Blog Post 4

The Spartan way, from Junior Scholastic

By Sean Price

In its time Sparta was the strongest, and most dominant City-state in ancient Greece. Their dominance had a lot to do with the fact that they had a army superior to most other rival city states. Spartan men had to join the army when they were seven and started ferocious training as soon as they joined the army. No mercy was shown toward the trainees.  They were not allowed to show pain and the boys did not even live with their family, this shows that all of citizens were devoted to the army from a young age. The elder soldiers and military leaders, treated the young men as slaves and expected them to be fully disciplined because they strongly believed that the army is the most important thing.  The army barely gave them any food so they had to steal provision, which means that they had to steal food and other supplies. Their army duties were over when they turned thirty; this meant that they could get married at the age of thirty the earliest. Which today isn’t early in some cultures it is considered late.

In Sparta Oligarchy was the chosen form of government. In Oligarchy several people controlled the government, In Sparta the king and military leaders controls the government. Unfortunately because of its very military oriented culture, the Spartans didn’t leave behind many written records for historians to study from. But from what we know about them we know that this violent civilization ceased to exist in 371 B.C when it was destroyed by Thebes.

I found this quote interesting and unusual, “After eating Spartan food, I saw why they were willing to die in battle”, as I understood this quote was found in a journal and it came from a visitor in Sparta.  What I found weird was that they would rather fight in war than eat the food. Either this man was on a culinary adventure, which I doubt or he wrote the quote in a humors manner. Since I highly disbelieve that any one would be willing to die because of bad food.