle system (basically a mechanism in which two or more pulleys are utilized). He discovered that each pulley he added made the load seem lighter, since the force was being transferred equally among all the pulleys in the array. This allowed merchants to construct great cranes capable of lifting heavier cargo, which meant more money on arrival.

But his genius did not end at maritime physics. While trying to find an easier way to irrigate highland farms, he invented Archimedes' screw, a device capable of carrying water upward. Now, ground water could be raised to the surface and reused on the crops. It could even be carried up mountains, if the pipes and screws were long enough. This revolutionary invention was so useful that the Romans later built it into all their farmland and even used it to carry drinking water into high fortified camps. Here's a great image of how this works:

During the First Punic War, he invented a primitive odometer. It was an array of gears and levers which would drop a ball into a small box for each mile it traveled. To have done this during a time when people believed that disease was caused by the moon is not only surprising; it's mind-bogglingly astonishing. In addition to this, he created several astronomical implements, some of which were carried away as loot by the Roman commander who sacked Syracuse.

In between revolutionary and brilliant inventions, he did Calculus. But wait! Didn't Sir Isaac Newton invent Calculus? No more than Henry Ford invented the automobile. Newton greatly expanded the science, which laid dormant for more than a thousand years, but it was Archimedes himself who made the first foray into the measurement of the infinite. Unfortunately, there was no one around capable of understanding Archimedes' work, let alone carry it on. Though he served as a bright light for a time, the world went dark again at his passing, and the Greeks and Romans went back to their day-to-day business, being afraid of things they didn't understand. His work lives on, and he remains one of the most important mathematicians and inventors in all of history.

The Siege of Syracuse

Located in south-eastern Sicily, Syracuse was an old Corinthian-Greek Colony with old-time values. Ruled over by kings and tyrants since its founding in 733 BCE, Syracuse enjoyed the many benefits of its central Mediterranean locale and became very wealthy through trade with Egypt, Rome, Carthage, Asia Minor, Palestine, and Spain. After the Pyrrhic war in 275 BCE, however, it was the sole remaining Greek settlement west of the Peninsula itself, and in a very tenuous position sandwiched between Rome and Carthage.

Syracuse survived for quite a while after Pyrrhus' final defeat because its leaders made smart alliances and used skilled diplomacy to ensure the protection of either Rome or Carthage. When the first Punic War broke out, Syracuse was at the center of the action and made an alliance with Carthage from fear of Rome. Luckily, Rome and Carthage fought each other so bitterly that by the time Rome got around to dealing with the unlucky Sicilian Greeks, they had already lost so many in battle that they were willing to settle for an apology and a cut of their trade. However, when the second Punic War broke out, Syracuse made the mistake of allying with Carthage again, and the Romans were determined to make them pay. However, Roman vengeance would come at a high cost to the Republic because of one resident of Syracuse whose mind possessed knowledge that could bring both great prosperity and very great destruction. This man's name was Archimedes.

I like to think of Archimedes as a sort of ancient world Da Vinci, except without the moral qualms about creating weapons. Where Da Vinci was purposefully putting gears in the wrong place so that his designs would ultimately fail, Archimedes was not only sketching these out, but utilizing them to a terrible degree of success. For this week's Famous Friday, we'll delve into Archimedes' discoveries in greater detail, but since it's Military Monday, let's focus on his original and horrific siege weapons.

The most famous of his weapons was The Claw, which utilized pulleys and complicated weight balancing to capsize Roman Triremes. Seriously, this crane-like weapon would hook onto the bow or stern of the boat, lift it out of the water, and send it crashing against the nearby rocks. Each boat carried about two hundred soldiers, so you can imagine the carnage that ensued when this happened over and over:

Another of his creations was an improved catapult. Again, using pulleys and counterweights, he was able to create an engine capable of throwing a 500 pound rock with much better accuracy than the inferior Roman scorpions and ballistae. He also contributed to the building of other weapons which could fire missiles and keep the Romans at bay.

The most controversial of his creations was his 'death ray.' Several authorities have tested it using various techniques, and some have been successful, while most have ended in a wash. Supposedly, Archimedes built a large array of bronze mirrors which could be turned, focusing their reflected light into a concentrated beam onto an approaching ship. The Roman ships, which were sealed with tar, caught on fire and sunk. While this does seem a bit far-fetched, I wouldn't put it past old Archie to give it a try. After all, it was Hiero II, the king of Syracuse and relative of Archimedes, who frequently challenged the genius and gave him the funding he needed to build better weapons since the first Punic War, so why wouldn't this mathematician try literally everything he could think of? Were there easier ways to light ships on fire? Yeah, lots. But if I were an invading Roman, I might think twice about mixing it up with an enemy who can light my ships on fire without shooting anything.

Syracuse eventually fell to sheer Roman determination, and Archimedes was killed, possibly while drawing circles in the sand. If not for him, the last Greek colony on Italian soil would surely have fallen in the first year, and Carthage wouldn't have stood a chance of surviving the Second Punic War. By the time the Roman army came to the gates of Carthage, they had suffered so many casualties from Syracuse and from fighting Hannibal for ten years that they allowed Carthage to live, albeit under severe economic sanctions. And when Carthage was finally leveled in the Third Punic War, there were no more brilliant mathematicians around to set Romans on fire from a distance.

Pax vobiscum

Theology Thursday: The Cult of Artemis

Looking at the statue of the Ephesian Artemis reminds me of when I lived in Japan, as the slender statue looks more like a Shinto deity than a Greek goddess. In fact, if you were to compare the idols of the Greek gods with the statue of Artemis which came from Ephesus, you'd probably think you were looking at completely different religious icons. And, in a way, you'd be right.

Artemis is unique among the Greek deities because she never married or had 'relations' with the other gods. She preferred the hunt to a dinner party, and the human lovers who were lucky enough to win her affection always met with tragic death, sometimes at her hand. She was the goddess of the moon, but the forest and childbirth were also within her realm of protection. Hunters would often lay the skins and horns of their prey upon a tree branch before leaving the woods as an offering so that Artemis wouldn't hunt them down for killing the animals before she had the chance. Women would cry out to her during childbirth in hope of relief from their pain either by the child emerging or receiving a quick death. The Greeks of Peloponnessus, that's the European side of ancient Greece, far preferred Zeus or Ares as their important deities, but for the Ephesians, none other than Artemis would do.

The Artemis image from Ephesus sticks out like a sore thumb in the Pantheon of Greek gods, and that is because that image predates Greek settlement in Asia Minor. It seems that before the Greek colonists came, the Ionian natives had built a matriarchal culture around a fertility goddess whose name has been erased by the fog of time. When the Greeks came and conquered the place, they adopted the image and claimed that it was Artemis, since the Greeks were fond of syncretism (that means incorporating local deities into your religion – word of the day!).

The Greek culture was extremely patriarchal, especially in Athens. Though it is true that Spartan women could own land and personal property (something Athenian women had no right to), this was done mostly out of necessity since the Spartans practiced open marriage. Thus it became necessary for the Greek priests to first break down the matriarchal local religion before they could alter the culture as well. Since the ancient worldview was typically that reality reflected the divine realm, those Ionians who were conquered must have figured that their religion was backwards, and so gave in to the priests and renamed their statue.

Her unique appearance, combined with the need for ancient people to have a lot of children to hedge their bet, made her a popular deity, and her temple in Ephesus was three times larger than the Parthenon temple that the Athenians built for their patron god Athena. In fact, the Ephesian Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the Ancient world, making Ephesus a huge tourist attraction for people from every corner of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Ephesus being a coastal town, its economy was dependent on trade and tourism, so much so that there was once a riot against Christian missionaries organized by idol craftsmen who feared the sag in their income that a more popular god would bring! You can read more about this uprising in Acts chapter 19, which is a very informative account of the fame of the Ephesian Artemis.

The cult surrounding Artemis, ironically, centered around her virginity. Priests who served this moon goddess would willingly castrate themselves while men who went off to war would swear vows of chastity before the idols and likely keep a pocket-sized version with them as a reminder. While encamped in rugged hills on campaign, I imagine many a veteran Hoplite telling a tale around a cookfire all about a foolish young soldier who broke his vow to Artemis and brought his entire army to ruin. There were many such tales, since the Greeks were so fond of Fables.

Though Artemis was widely beloved, she eventually fell to the cross, as did all her Olympian brethren. Over time, the Roman Empire became more and more Christian through either proselytizing or by political manipulation, and the old gods were cast aside like yesterday's newspaper. Artemis would hunt no more.

Pax vobiscum

Culture Wednesday: More Than a Theorem

Anyone who's learned even the most rudimentary geometry has heard his name. Yes, in his own way, Pythagoras achieved the Greek ideal of fame that causes him to live forever, even if he is relegated to the pages of High School textbooks. But there is more to this mathematician than a simple ratio. Among other things, he believed himself to be the reincarnation of a Trojan hero, and refused to eat beans. His mathematekoi brotherhood was thought to be the most well-learned in the ancient world, but they did not hesitate to murder one man who would expose their most embarrassing secret: irrational numbers.

Though he seems harmless in his textbook depictions, Pythagoras was considered by many in the ancient world to be a dangerous cult leader, and a malcontent. He lived during that necessary twilight between oral tradition and written history, and thus his life and work is shrouded in an unfortunate cloud of mystery and myth. It is said that he traveled all throughout the world to gain knowledge of mathematics, science, medicine, astronomy, astrology, and mysticism from whomever would teach him. I think it likely that he traveled to Egypt, home of the famous ancient mathematician Thales, who accurately calculated the height of a pyramid by measuring its shadow. The Greek philosophy of math and science was that it was attainable, that they could actually observe and learn from what they saw to predict or manipulate future behavior. However, it was also steeped in Pagan mysticism, something which taints their learning somewhat and caused many, especially Pythagoras, to go off the rails.

Eccentric though he was, even by ancient weirdo standards, he built a school around this central tenet: All is number. He believed that numbers could be used not only to define all things, but could even give them greater meaning. His disciples took this motto to heart, and immediately began measuring angles and lengths to find the hidden constant ratios between them. In fact, most of the really boring parts of Geometry today (constructions, proofs) were what the Pythagoreans discovered when they were just playing around. They would challenge each other with number riddles like, “can you form a right triangle if given two points?”

One story claims that Pythagoras discovered the mathematical value of music. He was passing by a smithy one day, and the ringing of the anvils was sticking in his head. He noticed the relationship between their individual pitches, and examined three of them to discover that the middle one was one-third bigger than the smallest, and that the largest was one third bigger than the middle. Through experiments that the school performed on strings, bells, and other instruments, they created the octave as a means of dividing the musical notes, something we still do in Western music today.

As clever as these stories make him out to be, my belief is that Pythagoras was just the charismatic leader of some very bright young Greeks. I believe his school as a group made much of the discoveries that he is given credit for, just like professors will occasionally take credit for their students' findings today. In either case, he should at least be honored for cultivating an environment in which learning and discovery could take place.

However, this was long before the days of public education, and knowledge of every sort was a tightly guarded secret, particularly mathematics. As we will see in coming weeks, mathematics can kill people, and it often does so in great quantities with a minimal effort. For the Pythagoreans, the biggest secrets that they kept were the ones that they hated and couldn't explain.

Pythagoras and his followers were so convinced that everything could be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers that when they discovered ratios that didn't work out to nice, neat, clean whole numbers they were thrown into a crisis of faith. You see, this wasn't “just math” to them; this was their religion. Everything they held to be true, yes, the very order of the universe was at stake, and if it was just all random, irrational events, then knowledge itself was a fools game, a mirage in the desert of unpredictability.

Try this to see what I mean: draw yourself a square. Go ahead, draw one. Now, assign each side the number 1. Doesn't matter how big you've made it, just pretend you've created your own unit of measurement, name it after yourself if you like. Now that you have your square, draw a diagonal line from one corner to the other. Great. Now, using the Pythagorean Theorem, a^2 + b^2 = c^2, calculate the length of that diagonal. You should get 1^2 + 1^2 = c^2, and c^2 is equal to 2. So how long is that diagonal? The number √2, if you bother to plug it in, should make your calculator go crazy with an endless stream of numbers. However, it's a decimal answer, and therefore not a whole number. The Pythagoreans probably convinced themselves that there must be some sort of mistake in all of this, but their equations would continue to come out irrational, that is, being unable to express in a ratio of whole numbers. And since the square was one of their 'sacred shapes,' there's no doubt that they wanted to keep this a secret until they could find a way to make it work.

Well, enter Hippasus, a Pythagorean disciple who couldn't keep this cat inside its loosely constructed bag. He blew the whistle to the general public and alerted everyone in the Mediterranean that Pythagoras and his school were just a bunch of frauds. Little is truly known about this character as well, though some believe he created a rival school of mathematics. In either case, it is believed that he was murdered by Pythagorean zealots while trying to leave town. Yes, that's right, he was murdered for mathematics.

Pythagoras himself was killed during a political uprising in Croton in which he found himself on the wrong side. Supposedly, he ran from his assassins and was gaining ground until he came to a field of beans. He stopped and declared that he would not cross a field of beans, at which point I like to imagine his attackers stopping for a second to tilt their heads in unison before promptly dispatching this mathematical primadonna.

Pax vobiscum

Technology Tuesday: The Scythed Chariot

If you ever read accounts of early white American colonists and their scuffles with the native peoples, you may be surprised to find out just how often the colonists won battles despite being outnumbered by huge margins. Sometimes, this was because the colonists would target women and children instead of warriors, but when they did face native warriors, they won because of weaponry. Now, if you've ever watched a demonstration of a musket from the 1600's, you know that hitting anything with that unwieldy, smooth-bored weapon would be pretty impressive, even from ten feet away. But the shot itself is only half of the musket's usefulness; the other half is the bang. The Native Americans had a natural fear of smoke during battle because fire is an uncontrollable force of nature. The muskets give a loud report followed by clouds of white smoke and even if it didn't cause mass casualties, it usually caused enough fear to lead to a rout within a few volleys, often less. So it was with the ancient world that there were some weapons useful for their practical effectiveness in battle and others which, though they did not inflict great physical damage, caused fear and panic.

One such weapon of fear is the Scythed Chariot, brought to Asia Minor from Persia during the Greco-Persian wars. Civilian chariots were a status symbol in Rome, and in most of ancient Europe. Owning a horse was an expensive venture by itself, much less owning enough to pull you comfortably along in your little convertible boxcar. They were also used in races in the hippodrome, as seen on Ben Hur. The design of the chariot varied considerably depending upon its use, and the Scythed Chariot's use was to plow through tightly packed enemy formations to break them apart and to slaughter men in large numbers.

A typical Scythed Chariot was built very heavy, since it was made for combat. Four horses (usually heavily armored) would pull a large, sturdy boxcar with two or three soldiers inside, one to drive and the others to protect the driver. The wheels of the chariot were large and spoked, and attached to both sides of the axles were one or more three-to-five foot blades. You can imagine the carnage that would ensue if even one of these monstrosities successfully charged a tightly-packed Phalanx.

Spears, and especially the long Macedonian spears, could be effective in slowing the charge, but only by a coordinated defense could these frightening inventions be countered. Each had the charging power of four heavy horses, and even if the first two were injured, the momentum they created would still cause the bladed wheels to tear through men like fire to dried underbrush. Alexander the Great faced them when he pushed into Persia during his conquest, and he formulated an effective containment solution. His Phalanxes would move into an E-shaped formation, focusing the small center column against the vicious chariots. When the densely-packed group would slow the chariot's initial charge, The outside columns would flank it and kill the drivers and horses. This was effective, but costly, and not every center column was able to stand their ground as they needed to.

The Romans had a better counter: move out of the way. Their army was structured like their society; efficient. Their forces were disciplined, and they had a clearly-defined command structure. Their flexible formations gave them a great advantage over these heavy weapons, which were not easily maneuverable.

During the Mithridatic Wars, Mithridates VI made the mistake of using his Scythed Chariots in an initial charge, thinking to thin the Roman lines for his foot troops. Instead, the Romans moved out of the chariots' way at the last second, allowing them to pass through their ranks and into rough ground behind them that they had lined with stakes. Many of the chariots stopped in time, but were pretty easily dispatched by a few Triarii who were waiting for them. The Roman army taunted their Pontic enemy, cheering for the chariots as if they were watching a race. This fearful weapon had failed to bring victory, and Mithridates ended up losing that battle, his troops being demoralized to see their fellow soldiers slaughtered and mocked.

The Scythe Chariot was not finished with history at this point, however, and Mithridates' son Pharnaces II actually utilized them effectively against a Roman army himself much later. However, they were costly to maintain and the fear they created wasn't sufficient to infect Roman troops, so as Rome conquered the East, they fell out of style and practice as a suitable weapon. Eventually, the Romans thought of better things they could place on the chariots instead of blades; siege weapons. Yes, they later strapped ballistae (kind of a big crossbow) to the backs of their wagons and used them as the world's first known mobile artillery.

Pax vobiscum

Culture Wednesday: Sparta - The Phobiopolis

Few of my friends still make the mistake of mentioning any recent 'historical' movie in my presence. I don't get invited if that's what they're going to see, and if anyone brings it up in conversation, someone else in the group is quick to silence them if I'm around. This is because I hate (HATE) pretty much all modern movies based on historical events. And that includes the most recent Greek tale of heroics and glory, 300.

But wait, before you go back to the lolcats and delete my feed, hear this: I solemnly swear not to make this entire post about how inaccurate and terrible this movie was. However, you should be aware that it will come up. This is not a movie review, just a second look at the Spartans, through the lens of reality rather than romance. Let's start with Sparta's economy.

Every Spartan male was part of the army. From age 7 or so, they would live in the barracks and learn to be ruthless, survivalist warriors. However, if everyone is a Hoplite, who grows the food? Who trades? Well, the Spartan warriors that so many have come to revere and admire were slavers, plain and simple. Sometime very near the founding of Sparta, the surrounding indigenous people, later known as Helots, were enslaved and forced to work on the farms that dotted the Spartan countryside. They wore dog-skin hats and out-numbered the Spartans about 10 to 1 by most estimates. And periodically, just to keep things interesting, the leaders of Sparta would call for a mass execution. Or some soldiers would just kill a few Helots for amusement.

Some historians have claimed that the Helots, though no doubt resistant to their captivity at first, gradually grew to believe the Spartan propaganda that they were less than human and lived only to obey. The number of Helot rebellions seems to squish this theory like a fat, slow bug, however, and I can't bring myself to imagine anyone enjoying slavery. On top of the rebellions, the Spartans themselves would always bear their spear and shield when walking around the city at night, only unbuckling their shields when they were safely within the walls of their own home. That's how seriously they took the threat of being murdered secretly by a group of Helots.

Of course, slavery was common in ancient times, and the Greeks had several different words for slave, ranging from a slave captured in battle to an indentured servant. No one was as cruel to their slaves as the Spartans, though, which has raised a number of questions dealing with their unabashed oppression.

First, why the wanton violence toward the unarmed slaves? Why did they give them annual beatings regardless of their behavior? I believe the answer is fear. The Spartans, under all their armor, chutzpah, and rigorous training were nothing more than a bunch of frightened people trying desperately to obtain some sense of control.

The day-to-day Spartan lifestyle is pretty famous, and is the one thing I will give credit to 300 for portraying correctly. When they were not campaigning, they lived very simple lives as if they always lived in camp. They wore burlap-like clothes, and even their kings lacked the jewels and pomp of their Eastern neighbors. This is why the Spartans were never bribed with money; they didn't use it. Gold was just a shiny metal to them, and they scorned the opulence of Athens and Corinth. Even today, Spartan has become an adjective for someone who lives on the barest necessities.

They craved military power, to the point of conscripting the entire free population permanently. Their army was their most valuable commodity, and it set them apart from their neighbors. To have the Spartans in your alliance was a good reason for your enemies to negotiate. Their Phalanxes were near unbreakable, and their armor was heavy and durable. However, while we interpret military strength as a reason for security, that same thought reveals the insecurity of building up a military in the first place. Why build such a massive, professional force if you have nothing to fear? It was in fear that they trained, and a pure cynical ploy to motivate the troops by the council of Elders to leave the city with no walls (claiming Sparta's fighting men are its walls).

They practiced infanticide for those babies who had deformities or were crippled from birth. This practice horrifies us today, and no one will defend a mother who has left her baby in a dumpster by saying that she is just being “spartan.” Surely they could find work for a child that was disabled, the same way that the Japanese, for example, would train their blind people in the art of massage and acupuncture? But common work is not for Spartans; it is for Helots. The Spartans are born to fight or they are killed after birth. This, too, was fear at work. Fear of weakness, fear of social change, and fear of subjugation.

So the next time you watch a movie or read a book portraying those gallant, rugged, and noble Spartans defending their homeland or joining their allies to defend Greece, don't be taken in by the romantic view that started, I believe, with the Renaissance. Remember the Helot, who lived in daily fear of his life. Remember the baby whose life was taken because he was deemed unfit to live. Remember, most of all, the founders and leaders who would take the freedom of ten times their number just to ensure their own.

Pax vobiscum

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