THE SPARTA
Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer -- The First Reviews
Just ten days after the release of Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer two reviews have already been posted on amazon.com. That's exciting -- especially when both are from people I do not know and to whom I did not send review copies. I hope this is a good omen and the book will continue to attract positive attention.
5.0 out of 5 stars
So Good It Will Make You Stay Up Past Your Bedtime..., September 8, 2011
By
Kathleen Ann Langley "Lucky 7 Tattoo Kings Beach" (Lake Tahoe, California)
(REAL NAME), Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is for: Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer (Paperback)
Yes, once again Ms Schrader has kept me up WAY past my bedtime for "just one more chapter." Rarely in historical fiction does this happen for me. I will hit a boring spot in a book and easily put it down until next time. Not so with the second book of this Leonidas trilogy "Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer." She had a tough job to outshine herself after the first part of this 3 part series, " A Boy of the Agoge" yet the author met the challenge with gusto.
All the main players of ancient Sparta are back, and some new ones add to the story without becoming confusing. Gorgo comes into her teenage years with timeless problems we can relate to. Leonidas becomes a man we would all desire to have in our lives as the ultimate compassionate alpha male. And the folks who surround these 2 ancient royal players have their own stories told too. Not a boring one in the bunch either. It's like a soap opera set in antiquity!
Now that I have plowed my way through this second book I once again cannot wait until the 3rd and final book comes out next year! If you even have a vague interest in what life may have been like for Leonidas, or the Spartan people at this time and place in history, you will dig this book.
AND
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thin rations, September 4, 2011,
BY
Jessica Allan Schmidt (People's Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States)
(REAL NAME)
This review is for: Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer (Paperback)
William Styron, author of The Confessions of Nat Turner once commented that a historical novelist did best when given "thin rations". This book takes those scant rations available from the historical record and extrapolates them, using common sense as well as classical sources, to construct what life may have been like for Leonidas I. There are some interesting inconsistencies with the historical records -- for instance, it is not known if Cleombrotus was Leonidas' twin or younger brother, yet the series paints him quite convincingly as Leonidas' elder twin -- but on the whole, it provides a very interesting look at the dynamics of an unusual society.
Sparta is often treated by modern scholars as a nation of simple brutes, but records do not hold with this -- if the training of youths was simply a matter of testing them until they broke, Greek leaders from all over the peninsula would not have competed to send their sons to the agoge for whatever periods they could. Like military schools of today, Sparta's educational programme was much more clearly devoted to military *and* practical learning, but the relative dearth of universal military training during this period means that its military nature is over-emphasised. Moreover, the fact that attendance at the Spartan agoge meant for some préstige among other Greeks strongly implies that it was seen as a specialist school that was a great honour for youths inclined to eventually rise to rôles of command in their own city-state's military.
The examination of what Spartan adult life was like is an interesting view of comparison and contrast. In the era before supertankers and jet aircraft, military engagements were by necessity no more than half the year, before mud and rain made it impossible to manoeuvre effectively, and, even more importantly, avoid disease decimating the ranks (a killer that was more likely than death by battle wound up through the Second World War), and therefore, even though Spartans were certainly careful to keep themselves in training year round and maintain constant operational readiness, they also had personal, civilian lives that were just as important to them, if not more so. As any tactician can tell you, the most motivated fighter is one who fights to defend a society he feels is integral to his life. Were Sparta a brutal place dedicated to warfare and only warfare, there would be no society to defend.
In this book, it is interesting to see the evolution of Queen Gorgo from girlhood to womanhood, even though most of it is conjecture based on what *is* known of the training of Spartan women. This book is also surprisingly engaging for the middle part of a trilogy, traditionally a time when *any* storytelling lags. The agoge is notorious, and Leonidas' death is equally well-known, but this period could have been fairly dull, yet it is as engaging as the first book in this series. I recommend it strongly.
The Physical Appearance of Spartans
As a novelist, I have given considerable thought to what the Spartans in the Age of Leonidas might have looked like, as well as how they would have groomed themselves and dressed. From comments and correspondence, I gather that this is a topic of interest to many of my readers as well, so I thought it might be worth some joint speculation.
In terms of physical build, I have not heard of any archeological evidence based on skeletons, but would welcome any information you may have heard or read about. In the absence of such forensic evidence, I may dependent on mixing ancient sources with modern experience and common sense.
Both Plutarch and – more importantly Xenophon – stress that Spartan youth (i.e. during the critical years of physical development and growth) were not allowed to eat “too much.” Xenophon speaks of “just the right amount for them never to become sluggish through being too full, while also giving them a taste of what it is not to have enough. [Lycurgus'] view was that boys under this kind of regime would be better able, when required, to work hard without eating, as well as to make the same rations last longer, when so ordered; they would be satisfied with a plain diet, would adapt better to accepting any type of food, and would be in a healthier condition. [Lycurgus] also considered that a diet which produced slim bodies did more to make them grow tall than one in which the food filled them out.” (Spartan Society:2)
Plutarch, the less reliable source, writes: “The aim of providing [Spartan boys in the agoge] with only sparse fare is that they should be driven to make up its deficiencies by resort to daring and villainy. While this is the main purpose of their scanty diet, a subsidiary one is claimed to be the development of their physique, helping them in particular to grow tall. When people over-eat, their breathing is labored, thus producing a broad, squat frame. In contrast, if breath suffers from only slight delay and difficulty and has an easy ascent, the body is enabled to develop freely and comfortably. Good looks are produced in the same way. For where lean, spare features respond to articulation, the sheer weight of obese, over-fed ones make them resist it.” (Lycurgus:17).
It is startling the way Xenophon’s explanation of why the Spartans restricted the diet of youth to the necessary is focused on virtues very useful to an effective army in the field, while Plutarch’s speculation is more about cheating and “villainy.” Indeed, if one follows Plutarch’s reasoning, Spartan youth didn’t suffer any deprivation at all because they simply stole what they didn’t get in their official rations and the clever and better they were at theft, the fatter they would have become, defeating any “secondary” aim of improving the physique.
Notable, however, is despite the different explanations of why the Spartans instituted a regime of sparse rations for youth, both authors suggest that it produced “tall” and (in Plutarch’s case) handsome men. To my knowledge, however, too little food in fact stunts growth, not the reverse. Clearly the ancient commentators postulated a causal effect where there was none, but such a thesis would presumably have been based on two known facts: that Spartan youth ate less than their Athenian etc. equivalents and Spartans were, on average, taller than their enemies.
(The modern observer should take careful note of the fact that if Spartans were apparently on average taller than other Greeks, they probably did not suffer any real deprivation as children. Whatever “short” rations were common in the agoge, they were not so short that growth was in any way impeded since even if some youth may have been adept at theft, most would not have been.)
Returning to the theme of physical appearance, however, we clearly have a reasonable indication that Spartans were on average notably taller than most of their contemporaries. Since the ancient explanation (they received too little to eat as children) is implausible, we need to look for other possible explanations that would make the thesis (Spartans were generally taller) credible. Here the experience of modern Japan might be a useful corollary. As long as the Japanese diet was dependent almost exclusively on fish for protein, the Japanese were notoriously short; the introduction of meat led to the average height in Japan skyrocketing by roughly a foot in just two generations. If we remember that fish was the preferred food in Athens and the most readily available protein for all the island Greeks, while Spartans were envied for their rich pastures and game-filled forests, I think it is fair to postulate that the Spartan diet was more meat heavy than that of their major rivals. It is reasonable, therefore, to picture Spartans as unusually tall by contemporary standards.
It would be wrong to conclude, however, that they were broader as well as taller than their contemporaries. On the contrary, the ancient commentators stress that Spartans were slim, something they attributed to the fixed rations at the syssitia. Yet men who are too tall and too thin would have been incapable of marching long distances or fighting exceptionally well in a phalanx. So we are talking about lean, not skinny, men.
While it might be tempting to picture a Spartan in his prime looking something like a linebacker, I would caution that Sparta’s military successes were not soley a function of Spartan troops being able to push harder, but also march more rapidly (and move at night) and to cover difficult terrain. Likewise the emphasis on hunting, particularly for men in the reserves, suggests to me that Spartans were not excessively “top heavy,” but rather lithe and fleet of foot as well as broad shouldered and strong-armed. In conclusion, I postulate that Spartans had an all-round athletic build developed over decades of physical activity from sports and hunting to military drill and combined with a healthy, but protien-heavy diet that made them tough and lean but not stocky.
Turning to grooming, let me start by dismissing modern artistic depictions of Spartans that show them as shaggy, unkempt men with scrawny, chest-long beards and wild, tangled hair hanging to their shoulders alà Richard Hook’s illustrations in Osprey’s The Spartan Army. Likewise, I reject descriptions such as those of Otto Lendle, who describes Spartans as stinking, filthy and slovenly. These images contradict the historical record and existing archeological evidence.
Herodotus, for example, makes a great point of how the Spartans groomed themselves before Thermopylae, and no one would be tempted to stress the beauty of Spartans as Plutarch does if they had been repugnant for their lack of grooming and hygene. More important, a statue fragment found in the heart of Sparta and dating from the early fifth century (commonly – or affectionately – referred to as Leonidas) shows a man with a clipped beard and neat hair. Earlier archaic artwork unanimously shows men with short beards and long, but very neat, “locks” of hair. (Note, for example the hoplites on the magnificent frieze of the Siphnian Treasure at Delphi dating from Leonidas’ lifetime, the Krater of Vix also from this period, and the figurines of known Laconian origin now displayed in the Museum of Ancient History in Berlin or pictured in Conrad Stibbe’s Das Andere Sparta.)
In addition to these sources, the admittedly dubious Plutarch claims Spartan men took particular care of their hair especially in the face of danger, and refers to an alleged quote from Lycurgus that long hair was preferred because it rendered a handsome man better looking, and an ugly one more frightening.
Whether the locks depicted in ancient sculpture were in fact braided or plaited is not possible to tell from the stylized nature of the evidence. However, it is physically impossible to keep long hair in neat, orderly strands when engaged in sports and other strenuous activities unless it is carefully confined in some way. Thus, practical modern experience suggests that Spartan men did braid their hair, something that is consistent with – though not definitely proved -- by the archeological evidence.
Braiding has the added advantage of being something that can be done quickly and alone if necessary, or done elaborately with help. Thus it could have beean a means for men to express individual taste and personality within the rigid limits of the Spartan prohibitions against displaying wealth in dress or personal ornament. I personally like to think of conservative, “old-fashioned” men just braiding their hair to keep it out of their faces, while the “dandies” of Spartan society innovatively braided their hair at diagonals or in crossing patterns etc. – as in Africa today. This gave a man a great deal of freedom for individual expression – all without breaking any taboos about the use of jewelry or other oranaments.
A Tribute to Gorgo -- The Bride of Leonidas
The second book in the Leonidas Trilogy, Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer, is available for purchase on amazon in both trade paperback and Kindle formats. Gorgo plays an important role in this book, which describes her childhood as well as Leonidas' years as a "young man," serving in the Spartan Army. That's why I'd like to devote this entry to Gorgo.
The most remarkable thing about Gorgo, wife of King Leonidas I of Sparta, is that we know anything about her at all. Herodotus and other ancient Greek historians are far more likely to mention Persian queens than the wives of Greeks – not because Persian women were more powerful than their Greek counterparts but because Persians had several wives and so it was sometimes useful to record by which of them a certain Persian prince had been born. Since Greeks had only one legitimate wife, there was no need for such clarification when it came to prominent Greek citizens. Even the names of Sparta's Queens are rarely mentioned. We do not know, for example, the names of either Leonidas’ mother or his step-mother, the “second wife” who caused all the trouble in the Agiad family in the second half of the 6th Century BC.
The near complete absence of Greek women in ancient history (as opposed to Greek mythology and drama) is a function of the fact that ancient historians were predominantly Athenian males from the Classical or Hellenistic Periods. Athenians of these periods did not think women should be seen - much less heard – in public. Women had no public role and so no business in politics or history. As Pericles said in one of his most famous speeches, “the greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about, whether they are praising you or criticizing you.” (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2:46.) Gorgo was by that standard a hopeless piece of scandal.
The first time she is recorded opening her mouth, she was already interfering in the affairs of state. She told her father to send away the powerful tyrant Aristagoras, who requested Spartan military aid for his planned rebellion against Persia. Gorgo’s father, King Cleomenes, had already told Aristagoras that his proposal was “improper” and asked him to leave Sparta, but Aristagoras then started to offer Cleomenes bribes. As these became ever larger, Cleomenes appeared to be weakening until his daughter intervened, saying: “Father, you had better go away, or the stranger will corrupt you.”
Gorgo allegedly offered this advice at the tender age of “eight or nine.” Even if, as there is good reason to believe, Herodotus exaggerated her youth to make her father seem foolish, it would be hardly less remarkable if a maiden of 18 or 19 did what Gorgo did. In no other Greek city but Sparta would a female of any age have been allowed to be present much less heard and heeded at a meeting between Heads of State.
Gorgo’s advice was all the more remarkable because it was good. It was Athenian aid for the Ionian revolt that brought the wrath of Persia down on mainland Greece. This led some people to quip that it was easier to bamboozle thirty thousand Athenian men than one Spartan girl. Ironically, had the Athenian Assembly been as wise as Gorgo, then Gorgo might not have been widowed twenty years later by the Battle of Thermopylae.
Perhaps the fact that she was genuinely and exceptionally bright explains why as a wife too she was consulted and her opinions respected. This is evidenced by the incident in which a blank wax tablet was sent to Sparta from the exiled king Demaratus then at the Persian court. “No one,” according to Herodotus, “was able to guess the secret until… Gorgo, who was the wife of Leonidas, divined it and told the others that if they scraped the wax off, they would find something written on the wood underneath. This was done; the message was revealed….(Herodotus, The Histories, 7:239.)
There is little doubt that Gorgo was clever, but what else do we know about her?
It is probably safe to say that Gorgo was not particularly pretty. Had she been, it would have been mentioned by somebody. The beauty of other Spartan women, notably Helen and Demaratus’ mother, is legendary or at least recorded. Some people have suggested Gorgo was ugly based on her name which conjures up the mythical Gorgon, a female beast with snakes for hair so hideous that all who looked at her turned to stone. But this seems to be taking things too far in the other direction. It is hard to imagine a truly ugly woman being so well-loved by either her father or her husband – or so well adjusted and self-confident. Furthermore, we are told that men “made advances” to her, which also seems inconsistent with an unattractive woman. Gorgo was probably simply “ordinary,” and so her looks were not worthy of comment.
Whatever her looks, Gorgo was the quintessential Spartan woman in spirit. She was educated, self-confident, out-spoken and involved in the body politic. She was neither vain nor materialistic. She showed Spartan scorn of affectation when she thought Aristagoras had no hands because he let a slave dress him, and when she accused an elegantly dressed man of not being able “to play even a female role.”
This second quote is again very telling because it suggests Gorgo was familiar with theatre – something an Athenian woman would almost certainly not have been. Athenian women, as we have seen above, were not supposed to be seen or talked about. It was a disgrace for them to be seen even standing in the doorways of their houses much less at the market place. How then should they have been tolerated in the crowds that attended Athenian theater? While it is just possible to imagine them (veiled and heavily escorted by their male relatives) attending tragedies, the sexual explicitness of Athenian comedies is utterly unimaginable if respectable Athenian women were expected to be in the audience. Gorgo’s reference to “playing a female role,” however, makes it very clear that she had seen plays performed.
There is even a chance that she saw these plays performed in Athens. We know that Leonidas’ short reign began with the Persian invasion that led to the Battle of Marathon and ended with the Persian invasion that crushed him and his 300 at Thermopylae before continuing on to burn Athens to the ground. In short, Leonidas’ entire reign was dominated by the Persian threat and the need for the Greek city-states to unite against the common enemy. It is therefore reasonable to postulate that Leonidas spent a good deal of his time lobbying for support in the other important cities especially Athens. The very fact that he was elected the commander of the coalition forces including nominal command of the Athenian fleet suggests that leaders in other cities were familiar with – and trusted - him. It is not fanciful to hypothesize that on at least one of his trips to Athens, he took Gorgo with him.
The evidence that Gorgo traveled to Athens is further corroborated by her most famous quote. An Athenian woman is said to have asked her why “only Spartan women rule their men.” Since it is inconceivable that an Athenian woman would have traveled to Sparta, the only place where such an exchange could have taken place was in Athens itself.
The thought of Gorgo in Athens is rather like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court. She must have been a sensation – and one imagines Leonidas with his dry sense of humor enjoying every minute of it! For example, note that the Athenian woman asked why only Spartan women “ruled” their men, implying that Gorgo had been seen giving Leonidas advice – and he had been seen to accept it, just as Cleomenes had done before him. As Gorgo’s response makes clear, the willingness of Spartan men not to discount good advice just because it came out of the mouth of a woman is what made Spartan men more manly – at least in Gorgo’s eyes! Understandably, perhaps, Spartan men, who measured their virility on the battlefield more than in the debates of the Assembly as in Athens, were less worried by the words of women.
But we should not picture Gorgo as a shrew. Gorgo’s role was that of advisor, companion and lover. She is not depicted telling Leonidas off (as she did her father), but rather helping him solve the mystery of the apparently blank wax tablet and obliquely bragging about his masculinity. And while other Spartan queens (notably Helen) are accused of adultery, Gorgo is portrayed rejecting unwanted advances. She was the mother of at least one child by Leonidas, his son and heir, Pleistarchos, and there is no reason to believe this was their only child. The fact that Pleistarchos was still very young at his father’s death suggests the opposite: that there had been elder children who died or had all been female.
When Leonidas marched out to die at Thermopylae, Gorgo asked him for instructions. His answer was a final compliment to her. He said: “Marry a good man and have good children.” Not sons, children. Leonidas wanted Gorgo not to mourn him but to be happy, and he valued daughters as much as sons – probably because he had learned from Gorgo the importance of clever and loyal women.
Gorgo plays a major role in the second book of the Leonidas Trilogy, Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer, now available for purchase on amazon or directly from the publisher, Wheatmark.
New Review of "Leonidas of Sparta: A Boy of the Agoge"
Master Gunner "Blue 7" posted the following review of Leonidas of Sparta: A Boy of the Agoge on amazon. He gave the book five stars as well!
I made the mistake of watching the movie "300" before reading Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire," one of he most inspiring books I have ever read (so good, in fact, that I got 35 copies of the book for my platoon to read and keep.) One of the best draws of the Spartan legacy is the incredible value they placed on small-unit team-building and self-reliance. In Gates, Pressfield takes a good look at the upbringing of Spartan youths within the agoge, and how the training led to incredible acts of heroism and sacrifice at the Battle of Thermopylae.
Which brings me to this book.
Helena Schrader looks even deeper into the agoge system, and personalizes it even further by showing us through the eyes not of a freeborn helot youth (as in Pressfield's case) but through the eyes of Leonidas himself. This book is everything: political intrigue,inter-family jealousy, and teen angst. But most importantly, it's well-researched and moredetailed than anything else I havee read on Sparta. (And I've read Herodotus!) Schrader takes research by historians, who have "reverse engineered" (sorry, but it's the closest word I can think of to what I mean) the Spartan agoge by studying the Roman version, which was based on the Spartan system. Taking into account the different terrain (Sparta vs Rome), different governmeent and beliefs (though not incredibly dissimilar), different time periods, and clues in writings by Greek historians, my guess is that this is probably more accurate than most.
Finally, sprinkled throughout the book are important themes of self-reliance, and self-determination, respect for laws and traditions, and the importance of comraderie.
I whole-heartedly suggest this book for anyone looking for inspiration in team-building, a curiosity about Sparta life, or just a great book to lose yourself in.
Products of the Spartan Agoge
There is general consensus among both ancient and modern commentators that the Spartan agoge was a state-run institution intended to produce ideal soldiers for the Spartan army. Thus Spartan youth were taught only as much literacy as “was necessary,” and great emphasis was placed on physical strength, endurance and discipline. Most modern writers have taken this to mean that Spartan youth were essentially illiterate brutes, who allowed themselves to be whipped to unconsciousness while growing up and after gaining the citizenship dumbly accepted the decisions of the Gerousia and/or king in Assembly and obeyed orders like robots in the army.
Without even addressing the issue of literacy, which has been handled elsewhere (see Ellen Millender’s excellent article “Spartan Literacy Revisited” in Classical Antiquity, Vol. 20/No.1/April 2001 and/or Jean Ducat’s essay “Perspectives on Spartan Education in the Classical Period,” in Sparta: New Perspectives, ed. Stephen Hodkinson and Anton Powell, 1999), I have a number of problems with this interpretation of Spartan society.
First, as any officer can tell you, the best soldiers are not robots who wait for orders but thinking, self-confident men and women who can take initiative and act without – or even against – orders, if necessary. Furthermore, the famous case of Amompharetus refusing to obey Pausanias’ orders on the eve of the Battle of Plataea is a dramatic case in point demonstrating that Spartans not only didn’t always obey orders – not even on the battlefield, much less in other circumstances. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that superiors in the Spartan army did not feel that they could coerce obedience. Amompharetus was not, after all, summarily executed or even relieved of his command. Instead, Pausanias tried to reason with him and finally ordered the rest of the army to move out. Last but not least, Sparta also had sufficient confidence in the judgment of its individual commanders to repeatedly send men of “ordinary” status out act as advisors to foreign powers, such as Gylippus in Syracus.
Second, the Spartan Assembly, in which all products of the agoge exercised their rights as citizens, was by no means powerless or docile. The Assembly had real powers, indeed more than the kings. The Assembly elected the ephors every year and members of the Gerousia whenever vacancies occurred due to death. Hence men with political ambitions had to lobby and ensure a majority of votes against rivals. Also, according to most interpretations of the Great Rhetra, the Assembly had “the final say” on legislation. The Assembly forced more than one king into exile (e.g. Cleomenes I, Leotychidas, Pleistoanax) and could condemn commanders who exceeded instructions from Pausanius to Phoebidas.
Most important, however, the Spartan assembly was made up of her soldiers and her soldiers knew that they represented the might and power of Sparta. A body in which a large minority was composed of virile young men, in peak physical condition, who have been raised to think of themselves as the elite of their profession is unlikely to have been docile. The men who were to be officers and admirals, magistrates, governors, ambassadors and military advisors around the world rose through the ranks of the army – and all had a voice (and probably a following) in the Assembly. Even if some citizens were indifferent to politics and willing to do what others advised, in every generation there are ambitious young men willing to challenge existing authority. We know for a fact that the Spartan Assembly could be outright rowdy on occassion -- as when the Assembly (“the Spartans” – not the ephors or Gerousia) threw the Persian emissaries of Darius down a well.
What the above demonstrates is that Spartan citizens were anything but mindless robots manipulated by their officers and political leaders. They were self-confident citizens with a highly developed sense of their own power and confidence in their own capabilities. And they were the products of the Spartan agoge.
In short,the agoge was not designed to produce blind-obedience, senseless acceptance of suffering, or mute endurance of hardship but citizens, who would serve Sparta long after they went off active service in a variety of political and diplomatic capacities. Sparta did not want or need docile political pawns or mindless slaves but rather thinking and responsible citizens capable of assuming responsibility and command. Only if one recognizes these broader objectives of the agoge is it possible to understand how it worked.
It is hard to imagine what Sparta would have looked like in Leonidas’ lifetime. The city was destroyed by earthquakes more than once, flooded and the site completely abandoned for more than a thousand years. Today, what few ruins remain date predominantly from the Hellenistic or Roman periods, and an unattractive modern town has been dumped upon the ancient site.
So naturally our images of the ancient city-state have been shaped by what we have been told about Spartan society. Spartan society was characterized by rigid discipline, a disdain for luxury, and endurance of hardship. We are told that the boys suffered a childhood of deprivation in which they had to steal to get enough to eat and were allowed only one garment per year. Allegedly the women were prohibited from wearing jewelry or taking pride in their weaving. Indeed, gold and silver was banned entirely, and so could not adorn even the temples of the Gods. The houses, we are told, were not painted (as else where in the Ancient world), and the cuisine was infamous for its lack of sophistication and variety. (See my blog entry from July 10 "The Secrets of Spartan Cuisine" for more thoughts on Spartan cooking.)
It is understandable if one imagines that such a society could only have developed in an austere, plain, indeed barren, landscape. After all, a society deprived of food and clothes, and lacking all forms of decoration and fine cuisine sounds like a desperately poor society. It is easy to assume that Spartan society evolved to make a virtue out of necessity.
But the valley of the Eurotas River, the heart of ancient Lacedaemon, is anything but barren! It is green and fertile and stunningly beautiful - like riches cupped in the hands of the gods. From the blooming oleander to the wild iris, the valley is a garden. Orange orchards stretch as far as the eye can see, brazenly advertising the abundance of soil and sun and water. Most spectacular of all, the Eurotas valley is one of those few places on earth that offers the sensually stimulating sight of palm trees waving against a back-drop of snow-capped mountains.
Nor is this richness a product of modern fertilizers and irrigation. The ancient historians also speak of Sparta’s agricultural wealth. Sparta’s hinterland produced in abundance every staple of ancient Greek agriculture from grain to grapes, and from citrus fruits to olives. Furthermore, ancient Laceademon was famous for its forests and pastureland. The former provided exportable timber and abundant game to enrich the Spartan diet, while the latter nourished sheep, cattle, goats and fine horses. Finally, Lacedaemon had exploitable mineral resources such as lead, tin, copper and marble.
Sparta took full advantage of these natural blessings. The fact that the ruling class, Sparta’s full citizens or Spartiates, were prohibited from engaging in any profession other than arms, has led many modern observers to imagine Lacedaemon was devoid of industry, trade and commerce. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sparta’s tiny elite of professional soldiers had the luxury to devote themselves to perfecting their skill at arms precisely because Lacedaemon had a large population of helots and perioikoi who ensured the economic prosperity of the Lacedaemonian state.
Both helots and perioikoi are believed to be the descendents of the peoples who inhabited Lacedaemon before the Doric invasion. While the helots had a status similar to medieval serfs and enjoyed only limited freedom, the perioikoi were fully free men. The perioikoi had abdicated control of foreign policy to Sparta, but they otherwise governed their own affairs by their own customs and laws. They were not bound by the Spartan Constitution attributed to Lycurgus regarding dress, diet, profession or the possession of gold and silver. Among the perioikoi there were artisans and architects, merchants and bankers, tradesmen and shipbuilders – just as in any other Greek city. The perioikoi produced everything from mundane domestic articles to exportable quality works of art in bronze, ivory and stone, and they traded from a variety of ports with direct access to the Aegean and Ionian Seas. (See my blog entry from April 9: "Shopkeepers and Shipmasters.")
In short, Leonidas’ Sparta was not poor, but the center of the powerful city-state of Lacedaemon. It was the administrative hub of large territory with an abundance of natural resources and agricultural produce, good lines of communication, and an active commercial and trading community. It was also the leading nation of the Peloponnesian League, a powerful defensive alliance of independent city-states – the NATO of its age. Last but not least, it was the site of annual vocal and dance festivals that attracted mass tourism from around the ancient world. It was most decidedly not a provincial back-water lost in a barren and inaccessible landscape.
Modern writers, however, have often been misled by the disparaging remarks made by Athenian observers about their hated rival. Nicolas Nicastro in his The Isle of Stone (p.67), for example, describes the capital of the dominant superpower of Greece as no more than “an agglomeration of sleepy villages.” Jon Edward Martin, an author whose research is on the whole very sound, writes in The Headlong God of War (p. 83) that “large buildings were few” and depicts the city as having only “a small collection of civic buildings clustered to the southeast of the acropolis.” Steven Pressfield in his best-selling novel Gates of Fire (p. 188) has one of his characters describe Sparta as “… a pile of stones,” and go on to claim: “It contains no temples or treasures of note, no gold….”
Yet Pausanias, whose travel guide to Greece was written in the 2nd Century AD – long after Sparta’s decline from prominence under Leonidas – needed 26 sections and more than 60 pages to describe only the noteworthy architectural sites of the ancient city! Far from being a backwater, Sparta was a large, prosperous and important city in the lifetime of Leonidas. But, as the Athenian commentary suggests, it was also very different from other Greek cities.
Visitors to Leonidas’ Sparta would have come expecting the capital of this rich and powerful state to be like other power-centers of the civilized world. Whether tourists, coming for the dancing and singing at the annual festivals, or diplomats, coming to plead for Spartan troops to support some distant conflict, foreign visitors would have compared Sparta to Susa, Babylon and Memphis no less than Athens or Corinth. These foreigners came expecting a city enclosed by walls whose strength matched Sparta’s military reputation. They expected to pass through imposing gates into a city crammed with brightly painted, colorfully tiled and elaborately decorated public buildings. They expected to find temples laden with gold crushed between pompous civic buildings. They expected to find a confusing maze of residential streets crammed with humanity humming incessantly with activity. They expected – as in other crowded cities – these back streets to be clothed in the perpetual shadows cast by the tall walls which shielded the private spheres and women of the inhabitants from public view. They expected a commercial capital as well as an administrative one. It is hardly surprising that they were disappointed with what they found at Sparta.
Sparta was different from other Greek cities, but it was not necessarily without its unique charms. For example, we know that in ancient Greece most statues and temples were painted vivid colors and the statues of the gods were dressed in robes, ivory, gold and jewels. Spartan temples were not. But isn’t it precisely that simplicity of white stone structures of flawless proportions and life-like naked marble statues that we find striking in ancient Greek architecture and sculpture today? Would we admire the Parthenon in Athens as much if it was dressed – as it was in the age of Leonidas - in vivid paint? Would we prefer to see Venus de Milo painted in flesh tones with red lips and blond hair?
Sparta’s ethos and aesthetics were different from other Greek cities, but that doesn’t mean it lacked beauty or refinement. Yes, Leonidas’ Sparta had no walls, but this meant it could spread out graciously upon its valley as all major European cities did after their confining walls were torn down. No one today would call Paris, Vienna or Rome “a collection of villages.” Yet all did in fact begin as collections of villages, which later grew into a single metropolis after the need for fortifications disappeared and economic growth fueled urbanization. Why should we assume that just because Sparta was made up of five distinct villages in pre-Archaic times that it was not – by the age of Leonidas when it was at the height of his glory – a cohesive, dynamic city?
Spartan homes may indeed have lacked elaborate interior paintings, but then maybe such decoration was not necessary because, unlike their Athenian counterparts, they were not compressed into the back allies of an over-crowded city and surrounded by high, protective walls. Spartans could afford to build their houses on generous plans. They could incorporate interior courtyards planted with fruit trees and herbs. They could surround themselves with gardens and orchards. Spartans could have decorated their homes - as they did themselves – with things of nature: cut flowers, bowls of fruits, running water. Even without gold or silver, their homes could still sparkle with sunlight glinting off the water of courtyard fountains.
Ironically, Leonidas’ uniquely Spartan city might well have been more pleasing to modern taste than Athens or Babylon of the 5th Century BC.
Picture a city spread across the broad floor of the Eurotas valley before the backdrop of snow-capped Taygetos. Picture a city of wide, tree-lined avenues along which the white-washed civic buildings, marble monuments and graceful temples stretched like pearls upon a green thread. Imagine a city of sun-soaked theatres and imposing but airy stoas. Imagine a city where the barracks and civic buildings with their long porches and batteries of Doric columns face green, open spaces set aside for running and horse-racing. Imagine a city decorated with fountains and flowering trees which gradually spreads out into the suburbs where large villas set in blooming gardens sprawl out toward the mountains on either side of the Eurotas. That image will bring you closer to the Sparta of Leonidas.
BBC News, Sparta
The BBC's Paul Henley detects stirrings of dissent in Sparta as middle-class Greeks hit by the country's economic woes aim their ire at the Athens government.
Yiannis did not expect to be back in his sleepy home town of Sparta, in the Greek Peloponnese, at the age of 30. He sees his return as a personal defeat. Up until 18 months ago, the business graduate had a career in Athens for a finance company. But his job was a casualty of a national economic collapse that dwarfs most others in Europe and, ever since, he has been unable to find work. He ended up moving back in with his parents where he grew up. Having made constant unsuccessful applications for work, he says the growing feeling of uselessness is reducing him as a person.
"Now" he says, "I can't dream as I did before, I can't be optimistic about life or have any real ambitions. Perhaps my only chance is to move abroad."
War against Athens
Yiannis is one of a group who call themselves the "Indignant Spartans" and who went on a 250km protest march to Athens. The three-day march, in May, was a vent for their anger and a way of publicly underlining their belief that ordinary Greeks had been betrayed by their political elite and by the murky world of international finance.
About 10 of the group are sitting around a table, at dusk, at a friend's pavement cafe. They are, frugally, drinking water in the shadow of a statue of Sparta's ancient king, Leonidas, a symbol of the days when Sparta waged a bitter war against Athens. These days, much of that bitterness is returning.
The "Indignant Spartans'' stories are a microcosm of the troubles facing citizens everywhere in Greece, as another national austerity package kicks in, living costs and taxes rocket, consumers rein in spending, wages fall and jobs are lost.
And although the calm, olive and palm tree-lined streets these Spartans inhabit, amid the constant hum of cicadas, seem a world away from the tear gas and the pitched battles outside parliament in Athens, the spirit of provincial rebellion seems to be growing fast.
Vasilis, who is 33, puts it like this: "Sometimes during the past two months I have started to understand how easy it would be to turn, in an instant, from being a good, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen - into a terrorist."
He is not the idle, state-reliant Greek familiar from mocking articles in the foreign press recently.
Vasilis is an entrepreneur who built up a highly successful business chain from scratch during a working life which began, he says, at the age of 12 and has regularly involved 18-hour days. In the past year, he says he has lost €800,000 ($1,150,000; £700,000. Vasilis's restaurant and catering business faces bankruptcy. A single cafe became a collection of restaurants and a mobile catering business with regular wedding and business contracts. As customers began to trail off, Vasilis put his capital into a scheme to build a hotel on the coast. But the scheme was reliant on government-approved loans and grants which disappeared in the crisis. The hotel was never finished and he is looking bankruptcy in the face.
"I feel very angry inside," he says. "When you try to do the best for your country and your children and your neighbours, you still get treated like garbage by the authorities," he says. "It is psychological violence. Maybe the terrorists we see on the television - this is the process they have gone through."
His words are greeted with nods around the table.
Constantina says she has been independent since she was 17 and now, at the age of 43, finds herself borrowing money from her parents. She set up a graphic design business eight years ago. Labels for agricultural products and flyers for local shops are her mainstay. Constantina's graphic design business is starved of business All her clients are desperate to save money. She feels penalised by a tax system she predicts will be the final straw for her business within the next year.
"Maybe marching is the only way I can remain an active citizen of this country," she says.
George, who is 45, is a secondary school teacher and one of those supposed to feel thankful for the relative security of his job. "I do not feel at all lucky," he says. Civil servants' salaries were a number one target in the cuts and that will continue." He feels the faith he had in the future has gone. A house he was building for his family has been left a concrete shell. "The next few years will be the hardest of our lives," he says. "The Ministry of Education has already begun closing schools."
"The situation makes me want to revolt," says Panagiotis, a pastry chef in his 40s. The business he set up with his nephew is at risk from a dramatic loss of customers recently and a simultaneous hike in costs. The macaroons, mini ice-creams and chocolate eclairs he makes are among the first to be crossed off people's shopping lists in difficult times. The handful of people they employ have already taken pay and some could soon be made redundant. "I worry for my family," he says. "What will happen if I can not pay back the loans on the business? I want to go out into the streets and shout about it."
His words are a thinly-veiled warning to Athens: "I want people to understand that my personal revolution must become a national revolution."
Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer -- The First Reviews
Just ten days after the release of Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer two reviews have already been posted on amazon.com. That's exciting -- especially when both are from people I do not know and to whom I did not send review copies. I hope this is a good omen and the book will continue to attract positive attention.
5.0 out of 5 stars
So Good It Will Make You Stay Up Past Your Bedtime..., September 8, 2011
By
Kathleen Ann Langley "Lucky 7 Tattoo Kings Beach" (Lake Tahoe, California)
(REAL NAME), Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is for: Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer (Paperback)
Yes, once again Ms Schrader has kept me up WAY past my bedtime for "just one more chapter." Rarely in historical fiction does this happen for me. I will hit a boring spot in a book and easily put it down until next time. Not so with the second book of this Leonidas trilogy "Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer." She had a tough job to outshine herself after the first part of this 3 part series, " A Boy of the Agoge" yet the author met the challenge with gusto.
All the main players of ancient Sparta are back, and some new ones add to the story without becoming confusing. Gorgo comes into her teenage years with timeless problems we can relate to. Leonidas becomes a man we would all desire to have in our lives as the ultimate compassionate alpha male. And the folks who surround these 2 ancient royal players have their own stories told too. Not a boring one in the bunch either. It's like a soap opera set in antiquity!
Now that I have plowed my way through this second book I once again cannot wait until the 3rd and final book comes out next year! If you even have a vague interest in what life may have been like for Leonidas, or the Spartan people at this time and place in history, you will dig this book.
AND
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thin rations, September 4, 2011,
BY
Jessica Allan Schmidt (People's Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States)
(REAL NAME)
This review is for: Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer (Paperback)
William Styron, author of The Confessions of Nat Turner once commented that a historical novelist did best when given "thin rations". This book takes those scant rations available from the historical record and extrapolates them, using common sense as well as classical sources, to construct what life may have been like for Leonidas I. There are some interesting inconsistencies with the historical records -- for instance, it is not known if Cleombrotus was Leonidas' twin or younger brother, yet the series paints him quite convincingly as Leonidas' elder twin -- but on the whole, it provides a very interesting look at the dynamics of an unusual society.
Sparta is often treated by modern scholars as a nation of simple brutes, but records do not hold with this -- if the training of youths was simply a matter of testing them until they broke, Greek leaders from all over the peninsula would not have competed to send their sons to the agoge for whatever periods they could. Like military schools of today, Sparta's educational programme was much more clearly devoted to military *and* practical learning, but the relative dearth of universal military training during this period means that its military nature is over-emphasised. Moreover, the fact that attendance at the Spartan agoge meant for some préstige among other Greeks strongly implies that it was seen as a specialist school that was a great honour for youths inclined to eventually rise to rôles of command in their own city-state's military.
The examination of what Spartan adult life was like is an interesting view of comparison and contrast. In the era before supertankers and jet aircraft, military engagements were by necessity no more than half the year, before mud and rain made it impossible to manoeuvre effectively, and, even more importantly, avoid disease decimating the ranks (a killer that was more likely than death by battle wound up through the Second World War), and therefore, even though Spartans were certainly careful to keep themselves in training year round and maintain constant operational readiness, they also had personal, civilian lives that were just as important to them, if not more so. As any tactician can tell you, the most motivated fighter is one who fights to defend a society he feels is integral to his life. Were Sparta a brutal place dedicated to warfare and only warfare, there would be no society to defend.
In this book, it is interesting to see the evolution of Queen Gorgo from girlhood to womanhood, even though most of it is conjecture based on what *is* known of the training of Spartan women. This book is also surprisingly engaging for the middle part of a trilogy, traditionally a time when *any* storytelling lags. The agoge is notorious, and Leonidas' death is equally well-known, but this period could have been fairly dull, yet it is as engaging as the first book in this series. I recommend it strongly.
The Physical Appearance of Spartans
As a novelist, I have given considerable thought to what the Spartans in the Age of Leonidas might have looked like, as well as how they would have groomed themselves and dressed. From comments and correspondence, I gather that this is a topic of interest to many of my readers as well, so I thought it might be worth some joint speculation.
In terms of physical build, I have not heard of any archeological evidence based on skeletons, but would welcome any information you may have heard or read about. In the absence of such forensic evidence, I may dependent on mixing ancient sources with modern experience and common sense.
Both Plutarch and – more importantly Xenophon – stress that Spartan youth (i.e. during the critical years of physical development and growth) were not allowed to eat “too much.” Xenophon speaks of “just the right amount for them never to become sluggish through being too full, while also giving them a taste of what it is not to have enough. [Lycurgus'] view was that boys under this kind of regime would be better able, when required, to work hard without eating, as well as to make the same rations last longer, when so ordered; they would be satisfied with a plain diet, would adapt better to accepting any type of food, and would be in a healthier condition. [Lycurgus] also considered that a diet which produced slim bodies did more to make them grow tall than one in which the food filled them out.” (Spartan Society:2)
Plutarch, the less reliable source, writes: “The aim of providing [Spartan boys in the agoge] with only sparse fare is that they should be driven to make up its deficiencies by resort to daring and villainy. While this is the main purpose of their scanty diet, a subsidiary one is claimed to be the development of their physique, helping them in particular to grow tall. When people over-eat, their breathing is labored, thus producing a broad, squat frame. In contrast, if breath suffers from only slight delay and difficulty and has an easy ascent, the body is enabled to develop freely and comfortably. Good looks are produced in the same way. For where lean, spare features respond to articulation, the sheer weight of obese, over-fed ones make them resist it.” (Lycurgus:17).
It is startling the way Xenophon’s explanation of why the Spartans restricted the diet of youth to the necessary is focused on virtues very useful to an effective army in the field, while Plutarch’s speculation is more about cheating and “villainy.” Indeed, if one follows Plutarch’s reasoning, Spartan youth didn’t suffer any deprivation at all because they simply stole what they didn’t get in their official rations and the clever and better they were at theft, the fatter they would have become, defeating any “secondary” aim of improving the physique.
Notable, however, is despite the different explanations of why the Spartans instituted a regime of sparse rations for youth, both authors suggest that it produced “tall” and (in Plutarch’s case) handsome men. To my knowledge, however, too little food in fact stunts growth, not the reverse. Clearly the ancient commentators postulated a causal effect where there was none, but such a thesis would presumably have been based on two known facts: that Spartan youth ate less than their Athenian etc. equivalents and Spartans were, on average, taller than their enemies.
(The modern observer should take careful note of the fact that if Spartans were apparently on average taller than other Greeks, they probably did not suffer any real deprivation as children. Whatever “short” rations were common in the agoge, they were not so short that growth was in any way impeded since even if some youth may have been adept at theft, most would not have been.)
Returning to the theme of physical appearance, however, we clearly have a reasonable indication that Spartans were on average notably taller than most of their contemporaries. Since the ancient explanation (they received too little to eat as children) is implausible, we need to look for other possible explanations that would make the thesis (Spartans were generally taller) credible. Here the experience of modern Japan might be a useful corollary. As long as the Japanese diet was dependent almost exclusively on fish for protein, the Japanese were notoriously short; the introduction of meat led to the average height in Japan skyrocketing by roughly a foot in just two generations. If we remember that fish was the preferred food in Athens and the most readily available protein for all the island Greeks, while Spartans were envied for their rich pastures and game-filled forests, I think it is fair to postulate that the Spartan diet was more meat heavy than that of their major rivals. It is reasonable, therefore, to picture Spartans as unusually tall by contemporary standards.
It would be wrong to conclude, however, that they were broader as well as taller than their contemporaries. On the contrary, the ancient commentators stress that Spartans were slim, something they attributed to the fixed rations at the syssitia. Yet men who are too tall and too thin would have been incapable of marching long distances or fighting exceptionally well in a phalanx. So we are talking about lean, not skinny, men.
While it might be tempting to picture a Spartan in his prime looking something like a linebacker, I would caution that Sparta’s military successes were not soley a function of Spartan troops being able to push harder, but also march more rapidly (and move at night) and to cover difficult terrain. Likewise the emphasis on hunting, particularly for men in the reserves, suggests to me that Spartans were not excessively “top heavy,” but rather lithe and fleet of foot as well as broad shouldered and strong-armed. In conclusion, I postulate that Spartans had an all-round athletic build developed over decades of physical activity from sports and hunting to military drill and combined with a healthy, but protien-heavy diet that made them tough and lean but not stocky.
Turning to grooming, let me start by dismissing modern artistic depictions of Spartans that show them as shaggy, unkempt men with scrawny, chest-long beards and wild, tangled hair hanging to their shoulders alà Richard Hook’s illustrations in Osprey’s The Spartan Army. Likewise, I reject descriptions such as those of Otto Lendle, who describes Spartans as stinking, filthy and slovenly. These images contradict the historical record and existing archeological evidence.
Herodotus, for example, makes a great point of how the Spartans groomed themselves before Thermopylae, and no one would be tempted to stress the beauty of Spartans as Plutarch does if they had been repugnant for their lack of grooming and hygene. More important, a statue fragment found in the heart of Sparta and dating from the early fifth century (commonly – or affectionately – referred to as Leonidas) shows a man with a clipped beard and neat hair. Earlier archaic artwork unanimously shows men with short beards and long, but very neat, “locks” of hair. (Note, for example the hoplites on the magnificent frieze of the Siphnian Treasure at Delphi dating from Leonidas’ lifetime, the Krater of Vix also from this period, and the figurines of known Laconian origin now displayed in the Museum of Ancient History in Berlin or pictured in Conrad Stibbe’s Das Andere Sparta.)
In addition to these sources, the admittedly dubious Plutarch claims Spartan men took particular care of their hair especially in the face of danger, and refers to an alleged quote from Lycurgus that long hair was preferred because it rendered a handsome man better looking, and an ugly one more frightening.
Whether the locks depicted in ancient sculpture were in fact braided or plaited is not possible to tell from the stylized nature of the evidence. However, it is physically impossible to keep long hair in neat, orderly strands when engaged in sports and other strenuous activities unless it is carefully confined in some way. Thus, practical modern experience suggests that Spartan men did braid their hair, something that is consistent with – though not definitely proved -- by the archeological evidence.
Braiding has the added advantage of being something that can be done quickly and alone if necessary, or done elaborately with help. Thus it could have beean a means for men to express individual taste and personality within the rigid limits of the Spartan prohibitions against displaying wealth in dress or personal ornament. I personally like to think of conservative, “old-fashioned” men just braiding their hair to keep it out of their faces, while the “dandies” of Spartan society innovatively braided their hair at diagonals or in crossing patterns etc. – as in Africa today. This gave a man a great deal of freedom for individual expression – all without breaking any taboos about the use of jewelry or other oranaments.
A Tribute to Gorgo -- The Bride of Leonidas
The second book in the Leonidas Trilogy, Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer, is available for purchase on amazon in both trade paperback and Kindle formats. Gorgo plays an important role in this book, which describes her childhood as well as Leonidas' years as a "young man," serving in the Spartan Army. That's why I'd like to devote this entry to Gorgo.
The most remarkable thing about Gorgo, wife of King Leonidas I of Sparta, is that we know anything about her at all. Herodotus and other ancient Greek historians are far more likely to mention Persian queens than the wives of Greeks – not because Persian women were more powerful than their Greek counterparts but because Persians had several wives and so it was sometimes useful to record by which of them a certain Persian prince had been born. Since Greeks had only one legitimate wife, there was no need for such clarification when it came to prominent Greek citizens. Even the names of Sparta's Queens are rarely mentioned. We do not know, for example, the names of either Leonidas’ mother or his step-mother, the “second wife” who caused all the trouble in the Agiad family in the second half of the 6th Century BC.
The near complete absence of Greek women in ancient history (as opposed to Greek mythology and drama) is a function of the fact that ancient historians were predominantly Athenian males from the Classical or Hellenistic Periods. Athenians of these periods did not think women should be seen - much less heard – in public. Women had no public role and so no business in politics or history. As Pericles said in one of his most famous speeches, “the greatest glory of a woman is to be least talked about, whether they are praising you or criticizing you.” (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2:46.) Gorgo was by that standard a hopeless piece of scandal.
The first time she is recorded opening her mouth, she was already interfering in the affairs of state. She told her father to send away the powerful tyrant Aristagoras, who requested Spartan military aid for his planned rebellion against Persia. Gorgo’s father, King Cleomenes, had already told Aristagoras that his proposal was “improper” and asked him to leave Sparta, but Aristagoras then started to offer Cleomenes bribes. As these became ever larger, Cleomenes appeared to be weakening until his daughter intervened, saying: “Father, you had better go away, or the stranger will corrupt you.”
Gorgo allegedly offered this advice at the tender age of “eight or nine.” Even if, as there is good reason to believe, Herodotus exaggerated her youth to make her father seem foolish, it would be hardly less remarkable if a maiden of 18 or 19 did what Gorgo did. In no other Greek city but Sparta would a female of any age have been allowed to be present much less heard and heeded at a meeting between Heads of State.
Gorgo’s advice was all the more remarkable because it was good. It was Athenian aid for the Ionian revolt that brought the wrath of Persia down on mainland Greece. This led some people to quip that it was easier to bamboozle thirty thousand Athenian men than one Spartan girl. Ironically, had the Athenian Assembly been as wise as Gorgo, then Gorgo might not have been widowed twenty years later by the Battle of Thermopylae.
Perhaps the fact that she was genuinely and exceptionally bright explains why as a wife too she was consulted and her opinions respected. This is evidenced by the incident in which a blank wax tablet was sent to Sparta from the exiled king Demaratus then at the Persian court. “No one,” according to Herodotus, “was able to guess the secret until… Gorgo, who was the wife of Leonidas, divined it and told the others that if they scraped the wax off, they would find something written on the wood underneath. This was done; the message was revealed….(Herodotus, The Histories, 7:239.)
There is little doubt that Gorgo was clever, but what else do we know about her?
It is probably safe to say that Gorgo was not particularly pretty. Had she been, it would have been mentioned by somebody. The beauty of other Spartan women, notably Helen and Demaratus’ mother, is legendary or at least recorded. Some people have suggested Gorgo was ugly based on her name which conjures up the mythical Gorgon, a female beast with snakes for hair so hideous that all who looked at her turned to stone. But this seems to be taking things too far in the other direction. It is hard to imagine a truly ugly woman being so well-loved by either her father or her husband – or so well adjusted and self-confident. Furthermore, we are told that men “made advances” to her, which also seems inconsistent with an unattractive woman. Gorgo was probably simply “ordinary,” and so her looks were not worthy of comment.
Whatever her looks, Gorgo was the quintessential Spartan woman in spirit. She was educated, self-confident, out-spoken and involved in the body politic. She was neither vain nor materialistic. She showed Spartan scorn of affectation when she thought Aristagoras had no hands because he let a slave dress him, and when she accused an elegantly dressed man of not being able “to play even a female role.”
This second quote is again very telling because it suggests Gorgo was familiar with theatre – something an Athenian woman would almost certainly not have been. Athenian women, as we have seen above, were not supposed to be seen or talked about. It was a disgrace for them to be seen even standing in the doorways of their houses much less at the market place. How then should they have been tolerated in the crowds that attended Athenian theater? While it is just possible to imagine them (veiled and heavily escorted by their male relatives) attending tragedies, the sexual explicitness of Athenian comedies is utterly unimaginable if respectable Athenian women were expected to be in the audience. Gorgo’s reference to “playing a female role,” however, makes it very clear that she had seen plays performed.
There is even a chance that she saw these plays performed in Athens. We know that Leonidas’ short reign began with the Persian invasion that led to the Battle of Marathon and ended with the Persian invasion that crushed him and his 300 at Thermopylae before continuing on to burn Athens to the ground. In short, Leonidas’ entire reign was dominated by the Persian threat and the need for the Greek city-states to unite against the common enemy. It is therefore reasonable to postulate that Leonidas spent a good deal of his time lobbying for support in the other important cities especially Athens. The very fact that he was elected the commander of the coalition forces including nominal command of the Athenian fleet suggests that leaders in other cities were familiar with – and trusted - him. It is not fanciful to hypothesize that on at least one of his trips to Athens, he took Gorgo with him.
The evidence that Gorgo traveled to Athens is further corroborated by her most famous quote. An Athenian woman is said to have asked her why “only Spartan women rule their men.” Since it is inconceivable that an Athenian woman would have traveled to Sparta, the only place where such an exchange could have taken place was in Athens itself.
The thought of Gorgo in Athens is rather like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court. She must have been a sensation – and one imagines Leonidas with his dry sense of humor enjoying every minute of it! For example, note that the Athenian woman asked why only Spartan women “ruled” their men, implying that Gorgo had been seen giving Leonidas advice – and he had been seen to accept it, just as Cleomenes had done before him. As Gorgo’s response makes clear, the willingness of Spartan men not to discount good advice just because it came out of the mouth of a woman is what made Spartan men more manly – at least in Gorgo’s eyes! Understandably, perhaps, Spartan men, who measured their virility on the battlefield more than in the debates of the Assembly as in Athens, were less worried by the words of women.
But we should not picture Gorgo as a shrew. Gorgo’s role was that of advisor, companion and lover. She is not depicted telling Leonidas off (as she did her father), but rather helping him solve the mystery of the apparently blank wax tablet and obliquely bragging about his masculinity. And while other Spartan queens (notably Helen) are accused of adultery, Gorgo is portrayed rejecting unwanted advances. She was the mother of at least one child by Leonidas, his son and heir, Pleistarchos, and there is no reason to believe this was their only child. The fact that Pleistarchos was still very young at his father’s death suggests the opposite: that there had been elder children who died or had all been female.
When Leonidas marched out to die at Thermopylae, Gorgo asked him for instructions. His answer was a final compliment to her. He said: “Marry a good man and have good children.” Not sons, children. Leonidas wanted Gorgo not to mourn him but to be happy, and he valued daughters as much as sons – probably because he had learned from Gorgo the importance of clever and loyal women.
Gorgo plays a major role in the second book of the Leonidas Trilogy, Leonidas of Sparta: A Peerless Peer, now available for purchase on amazon or directly from the publisher, Wheatmark.
New Review of "Leonidas of Sparta: A Boy of the Agoge"
Master Gunner "Blue 7" posted the following review of Leonidas of Sparta: A Boy of the Agoge on amazon. He gave the book five stars as well!
I made the mistake of watching the movie "300" before reading Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire," one of he most inspiring books I have ever read (so good, in fact, that I got 35 copies of the book for my platoon to read and keep.) One of the best draws of the Spartan legacy is the incredible value they placed on small-unit team-building and self-reliance. In Gates, Pressfield takes a good look at the upbringing of Spartan youths within the agoge, and how the training led to incredible acts of heroism and sacrifice at the Battle of Thermopylae.
Which brings me to this book.
Helena Schrader looks even deeper into the agoge system, and personalizes it even further by showing us through the eyes not of a freeborn helot youth (as in Pressfield's case) but through the eyes of Leonidas himself. This book is everything: political intrigue,inter-family jealousy, and teen angst. But most importantly, it's well-researched and moredetailed than anything else I havee read on Sparta. (And I've read Herodotus!) Schrader takes research by historians, who have "reverse engineered" (sorry, but it's the closest word I can think of to what I mean) the Spartan agoge by studying the Roman version, which was based on the Spartan system. Taking into account the different terrain (Sparta vs Rome), different governmeent and beliefs (though not incredibly dissimilar), different time periods, and clues in writings by Greek historians, my guess is that this is probably more accurate than most.
Finally, sprinkled throughout the book are important themes of self-reliance, and self-determination, respect for laws and traditions, and the importance of comraderie.
I whole-heartedly suggest this book for anyone looking for inspiration in team-building, a curiosity about Sparta life, or just a great book to lose yourself in.
Products of the Spartan Agoge
There is general consensus among both ancient and modern commentators that the Spartan agoge was a state-run institution intended to produce ideal soldiers for the Spartan army. Thus Spartan youth were taught only as much literacy as “was necessary,” and great emphasis was placed on physical strength, endurance and discipline. Most modern writers have taken this to mean that Spartan youth were essentially illiterate brutes, who allowed themselves to be whipped to unconsciousness while growing up and after gaining the citizenship dumbly accepted the decisions of the Gerousia and/or king in Assembly and obeyed orders like robots in the army.
Without even addressing the issue of literacy, which has been handled elsewhere (see Ellen Millender’s excellent article “Spartan Literacy Revisited” in Classical Antiquity, Vol. 20/No.1/April 2001 and/or Jean Ducat’s essay “Perspectives on Spartan Education in the Classical Period,” in Sparta: New Perspectives, ed. Stephen Hodkinson and Anton Powell, 1999), I have a number of problems with this interpretation of Spartan society.
First, as any officer can tell you, the best soldiers are not robots who wait for orders but thinking, self-confident men and women who can take initiative and act without – or even against – orders, if necessary. Furthermore, the famous case of Amompharetus refusing to obey Pausanias’ orders on the eve of the Battle of Plataea is a dramatic case in point demonstrating that Spartans not only didn’t always obey orders – not even on the battlefield, much less in other circumstances. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that superiors in the Spartan army did not feel that they could coerce obedience. Amompharetus was not, after all, summarily executed or even relieved of his command. Instead, Pausanias tried to reason with him and finally ordered the rest of the army to move out. Last but not least, Sparta also had sufficient confidence in the judgment of its individual commanders to repeatedly send men of “ordinary” status out act as advisors to foreign powers, such as Gylippus in Syracus.
Second, the Spartan Assembly, in which all products of the agoge exercised their rights as citizens, was by no means powerless or docile. The Assembly had real powers, indeed more than the kings. The Assembly elected the ephors every year and members of the Gerousia whenever vacancies occurred due to death. Hence men with political ambitions had to lobby and ensure a majority of votes against rivals. Also, according to most interpretations of the Great Rhetra, the Assembly had “the final say” on legislation. The Assembly forced more than one king into exile (e.g. Cleomenes I, Leotychidas, Pleistoanax) and could condemn commanders who exceeded instructions from Pausanius to Phoebidas.
Most important, however, the Spartan assembly was made up of her soldiers and her soldiers knew that they represented the might and power of Sparta. A body in which a large minority was composed of virile young men, in peak physical condition, who have been raised to think of themselves as the elite of their profession is unlikely to have been docile. The men who were to be officers and admirals, magistrates, governors, ambassadors and military advisors around the world rose through the ranks of the army – and all had a voice (and probably a following) in the Assembly. Even if some citizens were indifferent to politics and willing to do what others advised, in every generation there are ambitious young men willing to challenge existing authority. We know for a fact that the Spartan Assembly could be outright rowdy on occassion -- as when the Assembly (“the Spartans” – not the ephors or Gerousia) threw the Persian emissaries of Darius down a well.
What the above demonstrates is that Spartan citizens were anything but mindless robots manipulated by their officers and political leaders. They were self-confident citizens with a highly developed sense of their own power and confidence in their own capabilities. And they were the products of the Spartan agoge.
In short,the agoge was not designed to produce blind-obedience, senseless acceptance of suffering, or mute endurance of hardship but citizens, who would serve Sparta long after they went off active service in a variety of political and diplomatic capacities. Sparta did not want or need docile political pawns or mindless slaves but rather thinking and responsible citizens capable of assuming responsibility and command. Only if one recognizes these broader objectives of the agoge is it possible to understand how it worked.
It is hard to imagine what Sparta would have looked like in Leonidas’ lifetime. The city was destroyed by earthquakes more than once, flooded and the site completely abandoned for more than a thousand years. Today, what few ruins remain date predominantly from the Hellenistic or Roman periods, and an unattractive modern town has been dumped upon the ancient site.
So naturally our images of the ancient city-state have been shaped by what we have been told about Spartan society. Spartan society was characterized by rigid discipline, a disdain for luxury, and endurance of hardship. We are told that the boys suffered a childhood of deprivation in which they had to steal to get enough to eat and were allowed only one garment per year. Allegedly the women were prohibited from wearing jewelry or taking pride in their weaving. Indeed, gold and silver was banned entirely, and so could not adorn even the temples of the Gods. The houses, we are told, were not painted (as else where in the Ancient world), and the cuisine was infamous for its lack of sophistication and variety. (See my blog entry from July 10 "The Secrets of Spartan Cuisine" for more thoughts on Spartan cooking.)
It is understandable if one imagines that such a society could only have developed in an austere, plain, indeed barren, landscape. After all, a society deprived of food and clothes, and lacking all forms of decoration and fine cuisine sounds like a desperately poor society. It is easy to assume that Spartan society evolved to make a virtue out of necessity.
But the valley of the Eurotas River, the heart of ancient Lacedaemon, is anything but barren! It is green and fertile and stunningly beautiful - like riches cupped in the hands of the gods. From the blooming oleander to the wild iris, the valley is a garden. Orange orchards stretch as far as the eye can see, brazenly advertising the abundance of soil and sun and water. Most spectacular of all, the Eurotas valley is one of those few places on earth that offers the sensually stimulating sight of palm trees waving against a back-drop of snow-capped mountains.
Nor is this richness a product of modern fertilizers and irrigation. The ancient historians also speak of Sparta’s agricultural wealth. Sparta’s hinterland produced in abundance every staple of ancient Greek agriculture from grain to grapes, and from citrus fruits to olives. Furthermore, ancient Laceademon was famous for its forests and pastureland. The former provided exportable timber and abundant game to enrich the Spartan diet, while the latter nourished sheep, cattle, goats and fine horses. Finally, Lacedaemon had exploitable mineral resources such as lead, tin, copper and marble.
Sparta took full advantage of these natural blessings. The fact that the ruling class, Sparta’s full citizens or Spartiates, were prohibited from engaging in any profession other than arms, has led many modern observers to imagine Lacedaemon was devoid of industry, trade and commerce. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sparta’s tiny elite of professional soldiers had the luxury to devote themselves to perfecting their skill at arms precisely because Lacedaemon had a large population of helots and perioikoi who ensured the economic prosperity of the Lacedaemonian state.
Both helots and perioikoi are believed to be the descendents of the peoples who inhabited Lacedaemon before the Doric invasion. While the helots had a status similar to medieval serfs and enjoyed only limited freedom, the perioikoi were fully free men. The perioikoi had abdicated control of foreign policy to Sparta, but they otherwise governed their own affairs by their own customs and laws. They were not bound by the Spartan Constitution attributed to Lycurgus regarding dress, diet, profession or the possession of gold and silver. Among the perioikoi there were artisans and architects, merchants and bankers, tradesmen and shipbuilders – just as in any other Greek city. The perioikoi produced everything from mundane domestic articles to exportable quality works of art in bronze, ivory and stone, and they traded from a variety of ports with direct access to the Aegean and Ionian Seas. (See my blog entry from April 9: "Shopkeepers and Shipmasters.")
In short, Leonidas’ Sparta was not poor, but the center of the powerful city-state of Lacedaemon. It was the administrative hub of large territory with an abundance of natural resources and agricultural produce, good lines of communication, and an active commercial and trading community. It was also the leading nation of the Peloponnesian League, a powerful defensive alliance of independent city-states – the NATO of its age. Last but not least, it was the site of annual vocal and dance festivals that attracted mass tourism from around the ancient world. It was most decidedly not a provincial back-water lost in a barren and inaccessible landscape.
Modern writers, however, have often been misled by the disparaging remarks made by Athenian observers about their hated rival. Nicolas Nicastro in his The Isle of Stone (p.67), for example, describes the capital of the dominant superpower of Greece as no more than “an agglomeration of sleepy villages.” Jon Edward Martin, an author whose research is on the whole very sound, writes in The Headlong God of War (p. 83) that “large buildings were few” and depicts the city as having only “a small collection of civic buildings clustered to the southeast of the acropolis.” Steven Pressfield in his best-selling novel Gates of Fire (p. 188) has one of his characters describe Sparta as “… a pile of stones,” and go on to claim: “It contains no temples or treasures of note, no gold….”
Yet Pausanias, whose travel guide to Greece was written in the 2nd Century AD – long after Sparta’s decline from prominence under Leonidas – needed 26 sections and more than 60 pages to describe only the noteworthy architectural sites of the ancient city! Far from being a backwater, Sparta was a large, prosperous and important city in the lifetime of Leonidas. But, as the Athenian commentary suggests, it was also very different from other Greek cities.
Visitors to Leonidas’ Sparta would have come expecting the capital of this rich and powerful state to be like other power-centers of the civilized world. Whether tourists, coming for the dancing and singing at the annual festivals, or diplomats, coming to plead for Spartan troops to support some distant conflict, foreign visitors would have compared Sparta to Susa, Babylon and Memphis no less than Athens or Corinth. These foreigners came expecting a city enclosed by walls whose strength matched Sparta’s military reputation. They expected to pass through imposing gates into a city crammed with brightly painted, colorfully tiled and elaborately decorated public buildings. They expected to find temples laden with gold crushed between pompous civic buildings. They expected to find a confusing maze of residential streets crammed with humanity humming incessantly with activity. They expected – as in other crowded cities – these back streets to be clothed in the perpetual shadows cast by the tall walls which shielded the private spheres and women of the inhabitants from public view. They expected a commercial capital as well as an administrative one. It is hardly surprising that they were disappointed with what they found at Sparta.
Sparta was different from other Greek cities, but it was not necessarily without its unique charms. For example, we know that in ancient Greece most statues and temples were painted vivid colors and the statues of the gods were dressed in robes, ivory, gold and jewels. Spartan temples were not. But isn’t it precisely that simplicity of white stone structures of flawless proportions and life-like naked marble statues that we find striking in ancient Greek architecture and sculpture today? Would we admire the Parthenon in Athens as much if it was dressed – as it was in the age of Leonidas - in vivid paint? Would we prefer to see Venus de Milo painted in flesh tones with red lips and blond hair?
Sparta’s ethos and aesthetics were different from other Greek cities, but that doesn’t mean it lacked beauty or refinement. Yes, Leonidas’ Sparta had no walls, but this meant it could spread out graciously upon its valley as all major European cities did after their confining walls were torn down. No one today would call Paris, Vienna or Rome “a collection of villages.” Yet all did in fact begin as collections of villages, which later grew into a single metropolis after the need for fortifications disappeared and economic growth fueled urbanization. Why should we assume that just because Sparta was made up of five distinct villages in pre-Archaic times that it was not – by the age of Leonidas when it was at the height of his glory – a cohesive, dynamic city?
Spartan homes may indeed have lacked elaborate interior paintings, but then maybe such decoration was not necessary because, unlike their Athenian counterparts, they were not compressed into the back allies of an over-crowded city and surrounded by high, protective walls. Spartans could afford to build their houses on generous plans. They could incorporate interior courtyards planted with fruit trees and herbs. They could surround themselves with gardens and orchards. Spartans could have decorated their homes - as they did themselves – with things of nature: cut flowers, bowls of fruits, running water. Even without gold or silver, their homes could still sparkle with sunlight glinting off the water of courtyard fountains.
Ironically, Leonidas’ uniquely Spartan city might well have been more pleasing to modern taste than Athens or Babylon of the 5th Century BC.
Picture a city spread across the broad floor of the Eurotas valley before the backdrop of snow-capped Taygetos. Picture a city of wide, tree-lined avenues along which the white-washed civic buildings, marble monuments and graceful temples stretched like pearls upon a green thread. Imagine a city of sun-soaked theatres and imposing but airy stoas. Imagine a city where the barracks and civic buildings with their long porches and batteries of Doric columns face green, open spaces set aside for running and horse-racing. Imagine a city decorated with fountains and flowering trees which gradually spreads out into the suburbs where large villas set in blooming gardens sprawl out toward the mountains on either side of the Eurotas. That image will bring you closer to the Sparta of Leonidas.
BBC News, Sparta
The BBC's Paul Henley detects stirrings of dissent in Sparta as middle-class Greeks hit by the country's economic woes aim their ire at the Athens government.
Yiannis did not expect to be back in his sleepy home town of Sparta, in the Greek Peloponnese, at the age of 30. He sees his return as a personal defeat. Up until 18 months ago, the business graduate had a career in Athens for a finance company. But his job was a casualty of a national economic collapse that dwarfs most others in Europe and, ever since, he has been unable to find work. He ended up moving back in with his parents where he grew up. Having made constant unsuccessful applications for work, he says the growing feeling of uselessness is reducing him as a person.
"Now" he says, "I can't dream as I did before, I can't be optimistic about life or have any real ambitions. Perhaps my only chance is to move abroad."
War against Athens
Yiannis is one of a group who call themselves the "Indignant Spartans" and who went on a 250km protest march to Athens. The three-day march, in May, was a vent for their anger and a way of publicly underlining their belief that ordinary Greeks had been betrayed by their political elite and by the murky world of international finance.
About 10 of the group are sitting around a table, at dusk, at a friend's pavement cafe. They are, frugally, drinking water in the shadow of a statue of Sparta's ancient king, Leonidas, a symbol of the days when Sparta waged a bitter war against Athens. These days, much of that bitterness is returning.
The "Indignant Spartans'' stories are a microcosm of the troubles facing citizens everywhere in Greece, as another national austerity package kicks in, living costs and taxes rocket, consumers rein in spending, wages fall and jobs are lost.
And although the calm, olive and palm tree-lined streets these Spartans inhabit, amid the constant hum of cicadas, seem a world away from the tear gas and the pitched battles outside parliament in Athens, the spirit of provincial rebellion seems to be growing fast.
Vasilis, who is 33, puts it like this: "Sometimes during the past two months I have started to understand how easy it would be to turn, in an instant, from being a good, law-abiding, tax-paying citizen - into a terrorist."
He is not the idle, state-reliant Greek familiar from mocking articles in the foreign press recently.
Vasilis is an entrepreneur who built up a highly successful business chain from scratch during a working life which began, he says, at the age of 12 and has regularly involved 18-hour days. In the past year, he says he has lost €800,000 ($1,150,000; £700,000. Vasilis's restaurant and catering business faces bankruptcy. A single cafe became a collection of restaurants and a mobile catering business with regular wedding and business contracts. As customers began to trail off, Vasilis put his capital into a scheme to build a hotel on the coast. But the scheme was reliant on government-approved loans and grants which disappeared in the crisis. The hotel was never finished and he is looking bankruptcy in the face.
"I feel very angry inside," he says. "When you try to do the best for your country and your children and your neighbours, you still get treated like garbage by the authorities," he says. "It is psychological violence. Maybe the terrorists we see on the television - this is the process they have gone through."
His words are greeted with nods around the table.
Constantina says she has been independent since she was 17 and now, at the age of 43, finds herself borrowing money from her parents. She set up a graphic design business eight years ago. Labels for agricultural products and flyers for local shops are her mainstay. Constantina's graphic design business is starved of business All her clients are desperate to save money. She feels penalised by a tax system she predicts will be the final straw for her business within the next year.
"Maybe marching is the only way I can remain an active citizen of this country," she says.
George, who is 45, is a secondary school teacher and one of those supposed to feel thankful for the relative security of his job. "I do not feel at all lucky," he says. Civil servants' salaries were a number one target in the cuts and that will continue." He feels the faith he had in the future has gone. A house he was building for his family has been left a concrete shell. "The next few years will be the hardest of our lives," he says. "The Ministry of Education has already begun closing schools."
"The situation makes me want to revolt," says Panagiotis, a pastry chef in his 40s. The business he set up with his nephew is at risk from a dramatic loss of customers recently and a simultaneous hike in costs. The macaroons, mini ice-creams and chocolate eclairs he makes are among the first to be crossed off people's shopping lists in difficult times. The handful of people they employ have already taken pay and some could soon be made redundant. "I worry for my family," he says. "What will happen if I can not pay back the loans on the business? I want to go out into the streets and shout about it."
His words are a thinly-veiled warning to Athens: "I want people to understand that my personal revolution must become a national revolution."
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