The Life Of An Ancient Spartan | The Spartans | Timeline

[Music] when we think of ancient Greece this is the image that most of us have in mind the Parthenon in Athens this is where the blueprint for Western civilization received its first draft philosophy and science art and architecture democracy itself have their roots here and they're all embodied in the serene lines of one of the most famous buildings in the world but there's more to the story of ancient Greece than Athens this is another kind of monument to a very different kind of Greek city it's the burial mound of 300 warriors from Sparta who in

480 BC made a heroic last stand in the past at Thermopylae resisting a massive invasion force from the Persian Empire surrounded and outnumbered by about forty to one they put up a spectacular fight before they were hacked to pieces they're interred here and honored by this inscription which still echoes down the centuries always Dame Agra Lane Luckie demonios ot theack Amitha twice came on Ramar sea petal monoi go tell the Spartans stranger passing by that here obedience to their laws we lie unlike Athens Sparta can't boast of its philosophers and politicians and artists it's famous

for two things its frugality which is where we get our words Spartan from and its fighters in every day Spartan life these two were intimately linked the whole of Spartan society conformed to a strict code of extreme discipline and self-sacrifice their aim to create the perfect state protected by perfect warriors [Music] the pursuit of perfection made Sparta a strange place where money was outlawed equality was enforced and weak children were exterminated male homosexuality was compulsory and women enjoyed a degree of social and sexual freedom that was quite simply unheard of in the ancient world [Music]

it's history is one of ruthless militarism slavery on a massive scale and a system that can sometimes seem like a premonition of modern-day totalitarian regimes [Music] but Sparta was the first Greek city to define the rights and duties of its citizens and it can also claim alongside Athens to have saved the Western world from enslavement by the Persian Empire although Spartan hardline ideals don't have the charisma of Athenian culture they've meant as much to Western civilization as the ideals represented by the Parthenon so in a sense the story of the Spartans is the story of

ourselves and how some of the ideas that have molded Western civilization were first tried out in a warrior state on the Greek mainland over two and a half thousand years ago [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the story of the Spartans takes me on a journey through some dramatic history and there's a setting to match over there is the Peloponnese a huge Peninsula crowned by rugged mountains and scored by deep gorges that forms the southernmost part of the Greek mainland the ancient Greeks thought of it as an island and you can see why it does have a

brooding closed-in feel cold shouldering the outside world but long before the Spartans of our story arrived on the scene this part of the world was making history many of the Greeks who fought in the Trojan War some 3,000 years ago came from here Agamemnon the leader of the Greeks ruled over my scene I'm in the east and Peloponnese and to the south in sparta was the palace of Menelaus and his wife Helen the Helen of Troy whose beauty caused the Trojan War was once Helen of Sparta but at some point around 1100 BC it all

disappeared no one knows for sure what happened earthquakes slave revolts even asteroids have been blamed but all over the eastern Mediterranean the world of Helen went under in a cataclysm of fire and destruction a remnant clung on for a few hundred years but finally the Dark Ages came to Greece and the thread of history snapped [Music] and during those centuries of darkness out of the north new people came seeking more hospitable lands they brought with them a new Greek dialect their sheep and goats and a few simple possessions they settled all over the Peloponnese and

some found their way to the lands that once belonged to King Menelaus it was a journey worth making [Music] my [Applause] the people who came here must have thought they'd found a shangri-la down there is the plane of the euro toss River 50 miles north to south of precious fertile farmland and a river runs through it all year round land hungry Greece where 70% of the Latin can't be farmed and the rest is squeezed between the mountains and the sea there's a lot of elbow room to the west are the spectacular to Jesus Mountains rising

to more than 8,000 feet in places patches of snow still linger while Dan on the plane spring is turning into summer the slopes once teemed with game deer hair and wild boar rich pickings for the new arrivals but what statistics can't convey is the striking quality of this place a fantastic sense of security everywhere you look on every horizon you're bounded by hills and mountains it's not claustrophobic just safe you feel that everything you could possibly want is here if you could just lay claim to it and keep the rest of the world at bay

and so the herdsman traded in their sheep for olive trees and settled down here a new Sparta came into being and the new Spartans built this temple the men alayan to honor the legendary king and his wayward wife in the period of renewal following the Dark Ages new cities like Sparta appeared all over Greece they varied in size and power but had one thing in common they were all governed by a set of mutually agreed laws and customs the rules by which people agreed to live varied but the aim was broadly the same to create

good order and justice and to protect against chaos and lawlessness today in sparta archaeologists are still piecing together the story of the people who first came here some 3,000 years ago and built an ideal city a utopia it's not an easy task because they left few clues behind them and much of what they did lead was buried or destroyed when the modern-day city was built but whenever there's a building program precious new pieces of the puzzle are revealed every find is precious because the Spartans didn't leave us much in the way of stuff unlike the

Athenians they were famous for not building from not making things and for not writing about themselves so of all the cities and civilizations in the ancient world the Spartans remain the most intriguing and mysterious take for example Sparta's Kings since time immemorial Sparta had not one but two kings at the same time two royal houses twice the potential for the rouse that all monarchies are prone to the Spartans explained this unique arrangement by claiming that their kings were direct descendants of the great great grandsons of Heracles the strong man of Greek myth according to legend

it was this pair of twins who rested control of the Peloponnese from the descendants of Agamemnon the stories that people tell about themselves are always revealing and this tale of a land grab by a pair of aggressive usurpers themselves descended from the most macho man in mythology sent out a worrying message to the neighbors and it wasn't long before the Spartans started throwing their weight around season control of the whole of the euro toss valley enslaving non spartans or categorizing them as perioikoi meaning those who live around the perioikoi became a disenfranchised caste of craftsmen

and traders Sparta's economic muscle but sorting out their immediate neighbors was just the start of Sparta's aggressive expansionism despite the generous acres of the euro toss valley sparta like the rest of greece was always hungry for more farmland other cities dealt with this by founding colonies satellite settlements that would eventually spread as far west as the Straits of Gibraltar and as far east as the Crimea in the Black Sea the Spartans came up with their own take on colonization they turned their eyes west and began to wonder what opportunities there were beyond the mountains it

was there that they would go to satisfy their land hunger it was there that shangri-la would reveal its darker side because it was there that a slave nation would be created to serve the Spartan master race [Music] [Music] [Music] the journey through the gorges of the to Jesus mountains is as spectacular now as it must have been some 2800 years ago when the armies of Sparta headed west in search of conquest several days hard marched through the mountains would bring them to the territory of the Messenians the Spartans weren't just coming for their land they

wanted their freedom too they intended to turn the Messenians on mass into helots the word translates as captives that means more bluntly slaves slavery in ancient Greece was an accepted fact of life but slaves were supposed to be foreigners barbarians who spoke no Greek and so were obviously suited by nature to servitude the enslavement of fellow Greeks and on a massive scale was something else again and the crushing of messini would set Sparta apart from the rest of Greece it also shaped the kind of place Sparta became wary of unrest paranoid about revolt enslaving the

Messenians was no easy task it took two full-scale wars each lasting 20 years or more we know something about the second war because we have an eyewitness to the events one of the first identifiable eyewitnesses known to history he was called Curtis a Spartan soldier and just as importantly a poet [Music] it is a fine thing for a brave man to die when he has fallen among the front ranks while fighting for his homeland let us fight with spirit for this land and let us die for our children no longer sparing our lives come on

you young men make the spirit in your heart strong and valiant and do not be in love with life when you are a fighting man tertius was a war poet hardly at the Wilfredo in school I doubt he had any concept of the pity of war his verses were more like battle cries barked out with the directness of a sergeant major putting backbone into the shirkers and faint hearts look if you want this land you're gonna have to fight for it this is the kind of fighter that tertius addresses in his poems he was called

a hoplite an infantryman armed with an eight-foot spear and round shield by the end of the seventh century practically all greek cities had their own contingents of hotline these weren't full-time professional soldiers they were farmers who swamped plows for spares in defense of their communities by standing side-by-side with their neighbors these militiamen demonstrated not just their courage for their status as citizens this is Olympia home of the famous games it was also the unofficial shrine of the hoplite fighter but this was where you'd come to dedicate your arms to the gods in thanks for victory

[Music] that's the hot blonde that all-around shield the Cardinal item of equipment for a hot light and probably where he got his name you'd have held it by thrusting your left arm through that central arm band and then grasping onto a leather thong at the rim it was made of wood and metal and would have weighed around 20 pounds which is a hell of a way to be think of carrying that for a days fighting but to let your arm fall and the shield drop was the ultimate disgrace hoplite fighting was a team effort path

your shield was for you the other half for the man to your left the hoplites would form into densely packed ranks all the Phalanx seven or eight deep and perhaps fifty shields across coordination and discipline were important but most important of all that was trust if your neighbor broke and ran you'd be left exposed to the spare points of the enemy when to fallon sees met the tendency was for each line to shift to the right your natural instinct was always to tuck yourself as far as possible behind your neighbors shield at that moment the

discipline of the phalanx threatened to collapse to be effective you just had to grit your teeth and stand your ground tertius had some typically helpful advice those who dare to stand fast at one another site and to advance towards the front ranks in hand-to-hand conflict they die in smaller numbers and they keep the troops behind safe [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] there wasn't much in the way of tactics once the shield walls came together the battlefields all but disappeared in a dust cloud as the two opposing masses of bronze and muscle heaved against each other the

rear ranks provided the traction pushing forward like rugby players in a scrum it was in the front three ranks within range of the enemy's spear points but things got deadly it was there that you'd have come face-to-face with this a Gorgon emblazoned on your enemy's shields this was the goddess whose gaze had the power to turn men to stone and in the sweaty stabbing frenzy of the battle ending up inches from her must have been a literally petrifying experience ultimately sparta would surpass all other greek cities in the art of this particular kind of fighting

first they had to beat and enslave their neighbors the Messenians this was finally achieved around the Year 650 BC for the next 300 years the Messenians would be forced to slave in the fields of their Spartan masters like asses worn out by heavy burdens according to tertius [Music] but now that masini had been won the critical question for the Spartans became then and for centuries to come how do we keep it elsewhere in Greece cities were being torn apart by civil war between rich and poor with the spoils of messini up for grabs the chances

of that happening in Sparta were greatly increased to keep their paradise safe the Spartans chose to act in a totally radical way from now on utopia was their aim they would dedicate themselves to the creation of a perfect society and it would be modeled on the hoplite phallanx disciplined collective and unselfish there was going to be a revolution in shangri-la [Music] every revolution needs its great leader and this is Sparta's like her gasps the wolf worker I can't put my hand on my heart and say that he existed but the Spartans believed in him for

them he was a miracle worker someone who created heaven on earth following the advice of the gods themselves whether it was him or a bunch of people or a whole generation who knows but someone here embarked on a social experiment that would create one of the most extreme civilizations in the ancient world [Music] the revolution that transformed sparta took place around 650 BC when Sparta's neighbors the Messenians were finally defeated and enslaved in order to keep the helots quiet and as importantly to stop themselves falling out over the spoils of war the spartans set out

to become the most formidable disciplined and professional hoplite warriors that greece had ever seen the whole of Spartan society became in effect a military training camp Spartan men would neither fish nor farm manufacture nor trade they would simply fight and if they weren't fighting they were training and if they weren't training they were hanging out with their fellow fighters the family unit counted for very little what mattered was bonding with their male peers bolstering the Solidarity of the Phalanx it was a program that they pursued with typical single-mindedness [Music] being born Spartan was not enough

all male spartans had to earn their citizenship through long years of competitive struggle and the survival of one of the most grueling training systems ever invented the first test came early this ravine a few miles out of Sparta was known as the epithet I or deposits it was also called the place of rejection because it was down there that a newly born child would be thrown if he didn't match up to Spartans standards of physical perfection infanticide was common throughout ancient Greece unwanted babies usually girls were left on a hillside sometimes they'd be placed in

a basket or protective pot so that there was at least a chance of someone or something coming along and taking the child in in Sparta as ever things were very different boys rather than girls were the usual victims and it wasn't the parents but the city elders who decided whether they lived or died there was absolutely no possibility of a broody vixen or kindly Sheppard rescuing the newborn child once they've been tossed down there the city elders decision was final and absolute surviving the epithet I was just the start for the boys at the age

of seven they were taken from their families and placed in a training system called the Agoge it means literally rearing and the children were treated little better than animals the Spartan boys this was a classroom the wild foothills of Mount to gitis where they'd have spent much of their time they were organized into boooy their spartan word for a herd of cattle and all the child was put in charge of them responsible for their discipline and punishment and he was known as a boy herd emphasis was on surviving coping on the minimum each child was

given just one cloak to last them all year round which seems fine on an afternoon like this but in winter here it drops to minus six food supplies were short and they were encouraged to steal to supplement their rations if they were caught they were flogged not for the act of stealing but simply for not getting away with it it was as much a trial by ordeal as it was an education the mountains also provided the backdrop for one of Sparta's most controversial and disputed institutions the Crypt air or Secret Service Brigade membership of which

was reserved for the boys who'd shown particular promise [Music] the really hard cases were singled out given a knife and turned loose into the wilds by day they'd lie low but at night they'd infiltrate the valleys hunting down and murdering any helots that they caught exactly how the crypt air operated and the kind of hit rate it had has always been a mystery but the mere rumor of bloodthirsty adolescent death squads roaming the countryside was enough to institute a reign of terror the perfect tactic to keep a slave population quiet and obedient though sparta encouraged

the collective spirit it placed us higher value on individual achievement the boys were tested constantly against each other and against their own limitations this is the site at the sanctuary of Artemis or fear and it was here that the competitive nature of Spartan society had its most extreme form of expression assuming he'd survived the first five years of the Agoge system age 12 you were brought here for a brutal rite of passage the altar up there was piled high with cheese's your challenge was simple to steal as many cheeses as possible in front of the

altar there was a line of older boys each armed with a wit their instruction to defend the altar showing neither mercy nor restraint indoctrinated with the tenets of endurance and perseverance and desperate to excel in a public display the twelve-year-old boys braved the gauntlet again and again and again meeting the whips face on they sustained the most horrific injuries and some we're told were beaten to death [Music] it's easy to find yourself reeling back at the sheer brutality of a system that seems as alien and violence as these clay masks found in the sanctuary of

artemis or Thea and it's not just modern audiences that find the spartans shocking the philosopher Aristotle argued that they turned their children into animals while other Greeks pictured them as bees swarming around a hive creatures stripped of their individuality it's been a popular conception of sparta through the centuries but one that misses an important point being a part of any mass activity can be fantastically liberating if you've ever been in a Mexican wave in a football ground or sung in a choir or taken part in a protest march you'll know that being part of a

crowd doesn't diminish you it makes you stronger your reach is greater the sense of self is magnified and that was the fundamental attraction of the Spartan system the possibility of transcending your limitations as an individual and becoming part of something bigger and better from the age of 12 onwards the boys training became possible even more exacting reading and writing we're told were taught no more than was necessary but music and dancing were regarded as essential [Music] the battlefields on which hoplites clashed for once memorably described as the dancing floors of war and a phalanx that

was able to move together in a coordinated way made for a formidable dancing partner so the Spartans spent many hours perfecting what was known as real music a rhythmic drill in which changes in direction and pace were communicated musically the spartans earned the reputation for being the most musical and the most warlike of people at the age of 20 with their training nearing completion spartan males faced their most crucial test election - one of the common messes or dining clubs where they'd be expected to spend most of their time when they weren't training or fighting

but entry to these exclusive gentlemen's clubs was not guaranteed election to the comma mess was by the vote of existing members if you fail to measure up you could be blackballed and then that was that you were a failed Spartan publicly humiliated excluded from the society into which she'd been born it must have been a living hell if on the other hand you were elected you are given a big fat portion of land by the state and a quota of helot slaves to support you and your family you are now one of the homeo the

equals the warrior elite at the top of Sparta's hierarchy the common messes which lay a mile or so out at the center of Sparta we're an essential part of the city's social engineering intended to keep discord and civil strife at bay old and young mixed an easing generational conflicts a constant source of friction elsewhere in Greece more importantly rich and poor met on an equal footing the differences between them hidden by a rigorously enforced code of conspicuous non consumption in a gala tarry in Sparta the rule was even if you have got it don't flaunt

it and it was applied to everything from houses to clothes even to food elsewhere in Greece rich men would lay on a couple of prostitutes open some and fur of wine and invite their mates around to feast on larks tongues and honey roasted tuna in Sparta there was no time for fine dining in the common messes the dish of the day every day was a concoction made of boiled pig's blood and vinegar known as molasses Oh mass black soot an old oak goes there's a man from Sybaris in southern Italy of the town infamous for

its luxury and gluttony he was told the recipe for black soup ah he said now I understand why the Spartans are so willing to die Spartan frugality may have shocked their contemporaries but to a modern audience their diet leaving aside the black soup sounds nutritious and healthy judging from the contented expression on the face of this Spartan diner Lycurgus his system paid off well nourished and free from the need to make living or keep up with the neighbors this is someone who despite the demands of Sparta society knew the good life it's also the face

of an entirely new kind of human being a citizen Spartan society was one of the first to introduce a form of social contract where the duties of an individual were balanced by certain privileges and rights it's a profound concept and one that was current in Sparta a hundred years or so before any other Greek city was even beginning to think along similar lines but utopias need protecting and in the year 480 BC disturbing news reached to Sparta the Persian Empire was on the move a huge invasion force was heading west by land and sea the

time had come to see whether Sparta's celebrated warriors would live up to their fearsome reputation and save the Greek world from destruction [Music] archeology came relatively late to Sparta it wasn't until 1906 that a British team began the first systematic digs in 1925 there was a major find a striking life-sized bust of a Spartan warrior dating from the 5th century BC these lantern slides record the moments of discovery [Music] when the bust was inched out of the earth and it became clear he was a magnificent warrior one of the great workmen said without a moment's

hesitation this is Leonie das lion Edith was Sparta's superhero the king who with 300 Warriors made a doomed last stand against the might of Persia in the past at Thermopylae there isn't any hard evidence for that identification although he is from the right period but I think we can forgive the wishful thinking after all everyone wants a legend to have a face [Music] these days the warrior presides over the Museum in Sparta they still call him Leia need us the name is safely in quote marks but whoever he was he remains an impressive piece of

work that enigmatic smile is typical of sculptor of the period then it gives him a Mona Lisa line quality his eyes are blank now but in their day that have been inlaid with rock crystal and seashells and what a great answer the stone his torso is fantastically fit and toned his hair is very elaborately dressed and his upper lip is clean-shaven it was one of like kyrgyz's more fussy reforms that Spartan men should not have mustaches so if you want a picture of the ultimate Spartan here he is we know very little of the real

Leia need us he was a member of the Agra Die one of the two aristocratic families that supplied Sparta with her Kings he'd been on the throne for ten years when the Persian juggernaut began to roll West [Music] Persia was the regional superpower of the eastern Mediterranean a vast empire stretching from present-day Afghanistan to the Aegean Sea the Greeks were an insignificant but increasingly troublesome presence on the western limits of their empire inciting rebellion among the kings Greek subjects in the cities of Asia Minor it was the Persian King Darius who made the first move

he sent punitive forces to land at marathon only to see them routed by Athens and her allies the king died before he could avenge the insult and it was left to his son Xerxes to sort out the Troublesome Greeks once and for all [Music] the Persians set out by land and sea early in the year 480 the army was so fast that according to the Greek historian Herodotus it drank whole rivers dry Herodotus also reckons the combined Persian forces at more than one and a half million and more sober estimate would put the ceiling at

300,000 big enough to crush the minnow like cities of Greece when the Spartans learned a Persian invasion was on its way they sent for advice to the Oracle at Delphi Oracle's were thought of as messages from the gods delivered through the mouth of a possessed priestess the Spartans were deeply pious and they treated Oracle's as though they were military orders on this occasion the orders made for sobering reading hear your feet or dwellers in Sparta spaces either your famed great town must be set by those his assassins or the whole land must be one the

death of the kingdom of the house beneath the flowery language a simple choice was on offer capitulate or fight to the death the Spartans being Spartans chose the latter and put themselves at the head of the resistance to the invasion as the Persian army swung south towards the Greek heartland a Greek force under the command of King Leonidas headed north to stop their advance at Thermopylae the gates of fire in 480 Thermopylae was a natural bottleneck now the sea has receded miles in that direction but then the road south was squeezed between the shoreline and

these mountains it was here that between seven and eight thousand hoplites came from all over Greece the first thing they did was to rebuild a wall that crossed the most narrow point of the pass hunkering down behind it they aimed to stop the Persian advance in its tracks the Greeks were hopelessly outnumbered but they did have geography on their side if they could just slow down the Persians it would allow others to organize more formidable defenses on land and sea but for Leonie Das and for the 300 Spartans warriors who'd accompanied him Thermopylae was more

than a strategic strong point it was the place where they intended to show the world what it meant to be a Spartan as a whole the Greeks made a great deal of noise about the nobility of dying for your country but for the Spartans it was far more than just a platitude in battle they were ordered to seek out a kalos than Otto's a beautiful death it encompassed everything that the poet tertius spoke of advancing calmly to meet your enemy never fleeing the battlefield and embracing death like a lover in fact on campaign the Spartans

would make offerings to eros the God of love the beautiful death was a sacrifice in the true sense of the word turning something mortal into something sacred the men that Lainey das chose to do the job for him here were all married older and with sons he knew none of them would be coming back the spartans who fought at Thermopylae were a 300 strong camicazi squad for three days the Greeks held off the Persian advance sheltering behind their wall and then counter-attacking in hoplite formation three times the Persians attacked three times they were beaten back

Xerxes had almost given up and then he was told about a secret path that went through the mountains and came out behind the Greek wall when Leonidas discovered the Persians were on their way he knew the game was up before long the Greeks would be surrounded while there was still time for them to escape Leonidas dismissed most of the Greek allies setting the stage for one of history's most celebrated last stands on the final morning the Spartans followed their normal pre-battle rituals they stripped naked and exercised they old their bodies and combed each other's long

hair they wrote their names out on little sticks and fastened them to their arms dogtags so their bodies could be identified later Persian spies observing these strange activities reported them back to Xerxes he found them laughable it was said it looked as though they were getting ready for a party in fact they were making themselves make toys Klu stereo Therese CAI gorg Gatos greater more noble more terrible [Music] [Music] [Music] herodotus describes the final act in the morning Xerxes poured a libation to the Rising Sun and then ordered the advance [Music] the Greeks under lay

leaders knowing that the fight would be their last pressed forward into the widest part of the pass [Music] [Applause] they fought with reckless desperation with swords if they had them and if not with their hands and teeth until the Persians coming in from the front and closing in from behind overwhelm [Applause] militarily speaking Thermopylae was insignificant the Persian advance delayed for less than a week were soon rolling south again shortly afterwards another battle took place here in the Bay of Salamis where a Greek fleet led by Athens destroyed the Persian ships it was a scrappy

hidden miss affair but Salamis finished what Thermopylae had started and the following year the Persians were finally driven out of Greece in the aftermath of victory it was the doomed heroism of Thermopylae that captured the imagination of the Greeks Thermopylae was a stage upon which the Spartans played at the role they'd spent their lives preparing for they'd shown the world at the kind of place Sparta was and the kind of men it produced they'd fulfilled the ideals of their city and justified the claims of their utopia and by doing that according to Herodotus they had

laid up for the Spartans a treasure of Fame in which no other city could share [Music] you you