← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Dan Dare
Thread ID: 8823 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-08-06
2003-08-06 23:25 | User Profile
KQED (and maybe other PBS stations) is transmitting all three episodes of the highly-rated BBC documentary at 9pm Wednesday.
The Spartans THE SPARTANS charts the rise and fall of one of the most intriguing and extreme civilizations of the ancient world. Classical historian Bettany Hughes reveals this secretive, surprising society of battle-hardened warriors, weak babies left exposed on hillsides to die and powerful, liberated women. The story unfolds against the spectacular mountain scenery of Sparta in the Peloponnese and the stunning landscape and archaeology of classical Greece. Unlike its more famous rival, Athens, Sparta canââ¬â¢t boast of philosophers, playwrights or politicians. Itââ¬â¢s famous for its frugality and its fighters ââ¬â reputed to be the best in the whole of ancient Greece. The three-hour THE SPARTANS airs on PBS Wednesday, August 6, 2003, (check local listings).
2003-08-07 16:13 | User Profile
I watched it and enjoyed it.
HIS is my favorite Ch.
2003-08-07 17:42 | User Profile
I watched it for about 10 minutes and turned it off. Wasn't because it was neccessarily bad, but a lot of what they were talking about I either already knew about Sparta or learned on the History Channel's 4 hour documentary "the Rise and Fall of the Spartans" that aired last September.
For more information about Ancient Sparta [url=http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/By_Time_Period/Ancient_History/Greek/Sparta/]http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Histo...y/Greek/Sparta/[/url]
2003-08-08 05:54 | User Profile
Did either one of these documentaries hint that the Spartans were related to the ancient Hebrews through the tribe of Dan?
If you read lots of ancient literature, esp. literature on the dark age period between Late Minoan IIIb and when the lights come on again with Hesiod, there is a persistent rumor that the Spartans are Danite.
The usual reasons given (it ain't quite evidence) are:
Spartans were apparently both smaller & swarthier than their Attic brethren;
Spartans made no art of any distinction whatsoever and had no real inclinations in that direction -- the stuff archaeologists found there were bad knock-offs of Athenean pieces;
Spartans were linguistically unique and their use of Greek was similar to the way it was used among Hellenized Jews in Alexandria in a later era;
Spartans ran a totally wretched socio-economic system which depended not only on eternal grunt-work being done by helots, but depended also on absolutely despising and fearing the helots.
Spartans were sporadically courageous but even in the ancient world it was mostly PR. They were late at Marathon, not fighting at all, and only provided a corporal's guard at Thermopylae. At the latter their main distinction was wedging themselves into a pass and dying quite as uselessly as their later possible relatives died at Masada.
Spartan society collapsed in the end when it became impossible to control their stoop labor and project power abroad at the same time. The Spartans had no working class. A current Middle Eastern nation has a similar situation. They are so far handling it a lot like old Sparta, but the new helots are a grim bunch and may be just as capable of a long and dirty war as the old ones.
Anyway, it would be interesting if any of this was brought up.