{"id":69395,"date":"2022-03-25T01:00:46","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T05:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=69395"},"modified":"2026-03-03T11:29:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:29:01","slug":"qotd-herodotus-as-spartan-propagandist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/03\/25\/qotd-herodotus-as-spartan-propagandist\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Herodotus as Spartan propagandist"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The greatest military asset the Spartans had was not actual<\/em> military excellence \u2013 although, again, Spartan capabilities seem to have been somewhat better than average \u2013 but the perception<\/em> of military excellence.<\/p>\n

Herodotus seems to be at the start of it, at least in our sources \u2013 he relates a story where, after an embarrassing failure in an effort to reduce tiny Tegea to helotage (the Tegeans kicked the Spartans’ asses) in the mid-sixth century, the Spartans supposedly stole the bones of the hero Orestes. Consequently, Herodotus notes, the Spartans were from that point on able to always beat Tegea and subdued the Peloponnese (Hdt. 1.68), resulting in the creation of the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League. The unbeatable Spartans thus appear. It’s possible the Spartan reputation predated this, but \u2013 as we’ll see \u2013 Herodotus will be the one who codifies that reputation and cements it.<\/p>\n

Except, hold on a minute<\/strong> \u2013 how hard was it to subdue the Peloponnese? It seems to have been done with a fairly adept mix of diplomacy and military force (champion one side in a local dispute, beat the other, force both into your alliance, repeat, see Kennell (2010), 51-3 for details). But it is little surprise<\/strong> that Sparta would be dominant in the Peloponnese. Messenia and Laconia together was around 2,600 square miles or so. This is \u2013 if you’ll pardon the expression \u2013 flippin’ massive<\/em> by the standards of Greek poleis<\/em><\/a>. More than twice as large as the next largest polis<\/em> in all of Greece (Athens). Sparta is fully one-third of the Peloponnese<\/strong> (the peninsula Sparta is located on). The remaining two-thirds is home to many<\/strong> other poleis<\/em> \u2013 Corinth, Argos, Elis, Tegea, Mantinea, Troezen, Sicyon, Lepreum, Aigeira and on and on. Needless to say, Sparta was several times larger than all of them \u2013 only Corinth and Argos came even remotely close in size. The population differences seem to have roughly followed land area. Sparta was just much, MUCH larger and more powerful than any nearby state<\/strong> by the start of the fifth century.<\/p>\n

Sparta thus spends the back half of the 500s as the teenager beating up all of the little kids in the sandbox and making himself leader. When you are upwards of three times larger (and in some cases, upwards of ten<\/em> times larger) than your rivals, a reputation for victory should not be hard to achieve<\/strong>. And, in the event, it turns out it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to Herodotus […] because he isn’t just observing the Spartan reputation, Herodotus is manufacturing the Spartan reputation<\/strong>. Herodotus is our main source for early Greek history (read: pre-480) and for the two Persian invasions of Greece. Herodotus’ Histories<\/em> cover a range of places and topics \u2013 Persia, Greece, Scythia, Egypt \u2013 and contain a mixture of history, ethnography, mythology and straight up falsehoods. But \u2013 as Fran\u00e7ois Hartog famously pointed out in his The Mirror of Herodotus<\/em> (originally in French as Le Miroir d’H\u00e9rodote<\/em>), Herodotus is writing about Greece<\/strong>, even when he is writing about Persia \u2013 those other cultures and places exist to provide contrasts to the things that Herodotus thinks bind all of the fractious and fiercely independent Greek poleis<\/em>. And he is perfectly willing<\/em> to manufacture the past to make it fit that vision.<\/p>\n

Sparta has a role to play in that narrative<\/strong>: the well-governed polis<\/em>, a bastion of freedom, ever opposed to tyranny, be it Greek or Persian. We’ll come back to Sparta’s … let’s say relationship<\/em> … with Persian “tyranny” next week. But for Herodotus, Sparta is the expression of an ideal form of “Greekness” and in Herodotus’ logic, being well-governed (eunomia<\/em> is the Greek term) results primarily in military excellence. For the story Herodotus is telling to work, Sparta \u2013 as one of the leading states resisting Persia \u2013 must<\/em> be well governed and it must<\/em> be militarily excellent. That’s what will make a good story \u2013 and Herodotus never<\/strong><\/em> lets the facts get in the way of a good story.<\/p>\n

(Sidenote: Athens \u2013 at least post-Cleisthenic Athens \u2013 gets this treatment too. Athens ends up embodying a different set of “Greek” virtues and where Sparta shows its prowess on land, the Athenians do so at sea.)<\/p>\n

And so, Herodotus \u2013 the myth-maker \u2013 talks up the Spartiates<\/em><\/a> at Thermopylae (you know, the brave 300) and quietly leaves out the other Laconians (who, if you scrutinize his numbers, he knows must be there, to the tune of c. 900 men), downplaying the other Greeks. Spartan leadership is lionized, even when it makes stupid mistakes (Thermopylae, to be clear, was a military disaster and Spartan intransigence nearly loses the battle of Plataea, but Herodotus represents this as boldness in the face of the enemy; even more fantastically inept was the initial Spartan plan to hold on the Isthmus of Corinth as if no one had ever seen a boat before<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part VI: Spartan Battle”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry<\/em><\/a>, 2019-09-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The greatest military asset the Spartans had was not actual military excellence \u2013 although, again, Spartan capabilities seem to have been somewhat better than average \u2013 but the perception of military excellence. Herodotus seems to be at the start of it, at least in our sources \u2013 he relates a story where, after an embarrassing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1526,7,5,41],"tags":[732,1457,347,1617,1101,269,1151],"class_list":["post-69395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greece","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","tag-athens","tag-bretdevereaux","tag-debunking","tag-herodotus","tag-persia","tag-propaganda","tag-sparta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i3h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69395"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72525,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69395\/revisions\/72525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}