We actually made a video tour of ancient Sparta in Assassin's Creed Odyssey with an actual historian as our guide: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-joZkYwcK6ts.html
Great video. However, Sparta was never a superpower. Even at the height of its power, it was more like a regional power - and even then, it still shared dominance of the region with Athens.
Yes I saw your ancient Sparta Assassin's Creed Odyssey video. The depiction of the Spartan peer drilling with sword in hand against a post was utter "whacked". Very little is actually known about Sparta...with certainty, but even so the glaring inaccuracy of that sword drilling depiction is glaring. And by the way even at the apex of Spartan power it never had anything even remotely as grand as other Greek cities. In the words of Thucydides, the look and layout of Sparta would never allow an observer to believe that was ever as powerful as it in fact was.
If I may ask for a video topic; what are logistics of night battles? Both for attacking and defending armies and how experienced need generals be to use the cover of night to their advantage? Thank you for your time and videos!
"just today, our apollo day super sale: a brand new golden apollo statue in spartan hoplite gear for your attic. get it now for the charge of earth and water!"
Yeah, some places. But it’s not otherwise extinct like Rome is, or Sparta was when Romans resurrected it. Some day the US might be gone and people will travel to special places to dress up in jeans, some name brand shirt, Jordans and a cowboy hat. They’ll ride horses and harleys while shooting machine guns with gangster rap blasting then have barbecues while listening to country music.
Fun fact: Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos restored the Spartan war-like tradition by creating a squadron called the "Lacedaemonians" composed of 10.000 elite warriors and if we believe Anna Komnena's Alexiad they were trained near Mystras (almost Sparta) following their traditional "agōgē" plus Byzantine generals at this time were encouraged to memorize the tactis of erlier Spartan kings most notable Agesilaus and Leonidas.
@@kosmasfostinis8017 Ήταν Έλληνες, είμαστε Έλληνες, ο κόσμος ήδη γνωρίζει πλήρως ότι ήταν οι ανατολικοί Ρωμαίοι. Πρέπει να αγκαλιάζουμε τον Ελληνισμό μας πιο συχνά.
@@dimitrisg45 Macedonians: Bring the good old salpinx, boys, we'll sing another song Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along Sing it as we used to sing it, 30000 strong While we were marching through Boeotia Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free So we sang the chorus from Thebes to the sea While we were marching through Boeotia
My roots are from Sparta, I have family that still lives in Sparta, I’ve stayed in Sparta many times, and I can unequivocally tell you that there is nothing cool going on in modern day Sparta.
I thought people were quite grumpy there but I was so excited anyway and the amount of freaking olive trees on the way there was like anything I ever seen, SO gorgeous!!!
More like the middle aged dude bro who likes to flex and talk about that one or two awesome things his granddaddy during the war (pick whichever war) and how he honors that legacy with his gucci AR and molon labe shirt.
I would think so. In that way, Sparta's not so different from some regions of the US that try to relive the former glory of the antebellum era, when they had plantations and slaves and, in their mind, everything was "genteel" (though there was nothing genteel about the way African American slaves were treated - medieval-style punishment props and literally pouring salt into whip wounds, among other things).
@A Velsen That's not racist though that is the truth whether or not you like it. Is the South as a whole racist? No. Do they want to go back to the good ol days? Yes. Not hard to figure out.
@Hernando Malinche I mean that’s true for a lot of civilizations though, “chivalry” for example was never a consistent code until after the age of knights was over and it started to get heavily romanticized.
I heard the seleucids were quite eager to re-enact there Though choosing romans for Persians was quite anachronistic. Well at least they lost the battle in a similar manner to sparta
I also had no idea that Sparta became a big mock up of itself, very interesting. The antagonistic relationship of Sparta to the rest of Greece may have been why Phillip didn't bother to conquer them, better to have the threat of them force the rest of Greece into his hegemony.
My understanding was they where such a small power at the time that he just didn't think it was worth it. He did defeat them but they just didn't accept it. Sense their city was never attacked they where able to get away with it. They also did a revolt that got put down. Not sure if that was under phillip or Alexander tho
@@coreyostrander1763 So essentially, it's like expecting the USA to forcibly (militarily) conquer Serbia to integrate them onto NATO, to move against Russia, for modern day context, long story short, it wouldn't go well for them. People tend to confuse early Macedonian hegemony of Greece, which was always carried out in an enlightened and respective spirit towards their fellow Greek city states, with the Hellenistic Macedonian rule of Greece, that was carried out in an authoritarian and forceful fashion, mostly because the Greek city states had tremendously declined by that time and they had became really weary of Macedonian hegemony, which in turn lead to revolts to assert their independence in order to make their city states "great again", which the Macedonians saw as a betrayal to their common cause (against the Persians) and really tight bonds by that time, moving to quell such revolts under the pretext of preserving the status quo, but essentially spiraling into an increasingly authoritarian way of rule to preserve their grip over the Greek city states
He wrote a letter to them calling them to surrender detailing what he would do to them if he conquered their city and the godamn Madmen answered him IF... Realistically why would he want to juke it with these madmen?
@@coreyostrander1763 Under Alexander. He was way to the east at the time, so his regent in Macedon, Antipater, put down the revolt. When Alexander heard of it, he called it "a battle of mice".
Technically, Phillip didn't really conquer Southern Greece. To use the word "conquer" is actually a big disservice to the true genius of Phillip. Phillip convinced everyone to join a an alliance (The Corinthian League). Which required some serious 5D chess skills. One of the methods Phillip used,was by forcefully taking and then redistributing Sparta's territory. Sparta had territorial disputes with everyone around them. These guys were extremely happy to receive those "gifts" for on Phillip. But, the only way they could possibly hope to defend those territories, was yo join j the League. Basically, everyone in Southern Greece was buttered up and made happy by Phillip at Sparta's expense (and also at the expense of Thebes). No one liked Sparta or Thebes😅. Even Athens was buttered up. For a short period, Phillip was so popular in Athens, that they built a huge statuein honor of him. That small windows of good favor was just enough for the Athenians to join the League competely willingly. (Athens held a vote and Phillip won by a landslide). Once inside the League, it was extremely difficult to leave, not because of force or threat. But because the rules of the League were very carefully crafted by Phillip. Phillip basically imprisoned Greece in a prison, thathad no walls and no guards. There was virtually no Macedonian military presence in Southern Greece...no forts or garrisons. Phillip, nor his army, never set foot on Athenian territory (this was very intentional...he needed their navy). Most people don't realize just how much of genius Phillip really was.
"TONIGHT YOU DINE IN HELL...as most famous restaurant for traditional Spartan dishes! Come and try our black broth! And if you celebrate your birthday here, you'll get a Leonidas figurine extra!
because, "take an objective on that hill and get a reward before anyone else" is an actual measured approach to training that isn't just trying to beat you into a super soldier.
In Sparta Land 3.0 they should bring back the steal the cheese attraction. However, the how many whips does it take to get to the center of a spartan is a crowd favorite.
@12:50 Hey Roman parents! Do your children disrespect you? Talk back to you? Refuse to stand when you enter the room, or bring honor to the family name? Give them a one-way ticket this summer to the "Spartan Agoge for Troubled Kids!" (Disclaimer: The "Spartan Agoge for Troubled Kids" is not liable if your son returns slightly more gay than when he left. Prospective clients are advised: "Caveat Emptor.")
16:40 I didn't realize Sellasia was that close to Sparta. To those who are wondering, that was the sight of the battle where the Macedonian-Achaean armies of Antigonus III Doson defeated the Spartan army (armed in a Macedonian-style phalanx) of Cleomenes III. That was also the first time where Sparta was militarily occupied by a non-Spartan general (i.e Antigonus III)
@@ThZuao They knew about gambling, but it was forbidden. Not that they didn't do it, but it would never be an official and legally accepted institution, which limited it as business.
In between the final abandonment of the city and it's reestablishment in the 1800's, the inhabitants fled to the more fortified and mountainous peninsula of Mani. There they more or less maintained their own lifestyle isolated from the outside world. Last we hear of them is around the ~800's, where a bishop is sending them a letter to abandon their pagan ways and convert to Christianity.
@@piotrgrzelak2613 Mani was the only part of Greece that was never conquered by the Ottomans.It had his own 'mpei' like a local warlord who at the Greek revolution of 1821 supplied most of the guns,ammunition and manpower
The city was destroyed in the third century A.D. if I remember correctly...by barbarians. The presence of barbarians produced something of a shield that protected the Greeks of old from the Byzantines and with that, from the advent of ugly Christianity. When the Byzantines took over Greece, they soon put an end to this remnant of Greek paganism.
@@DarkPsychoMessiah They told him, "Don't you ever come around here" "Don't wanna see your face, you better disappear" The fire's in their eyes and their words are really clear So beat it, just beat it
@@DarkPsychoMessiah nah during the start of Peloponnesian war they replied on phalanx only ,but after seeing the catastrophic results of the peltasts they quickly adobted it by hiring thracian mercenaries . The downfall of Sparta was due to population decrease and the unwillingness of adopting ideas and thank God for that.... Prefer Macedon or Athens over Sparta to form the hellenic league 😂
If they didn't rely so much on the phalanx and actually implemented more fighting tactics or even built fortifications for sparta they could have been a superpower for way longer than they were but they never had enough soldiers to fight rome but granted roman legions were what? 4 to 6 thousand troops nobody in Greece not even united could have held them off
Nice Video. My father is from Sparta, he used to take me as a kid to the archeological sites of our city and teach me its history. From the old Sparta emerged Eleutherolacones "Free Laconians", a league, southern of Sparta, at Mani Peninsula, protected by the mountain range of Taygetus and the sea, in the territories previously owned by Spartans, in the form of a league, having old Sparta as an example", which was quite impressive and transformed to the glorious "Mani" and it's fierce citizens, which served as mercenaries in all European armies -as well as pirates, which never fell to any foreign power including Ottomans until the creation of the Modern Greek State 1830s. A small but important and underatted offshoot of glorious Sparta.
It may seem funny that Sparta became a theme park, but you do what you have to do to get by. Even the Romans when a general returned from a great victory or campaign, and received a Triumph: "A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."
Thank you so much for this video! There's so much information about early Sparta and it's pinnacle, but little to no coverage of it's slow decline! Sparta's reputation lingered for much longer than it's actual political relevance.
There was no way to become a Spartan elite unless born into a family. They could not replace their loses. If they followed Rome army and allowed the best to join the ranks they be unstoppable
That was not an intrinsic problem on itself, as long as you have an large enough population. In my view, their problem was political: the elite didn't have strong enough institutions to dominate the other classes. They were always in constant fear of rebellion. That fear influenced a lot of their policies, both internal and external. Besides, there were basically no self made men in antiquity in general. All elite was born into a family. That is what means to be a patrician or a noble. Competition between elites was already hard, plebeians couldn't really compete.
Later in the Republic the Romans allowed any peasant or pleb to join, as they were very confident that their training could turn the lowliest farmer into a decent soldier.
Great video, Invicta. This really helps shed light on the creation of the modern myth of Sparta, which, as many historical myths in the present day, it all starts with Roman authors.
Sparta's decline happened because they were a nation of athletes and soldiers with no room for eggheads and strategists. They couldn't adapt to changing warfare, and started having mostly losing battles, with even their victories being mostly Pyrrhic since they couldnt replenish their ranks like other city states could due to their strict selectiveness (Athens on the other hand, lost a third of their population at one point due to a typhus outbreak and still remained a hegemon for some time). Strong naval power also became more important in Greek warfare and that was something Sparta could never really do well, so they relied on Corinth who were shaky allies at the best of times (they simply shared a common rival in Athens, and even then, Corinth threatened to side with Athens on a few occasions if Sparta didnt help them). During their brief period of hegemony they had over all of the Greek city-states, Sparta also managed to alienate the few allies they had. By the time of Macedon's ascendancy, they were an irrelevant backwater who nobody even really cared enough about to conquer They were the equivalent of the popular chad who was star quarterback on the high school football team, but ended up getting fat, is stuck in a crappy dead-end job, and his only friends are the regulars at the bar who like to listen when he reminisces
Only 1 or 2 countries can be superpower at any given time. Building industry and commerce has always been the more reliable route to prosperity. Prosperity allows culture to flourish, and culture attracts tourists, that's not a bad thing.
@@lama99654 Nothing, poor and suffering people always look for every little positive thing they can find to not go crazy. I saw a video of North Korean refugees who fled to South Korea and they had the audacity to say that people in the North are happier than the southerners who chase money. Like freaking what? If you were so happy, why did you escape?
Yes. The writers of New Vegas were drawing on a recurring trend in human history, wherein you see anti-democratic political forces try to create these highly fictionalized past societies where people were supposedly inherently 'stronger,' forces which get more horrifying the further back in history they imagine their utopia was. Sparta was an example of this just decades after it's fall.
Yeah the Legion in NV feels way more Like He combined Roman aestitcs with a Roman Spartan Tourist Guide because lets BE honest a real Fallout Caesar would have better Organisation and province Management than what the Legion in NV does.
The Sparta of old ,was long diminished,well before the Roman domination of the Hellenic world,the rise of the power of Macedonia ,and it’s future God King Alexander the Great saw to that..The Spartans took Persian gold to be mercenaries for the Shah of Persia,and fought against Alexander,and in a defeat of the Spartans,Alexander sent back three hundred suits of armour back to Sparta ,as a way of saying how they had dishonoured their ancestors like that of King Leonidas ,by the Spartans siding with the old enemy of Greece..Enjoying the Channel,A👍👍👍up
@Some thing seems like a display of tactics, physical strength, and agility would be more impressive. Plus I'm sure they're beating the hell out of each other with those sticks, so you'd think that would be enough for the blood thirsty. Watching torture just sounds boring once you get past it being horrific.
I'd say it's because tourists would go "pfft, anyone can do that" with the cheese thing. Torturing the shit out of your own people. Now that's original. Achieves fuckall phisically or militarily for soldiers. But it was low effort enough for them to try it, so they did and the people that built the Coliseum liked it, so that's that. They found the trick that gets people to come. Imagine how many idiotic gimmicks they tried before settling for that one.
@@ThZuao we'll see who can eat the most cheese without vomiting! We'll call it, Cheese Whipping! or maybe Reeds of Cheese... or maybe, uh, string cheese? To hell with it let's beat the shit out of someone.
Words cannot describe how much I live and appreciate your channel. As a teacher of ancient history in high school, you are the conduit between the academic world and the high school/life long learner world. May you please just bite the bullet and do a series on the Greco Persian wars, battle and peace 500-440BC : )
Looking at it now, Romans visiting Sparta would probably have a similar reaction to people who visit places like historical Williamsburg. They could see well over 400 years in the past travelling to Sparta.
Modern Sparti should rebrand as Sparta, and invite Dudebros from all over Earth to come live and lift. 60% of all whey protein on Earth should be consumed there. It should be a monument to muscle, and it could be accomplished through modern marketing.
@@windowsxp9120 Knowing a few actual dudebros, I cannot imagine one ever saying "no" to this, especially if the accommodations are Olympic-village level.
@@nosupes929 I just said, marketing. You know how cheap it'll be to make training based on rocks and calisthenics? Open-air natural lifting. The idea prints its own money.
"GREEKS, Persians, Chinese and Japanese could be cited as examples of ETHNIC CONTINUITY since despite massive cultural changes over the centuries key identifying components such as name, customs, language and territorial association were broadly maintained and reproduced for MILLENNIA" Anthony D Smith, Anthropologist, Emeritus professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity
This is true, and the Greeks and Japanese might be the only people who understand this, because their Ethnos is tied to their homogeny. If you read the history of Agia Lavra, and the revolution of 1821, you will understand that. Unfortunately, Western Europeans and Americans don't study those events.
@@royalrajput8127 India has a huge history but according to expert scholars on nationalism studies such as Smith, there is a lack of core components in order to speak of ethnic continuity for the case of the Indians. Common language is a core component for example. Indians never spoke a single language, but hundreds of different and totally diverse languages. This is not my personal opinion. This is what expert scholarship supports.
Actually, Sparta was never fully abandoned until 11-12th century. lt was the Latin occupation and the foundation of the nearby citadel of Mistras who contributed to the abandonment of the city. At the 1800s, after Greek independence, the newly found city of Sparta was populated by citizens of Mistras
I’m Spartan on my moms side and Macedonian on my dads so I’m Greek 100% so one thing I gotta wonder about is why are the Spartans depicted as being as dark or even darker than the Egyptians of Ptolemaic Egypt? In ancient texts there were 3 ways of describing the skin colour of people, and the ones that represented any shade of dark or tan had never been used to describe Spartans or Greeks all together in that matter in fact they were usually called fair skinned or in more specific cases “Ξανθός” (in modern day Greek meaning “blonde”) which back then didn’t have the same meaning as modern day Greek it meant white or pale compared to the Egyptians Persians and other surrounding nations and peoples. Another group of people who had the same skin colour would be those on the Italian peninsula and rarely comparisons would sometimes be made with the Celts as well although they were not nearly as common since the Celt were mostly way Paler that both Greeks and Italians/Romans.
The "Cheese Stealing" tradition sounds a lot like how the Spartans from Halo trained. Maybe they took some of their methods from the real ancient Sparta and not the exaggerated mockery of itself it became.
Sparta was one of the last survivors of the Greek Dark Ages. Everything falls into place when you consider their existence was a response to the anarchy of that period. Athens represented not just a rival but an existential threat: Athens was the future, an all-encompassing polis that could prosper where Sparta cannot; and this is why Sparta had to fight. It won the war but became the one thing it was never meant to be: an empire.
I was just reading Plutarch's biographies of Agis IV and Cleomenes III and they're some of the most underappreciated characters of antiquity, especially Cleomenes.
I LOVE this episode, can you do one for Venice? It was once a proud power that went toe to toe with the ottoman empire, but today it feels like Disneyland museum.
Man, I love the plane with the flag "What is your profession" written on it at 14:37 I already answer "AHOOO!!! AHOOO!!!" in my brain when I just read it.
Don’t forget that Spartas population decline can also be attributed to spartas extreme policy of male infanticide and deaths during the agoge training program.
No it can't. Our idea of brutal agoge comes exactly from this period the video covers. Sparta did not had as much a problem of reduction in population as a reduction in the percentage of the population that could "afford" to be considered a citizen. Spartan citizens were forbidden to work, for example, so they had to be very wealthy or they would lose their status of citizenship. That plus war attrition, is what explain it's decline in population. When only the elite are citizens, concentration of wealth and social inequality causes reduction in population.
Here's the thing. There was not really infanticide going on in Sparta. It's a huge misconception that has been propagated through Hollywood and even early historians. Since then kaiadas the area in which supposedly they threw kids has been searched meticulously and not a single infant skeleton has ever been found. They have found though skeletons of adults which probably were their enemies. Do remember most of the sources we have about Sparta are pro Athenian.
It wasn't actual population decline. Less Spartans could afford to be full Spartiates and so there were a few desperate attempts at land distribution but they were too little too late.
Blud cam from "TAKE FROM THEM EVERYTHING BUT GIVE THEM NOTHING" to "Buy our replica shields swords and armor they are very high quality we also have an assortment of cheeses"
Sparta was never a superpower. Even at the height of its power, it was more like a regional power - and even then, it still shared dominance of the region with Athens.
If i'm not wrong, Sparta couldn't be a greek superpower due to the fact they shouldn't be far from home for long times, since they needed to back home to the harvest and to guarantee a slave rebelion didn't happens.
@@jimmyandersson9938 that's like asking "if you call ancient Rome a super Power, what do you call USA, a ultra godly hyper power?". For its time, it was considered a superpower, which, after the peloponisian war, had control over the Greek world for a time, until Thebes became a thing (and a bit later, Macedonians)
Constantine the Last's brother Demetrius was in control of a city near the ruins of Sparta(Mystra) before the final fall of the Roman empire in the east.
@@natetwehues2428 so you prefer the city that was filled with phedophiles and sexism over the militaristic but not phedphilic and sexist city instead? I'd much prefer Sparta be the captial over a city with such a evil legecy oh yeah also they commited gencioide the Athenians I mean they loved gencioide and war crimes and inslaving other Greeks.
When you've built a reputation as a warrior society that held off the mighty Persians--and then a thousand years later your region will just be labelled for silkworms
I find it quite surprising that you didnt include Friedrich Schillers study on the legislation of Lycurgus and Solon. A useful contrast between the law givers that essentially shaped European civilization since.
Who in modern times even really thought of Sparta being a powerful nation of supersoldiers that trained in childhood EVEN WHEN THE ROMAN EMPIRE FINALLY CONQUERED ALL OF GREECE?!! I just thought that they're "supersoldier training" was already gone when Rome conquered all of Greece.
I always considered the fall of Sparta to be an economic thing. It took enormous resources to raise and train one warrior, and the economy just couldn't support all that after a while.
Agree - I think it was this, together with population decline, a conservative "citizenship" sytem, their succession laws and the freeing of the Messenian helots. After a certain point, the system couldn't work.
@@pitsinokakinot just couldn't work it's just wouldn't have been Spartan. Sparta was nothing without it slaves, Spartans were nothing special without their rituals. Which themselves worked against their growth and recovery. Alot of the old rituals were probably dismantled because they worked against recovery. Every baby culled was a baby that themselves would not have children.
@@Basedlocation married with children m8 but above all is possible to understand you know nothing about history cause that phenomenon was rather common in all ancient greece INCLUDED athens. greetings
Fantastic video! There is actually a good Asterix & Obelix animated video, The Mansion of the Gods, that echoes this development. Its always hard to find wholesome entertainment for kids, but that is a good one.