Pursuant to my review this week of Myke Cole’s excellent book on Sparta’s military record (linked below), a new consensus among academics is that Spartans did not expose imperfect babies (leave them to die) as portrayed so prominently in fascist propaganda. Turns out this is a Roman-era invention. No archaeology supports it and there are no primary sources for it. On the contrary, we know of Spartan kings who had deformities, and recovered remains show that the Greeks cared for babies with congenital problems.

We do the Spartans no honors by making them out to be superhuman, or beyond normal human morality.

Polemology Positions

Meet the Actual Spartans

The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy. Osprey Publishing, 2021. 615 pages. Above: the Chigi vase, which depicts Spartans that look very unlike our modern filmic ones. “One on one,” author Myke Cole tells us of the Spartans, “they weren’t particularly tough, but…their ability to fight together as a disciplined unit far exceeded t…

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a year ago · Matt Osborne