What is all this Spartan talk anyhow?
Humans have this cultural knack for latching on to the latest fad. At any point in time certain topics, historical people or philosophies are on the upswing or are at top of the cultural mind.
It seems Spartans and Stoics are currently on the cultural upswing. Some of this is probably due to our western society felling a bit culturally unhinged right now. Humans like to have absolutes in their lives and one of the byproducts of our modern society is fewer absolutes, more individual freedoms and the affluence to worry about it.
We have a well-intentioned tendency to look to the past to find some answers. Unfortunately we sometimes cherry pick the bits we like and confuse mythology with history.
First of all Spartan and stoic are two different things. Some of the Spartans may have been stoics or had stoic tendencies but those are different things. The reason they get lumped together is that both the Spartans and the Stoics believed in the value of self-discipline and a healthy dose of privation for people and society.
This is really the ‘Why do you care?’ part of this story. Our current society has some of the same challenges. Once you have achieved affluence as a society how do you counteract the human tendency to rest on your laurels and devolve into a debaucherous state?
The Spartans
Yes there was a city-state called Sparta that was one of a number of regional powers in the Peloponnese – (which is what the area of the Greek archipelago is called). They were a regional power around 500BC. They did lead the combined alliance of Greek forces against the Persians. They were rivals with Athens and ended up conquering Athens but losing to Thebes in the Peloponnesian wars.
The reason we hear so much about them is that they had a unique system of governance, even for their time. The other Greeks were fascinated with them and thus built up a popular mythology around the Spartans that has persisted until our day.
The source documents that we get this mythology from are not from the Spartans themselves. Most of it is not even from contemporary Greeks. Most people will quote later historians like Plutarch who were writing 200-500 years later. You’ve got to take all that with a grain of salt and realize that a good portion of the ‘history’ at the time was mythology.
The genesis legend is that a king named Lycurgus gave the Spartan’s their constitution around the core values of three Spartan virtues: equality, military fitness, and austerity. Early on in the formation of Sparta they conquered the local population and turned them into, ‘slaves’ is the wrong word, more like medieval serfs.
The Spartans had a problem. They were outnumbered 8 to 1 by their serfs. The way they addressed this was to have a professional military, which was a unique thing before Julius Caesar came along. All of the Spartan men were the highly trained, military elite class and all the serfs, known as Helots, did all the work. The tradeoff for the Spartans was they didn’t have to do any work in the fields but they had to have a full-time professional army all the time with everybody in it.
The closest thing in our modern history would be a National Socialist movement. This is a culture where the nation is the most important thing and the individual only exists insomuch to support the nation. In this way all of the citizens are equal in their subservience to the goals of the nation and the ideals of the nation. The ideals of Sparta were military fitness and austerity.
Whenever you see a nation taking children away from their parents to be socialized into a nationalist movement, whenever you see the fetishism of the military or extreme austerity as route to purity you see echoes of the Spartan mythology. As you have probably guessed already, Hitler was a big fan of the Spartans for their devotion to the nation and to their racial dominance over the Helots.
Yes the Spartans existed. Yes their cultural system made them really good at waging war and a dominant regional power for a couple hundred years in Greece. Be careful when you’re holding up the Spartans as cultural heroes. Be able to sort the history from the mythology and you can’t just take the cool stuff and throw out the icky stuff.
What’s the connection to the Stoics?
The basic connection is that the Stoic believed that how you lived was the best demonstration of your nature. This meant that the practice personal austerity in the way you lived helped you be better aligned with nature. This austerity hook is how Sparta and Stoics get lumped together in our current popular culture that is apparently too busy being austere to open Wikipedia.
Stoicism was/is a branch of Greek philosophy founded by a guy called Zeno of Citium around 300 BC. (Zeno was like Elvis, he only had a first name). Stoicism was very popular in Greco Roman times but was eventually snuffed out by Justinian, because, you know, Christianity didn’t have room under its tent for any other philosophy.
One of the reasons so much Stoic thought made it to our times is that they had a couple of hreat cheerleaders and the texts survived from antiquity intact. This sounds simple, but it is basically a miracle that these primary source writings from over 2,000 years ago survived the dark ages. Most of what we know about antiquity we have to tease out of 2nd and 3rd hand accounts.
One of those cheerleaders was Seneca the younger who’s ‘letters’ are a great and quite readable example of Stoic thought is the form of homey letters of advice to a young friend. Poor old Seneca the younger ended up on the wrong side of Nero and we know how that turns out.
The second Stoic cheerleader was the great philosopher king Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself. Good old Marcus kept a diary of stoic thought in which he gave himself pep talks while wandering about Germany bashing barbarians. The irony being that these were his personal journals and were supposed to be destroyed on his death.
I think what resonates so well with us and with all ages is that the Stoics were basically talking common sense. They knew the tendency of power and wealth to corrupt and they were trying to figure out a way to have power and wealth and still be good people true to their nature. Sound familiar? It’s the struggle of successful people across the ages. Now that I have everything, how do I lead a good life?
And, so, my friends that is my nickel tour of Spartans and Stoics. Now you can be the one to bitch slap the wannabe stoics and Spartans at your next cocktail party.