she emphasized that wise Athenians like Plato, Thucydides, and Xenophon had held up Sparta’s military aristocracy as a disciplined society that had avoided foreign adventure.

The ancient political “scientists” (philosophers) got it wrong.  I had never understood their praise for the Spartan constitution (or Rousseau’s or the Bonapartists’, or the fascists’ and Fascists’ or even the Marxists’) until a classics scholar told me that what the ancients valued most in a constitution was stability.

Which is exactly what the Spartan polis ultimately lacked.  Innocent of demography, the Spartans restricted marriage to males c. 40 years old and older.  Do that and you will have population decline. Epaminondas eventually beat them at their own game, and by the time of Pausanias, Sparta was a village that put on a play for Roman tourists, a sort of pagan Oberammergau, with an even smaller population.

Even the wisest of the ancient political theoreticians, Polybius, wrongly praised the Spartan constitution, although he knew the Roman was better.  Plato damned marshal timocracy with faint praise.

Were ancients were wrong to praise the Carthaginian constitution (a commerical maritime republic ruled by businessmen?).  A topic for another day.

Be that as it may, it’s missing Dr. Gottfried’s point: the Transnational Progressivist vision of “world citizenship” and “multiculturalism” is a recent phenomenon that seeks to destroy European civilization (I say not “Western” on purpose) by severing it from its roots. Much like the Persians at Thermopylae and Salamis (and Marathon and Plataea), it must be opposed.

Regarding Sparta: A society that depends on a military elite to police a slave state is doomed.

Three cheers for Miss Maguire!

Americans used to instinctively identify with the West and other Westerners, as Miss Maguire did.  Let us hope there are more Miss Maguires out there than we might suspect.

Perhaps I am tainted as I read Thucydides as the student of two Straussians.  However, what I found of great interest is that the most incompetent of the Athenian commanders was Cleon, who was the most Spartan in outlook, while the best Spartan commander was Brasidas, who was looked on with suspicion as being a closet Athenian.  Once, after beating the Athenians, Brasidas went in to a nearby city and made sacrifices to Athena.  So, some pan-Hellenic sentiment is in order.  Despite being of Scandinavian heritage, I also am thrilled by the courage exhibited at Marathon, Salamis, and Thermopylae Pass.  Certainly the ancient Greeks were far from perfect, but were still preferable to the imperial rule of Persia.  This is highlighted by the flight of an early neocon, Alcibiades, from Greece to sanctuary in Persia.

Theodore assumes that there was something very
suspect about the Spartans because they depended on
a slave economy. So did the “democratic” Athenians,
who probably treated their servile class even worse,
by chaining them to galleys and by working them in
mines.What made the Spartans different, although they,
like theAthenians and everybody else in the world
back then had a primitive economy, was their lack of
interest in creating an empire and, according to
Thucydides, their remarkable fortitude in the face of
adversity. The Athenians went all over the Aegean
plundering their fellow-Greeks in order to pay for their
democratic electorate at home; the Spartans did
nothing of the kind. And when Sparta and its
allies won the thirty years war that Athenian
aggression had forced them into,they treated the
defeated side with greater generosity than
one could have imagined being shown
if the sandal had been on the other foot.

“the Spartans did
nothing of the kind. “

But they did—right after beating Athens, and until
Epaminondas and the Thebans beat them.  Also, the Spartans
were responsible for expelling the tyrants from Athens
ca. 509 and helping to install the democratic party,
which they very soon regretted.

Never mind the institutional male homosexuality of
both societies . . .

Furthermore, I am willing to bet that part of the reason the Spartans were so
willing to face death was that their lives were so miserable.  They do not seem to have cultivated the arts of peace very much at all.

As the Melian dialogue tragically illustrated, even a democracy like Athens was at least as brutal and imperialist as her rivals for empire.  It is hard to determine what is worse:  a pagan democracy which justifies violence through appeals to Fate, or a “Christian” democracy which slaughters the enemies of freedom in the name of God.

The Thebans were challenging the Spartans for Greek
hegemony and built up an Athenian-like alliance
system in the wake of Sparta’s victory in the
Peloponnesian War. A clash between these competitors
for power was therefore inevitable. But what
distinguished the Spartan peace from a likely
Athenian one was the lesser degree of vindictiveness.
All that Lysander and the Spartan gerousia demanded
in order for the Spartans to lift their siege of
Athens and to depart were razing the Athenian
wall and not having a hostile government in the city.
It is inconceivable that the demagagogically
controlled democracy in Athens would have treated
the Spartans half so leniently. Nor did the Spartans
engage in the massive plundering of other Greeks
that had been characteristic of Periclean Athens or
force the rest of Greece to make fraudulent
contributions to waging a war of Greek liberation
against the Persian Empire. Xenophon in the
Memorabilia makes it appear
that Sparta had neither the inclination nor the
resources to establish a real empire.

Fantastic comments Nebojsa and Stanley.

“European civilization” as an alternative to “western civ.” says WHO we are talking about: the European peoples, as well as what: THEIR cultural heritage.

The descendants of the ancient Hebrews, the Japanese, and the Zulus who watch TV and drink coca-cola, are not “us”. They don’t even like us.

Gerry, I have heard that the author of this article is a descendant of the ancient Hebrews . . .

Dr. Gottfried,

It is true that the Spartans refused to destroy Athens.  But you state Sparta merely required that the govt. of Athens not be hostile.  Well, the “friendly” govt. they installed consisted of the Thirty Tyrants.  Hostile to Sparta, no; hostile to Athens, yes.

What of Lysander’s hegemony?  What of Agesilaus’ expedition against Persia?  I am not saying that the Spartans were equal to or worse than Athens, but history shows that Sparta indeed succumbed to the allure of empire.  Cicero in his De Officiis writes (I cite the Loeb translation):  “And again, when the Spartans exercised their supremacy tyrannically, did not practically all the allies desert them and view their disaster at Leuctra, as idle spectators?” (2.26).  This is in the section where Cicero says that it is better not to rule *by fear*—which the Spartans did.  Some of the reasons why Athens’ seems so much worse are 1) Athens actually had freedom of speech, so people could record what the idiots in charge were doing (such as in the works of Aristophanes)—something NOT true of Sparta, and 2) so many of the best prose stylists were pro-Spartan.  Athenians like Plato, Xenophon, Thucydides, etc., felt that they were doing no crime criticizing their own city.  Sparta had much less self-criticism, and accordingly much less self-critical literature.  If you seek information about life under the pro-Spartan Thirty Tyrants, see Lysias; for life in Thebes under Spartan oppression, see Plutarch’s “De Genio Socratis.”

Athens V Sparta

The Age-Old Question.

Dr Gottfried, I was once of the opinion that Athens was represented by today’s refined European/"Western" Civilization ("liberal democracy"), and Sparta by the European/"Eastern" Civilization (that being, primarily, Communism and Protestantism: neoconservativism).  Of course, young men are foolish.

In the Ancient World, the East truly is the East, with Revolutionary (that is, “neoconservative") Communism best represented by the Persian Empire: multi-cultural and aggressive - with an agenda of complete “regime change” and “nation re-building”, no matter what the Emperor claimed (ala GW Bush).

Who, then, are the descendants of Athens and Sparta?

Why, they are the libertarians and the paleo-conservatives, of course.

Andrew Capp:

It is quite dangerous to make these sorts of connections.  Sparta had a highly regimented, military oligarchy with a totalitarian mentality and system of eugenics.  It was not a society of yeomen farmers—the land was worked by helot slaves who could be murdered during the Spartiate coming-of-age process.  Is that your model of paleoconservatism?

<<Is that your model of paleoconservatism?>>

Of course not.

The connections are, for lack of a better word (hey, it’s Shrove Tuesday, and I’m Catholic, understand?) metaphorical.

Gerry, I have heard that the author of this article is a descendant of the ancient Hebrews . . . Caper

I know that Caper. Gottfried’s non-hostility is individual, not ethnic, among his people it’s rare.

<<Gottfried’s non-hostility is individual, not ethnic>>

Quite frankly, that kind of racial/ethnic/confessional SOCIALISM is quite strange.

Herr Doktor Gottfried is simply a man of Europe.  You would expect him to support Europe, just as Herr Doktor von Mises sich waehrend der Grosse Krieg fuer der Hapsburg Osterreich-Ungarn gestritten.

But Mr. Capp, what use are “metaphorical” connections that don’t match reality?  You claim that regime change and aggression are the characteristics of Persia.  What?  Study how the Athenians went around setting up democracies.  Study how the Spartans went around deposing tyrants, and setting up oligarchies.  Take a look at what Coulombe wrote about the Persian Empire in his recent article about the American empire: 

“The Persians, having conquered the area from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Greece (and Egypt as well) were faced with a tremendous challenge. Part of dealing with this was to portray their Emperor in terms of whatever the Sacred Kingship of the given province had been—heir of the pharaohs in Egypt, chief priest of Marduk in Babylon, or whatever. The Empire was divided into 20 satrapies: the governors or “satraps” were often natives of the region they ruled, but bound to the Emperor directly, one way or the other. Under the terms of the “Cylinder of Cyrus,” the set of laws enacted by the first Emperor (and often touted as the first charter of rights in the world) the rights, duties, and freedoms of the subject were laid out. Royal roads made travel easy and secure, and relatively free trade built prosperity. For all the bad press our Greek predecessors gave them, apparently life for subjects of the Persian Emperor was no worse for the average individual than in many places, and far better than in most.”

Of course our cultural ancestors are the Greeks, not the Persians.  So we can be prejudiced on those grounds.  But simplistic equations (your nebulous “metaphorical” connections) do no justice to historical reality.  Remember: the Straussians study the Greeks, not the Persians, and the Straussian movement feeds the neoconservatives. 

A holy Lent to you.

“Study how the Spartans went around deposing tyrants”

. . . and deposing democracies, too.

Herr Doktor Gottfried is simply a man of Europe.  You would expect him to support Europe... Caper

For a start he’s hardly ‘simply a man of Europe,’ he’s Jewish, and they are a people of non-European origin.

Most Jews don’t ‘support Europe,’ they distrust Europeans and favour the policies for Europeans that they favoured for the European majority in America - mass immigration of non-Euros to dilute and neutralize ethnic solidarity.

Like I say, he doesn’t, but he’s about the only one.

Quite frankly, that kind of racial/ethnic/confessional SOCIALISM is quite strange... Caper

No, it’s the global, human norm, the historical norm for European peoples, and the historical norm (necessity) for conservatives too.

Uh, “Gerry”, it’s me, not “Caper” that you quote.

At least try and get the GIVENS correct, OK?

@Caper

In my Shrove Tuesday wine induced stupor, I will attempt to respond more coherently than I [failed] to make my points:

First of all, my wife has the least of our little clan on her lap, and, like her siblings, she considers Daddy the “awake guy”, so she stares at me with saucer-wide eyes while Mommy, the “asleep girl”, snoozes with her on this here couch.  It is a good setting for an already fun Shrove Tuesday…

As for the “punch line” of this whole ordeal: Persia was the invaders of Greekdom (not a word, YET).  There were two sets of “Greeks”, according to our accepted history/mythology, the Athenians and the Spartans.  The Athenians stood for all that is right in the “West” today: liberty, equality, and fraternity (according to accepted history/mythology - reality is a different matter).  Sparta stood for what has been rejected about “Western” culture: order, hierarchy, and fatherhood (once again, according to accepted history/mythology - once again, throw out reality).

You see what I’m getting at, correct?  It is a messy metaphor, and I’m not proud of it, but it works for me...in a metaphorical kind of way...except, in the end, but not the VERY end, the ideas of the Athenians win out.

<<The Athenians stood for all that is right in the “West” today: liberty, equality, and fraternity>>

Said “tongue in cheek”.  I am quite the anti-Revolutionary Enlightened guy, just to let you know.

After reading what I posted, it sounded oh so wrong to the ear.

Unfortunately, we do not have the works of the
Spartans to tell how much we inherited from them. All
we seem to have is what others wrote about them.

Like it or not, our civilization descends from the
Athenians, not the Spartans. When we talk about the
Classics, we never reference a Spartan philosopher, or
artist. It is all Athenians, or Athenian residents.

As for the attribution of virtue to them by non-Spartans,
well it is a well known fact is that people who are
disatisfied with their own society tend to idealize
different societies and hold them up as models - and
lately, the more backwards the better. I suspect that
we have the same phenomenon there.

Until we can read that the Spartans themselves wrote,
their own direct testimony, we have to take with a grain
of salt anything said about them, both good or bad.

Sorry Andrew Capp, still, care to respond?

@Andrew

Liberty, equality, and fraternity - never mind what
the Enlightment claimed - is our Christian heritage. We
are all free in Christ, we are all equal in His sight,
all equally deserving of salvation, and we are all
brothers and sisters.

Now, the Athenian tradition tied up with it and made it
richer.

The Spartans? They are a footnote to History, and all
we know of them if what other people, many with agendass
of their own wrote about them.

What did the Spartans say about themselves?  I guess we can read Tyrtaeus, the lyric poet.  The Spartans as a whole were notoriously taciturn; “laconic” means “from Laconia,” i.e. the district around Sparta.  Being quite paranoid, they expelled all foreigners before holding councils, so we aren’t likely to find much that they themselves produced.

Caper wrote,

The Empire was divided into 20 satrapies: the governors or “satraps” were often natives of the region they ruled, but ound to the Emperor directly, one way or the other.

To continue my point from above, sounds like exactly what Bush and the neo-cons fantasize about which would strengthen Andrew Capp’s point.

Re:  Mr. Nucci.

Mr. Capp said that the Persians engaged in “nation-
-building.” Not so. Coulombe (the author of the
quotation you ascribe to me) shows that the Persians
did not recreate the subject nations in their own
image so much as add an extra layer of imperial rule
on top of what was there.  Maybe that is not so much
the case with the tyrants they assisted in Ionia; I
don’t know.  The nations—Egyptian, Babylonian,
Jewish, Lydian, etc., remained what they were, with
native cultures and societies.  There was no “nation-
building.” The Spartans and the Athenians definitely
engaged in regime-change.  So the Persians were not
perfect, but to try to say “Persian=neocon, Greek=
paleocon,” is far, far too simplistic.  It is merely the
turning-inside-out of the Straussian necon identification
“Greece=the West, Persia=Islamofascism.” Honor our
Greek ancestors for what they were, not how we wish they were
Even Hamlet, when his deceased father was praised by
someone else, had the honesty and modesty to say, “He
was a man; take him all in all” (vel sim.).

@Caper,

I did not intend to imply that Greece equalled the west merely that the quote in question did indeed sound like the regime change that we have forced on the Iraqis.  In fact in Iraq the culture has been said by some apologists of the Bush administration to be flourishing, the plight of the Chaldean Church notwithstanding.

Then why make this invidious comparison “Bush=the Persian imperialists”?  Why not, “Bush=the Athenian imperialists”?  Or “Bush=the Spartan imperialists”? 

Furthermore, it cannot be intrinsically wrong to replace hostile, tyrannical regimes with friendlier, non-tyrannical ones.  Either the new regime in Iraq is better than the old one, or it isn’t.  If over the course of centuries it proves a significant improvement for all involved, then it will have been worth the fighting.  I am not saying this in order to defend the Iraq war, merely to acknowledge reality.  Many of the opponents of the war have devised their criteria in such a way that it would seem that the toppling of Saddam Hussein was intrinsically wrong, when clearly there are possible situations in which it would be prudent and just.  Changing other country’s regimes is not intrinsically wrong, nor should it be opposed on principle as opposed to other considerations.

My family is Greek from Cyprus.  The conversation caught my attention and I feel compelled to repond.  My parents always taught to learn from others and to try to emulate and/or copy those qualities which are better than my own. To add a bit of controversy, I have always believed that the American founding fathers: Washington, Fraklin, Jefferson, Madison, ect. had the most Athenian qualities.  The love of learning, the ability to debate in a logiacal manner, and the desire to give each person a voice in the decision making.