Also uh hot take, but Sparta bad. Frankly all of ancient greece was a shitshow. Critical Support for the Achemenian Empire in their struggle against greek colonizers.
John Dolan has said that Sparta and the Antebellum South/Confederacy were basically the same society.
I know when I was reading that blog’s series about Sparta my instant take was “Oh so this is the Confederacy without the child soldiers part” and the blog ends with “Oh it’s like North Korea.”, like fucking hell. And the dude goes on and on about getting primary sources and secondary sources and how to read them but then a modern nation comes along and nah CNN is good enough. Fucking tiresome.
How is sparta not innovative yet also the origin of all totalitarian governments? You cant be both.
also my pet peeve is these greece/rome/sparta/etc worshiping dimwits who cant help but force comparisons to the modern world when they are irrelevant. oh yes agreed sparta is like singapore and vietnam good analysis! morons
I really wish I could remember the book, but there was someone who talked about the Athens/Sparta myth and how America has used it.
The idea I think is that immediately after the revolution, the US set itself up as Sparta, a militaristic, energised power struggling against a decadent and degenerate naval power like Athens - the UK. The myth becomes useful again during the Cold war only now the US is a democratic, free naval power just like Athens against a paranoid, militaristic dictatorship of the USSR.
It was kinda interesting to see how myths that where honestly way off when they were first written down are still used as a sorta template and a desire to return to some daft golden age. And of course how easily those myths are twisted to fit the current circumstances.
So is it one of those rationalist blogs? Are there any good posts you’d recommend?
The blog is about a liberal historian, mostly materialistic takes though, going through the the history of battle in popular culture. The posts about the Siege of Minas Tirith , Siege of Helm’s Deep and the series about shitting on Sparta are decent reads. He also has some stuff about Game of Thrones but I never cared for that so I didnt check it out.
