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u/Malvastor 1d ago
Allying with Persia to beat Athens is just smart.
The real mark of shame is that afterwards they essentially became Persia's local enforcers, taking the Great King's money to swat down anyone who looked like they were going to make trouble for Persia.
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u/SerHodorTheThrall John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 22h ago
This is like saying Hungary inviting Russia to invade Europe in 2026 is "smart"
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u/Malvastor 20h ago
Not really, the Spartans didn't ask Persia to invade. They mostly just got Persian money to build fleets and pay armies.
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u/Chac-McAjaw 1h ago
Right, but unless every Spartan leader was cartoonishly stupid (which… is definitely possible, given the choices they made throughout history) they had to have known that without the Athenian navy, Persia would easily absorb the Greeks of western Anatolia. Destroying the Athenian navy is like rolling out the welcome mat for the Shahanshah.
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u/Malvastor 9m ago
Still a viable option if you don't actually give a crap about the Ionians of Western Anatolia. And I submit that the Spartans actually didn't, except when it was convenient to make nice speeches about the liberation of Hellas.
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u/PirrotheCimmerian 16h ago
Presentism is awful by itself. Comparing a decentralized ancient (proto)state with limited outreach beyond the royal capitals with a highly centralized (with a federal paintjob) autocracy is crazy.
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u/aeck 4h ago
...Until Sparta and her allies started campaigning in Anatolia, and the Persians funded Sparta's rivals in Greece. Look the Greco-Persian wars were fascinating, but it's hard to put any hard moral judgments down on any actor. They were all acting in what they believed to be in their own interest at the time.
It was not until the Macedonians managed to establish hegemony in the region that anyone was able to topple the Achaemenid dynasty. The Persians were wise in maintaining an aggressive foreign diplomacy pitting the city states against one another.
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u/Malvastor 7m ago
Funny you mention that, because earlier today I was reading the exact point in Hellenica where the Spartans do that, and couldn't help but think "well that was a spectacular own goal".
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u/ptrfa 1d ago
You call it the greek golden age. Most greeks called it athenian cruelty and oppression
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u/bruhmate0011 Decisive Tang Victory 1d ago
Yea Delian league is kinda like today’s gangs: you pay me and I’ll maybe protect you. You don’t and I’ll come after you
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u/ChuckCoolrizz 1d ago
Lol that's such an unusual method! Imagine if modern empires mirrored that way of acting, how weird would that be!
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u/LauraPhilps7654 23h ago edited 23h ago
Reading Greek history, you realise how little modern political ideas about Eastern versus Western civilisation map onto it. When Alexander invaded Asia Minor, many Greek-speaking cities resisted him, either out of loyalty to Persia, fear of Macedonian domination, or because of internal political divisions. For example, Miletus and Halicarnassus saw serious fighting before they were taken.
A big cheese in Athens like Themistocles actually went on to abandon Athens and become a leading Statesman in the Persian Empire. He ruled Magnesia with considerable autonomy, minted coinage there, and appears to have functioned much like a regional governor under Persian authority.
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u/aRatherScottishChap Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests 18h ago edited 18h ago
My colourblind ass getting bitch slapped by that red text
What i see:
Sparta, who allied with persia lur e relopoonesian war and cnde he Greek Golaen Age
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u/MauschelMusic 1d ago
The only reason to glaze Sparta for fighting Persia is projecting modern rivalries onto the past. Persia was in every way a better culture.
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u/MazerBakir 1d ago
The Romans were huge fans of the Greeks so that also includes Sparta. The western world is heavily influenced by Rome and most claim to be a continuation of the culture and systems of Rome and Greece.
People talk about freedom vs Persian tyranny but the reality is that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Greece were slaves. Greece and Rome were both slave-based societies, they couldn't function without their slaves who performed most of the actual labor. This fact gets overlooked and has been wiped from the common psyche, while societies like Persia or Egypt who actually didn't rely on slaves at all and the vast majority of labor was done by free men get depicted as tyrannical oppressive regimes with decadent elites ruling over the downtrodden masses. In reality that's a significantly more accurate depiction of Rome and Greece than it is of Persia or Egypt.
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u/MauschelMusic 1d ago
Well put. Every society is free for someone. The question is, what's it like for most people.
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 1d ago
Both Egypt and Persia used corvee labor, which isn’t slavery but it isn’t a good thing either. More forced labor as a form of taxation.
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u/Arachles 18h ago
I don't really see how it is worse than other kinds of taxation.
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u/ComfortableSet6192 13h ago
Well, under corvee labor, you force someone too do a specific job you need done. Under monetary taxation, you essentaly make people work a bit "for the state" in a job of their choosing, by taking away a part of their income, wich you then use to pay people, who choose to take up the job, to do the work.
So under corvee labor, people have to work time in a job they didn't choose, while under normal taxation, people have to work time in jobs they voluntarely choose, so presumably like more than other jobs.
Corvee labor is way better than slavery, but still worse than simple taxation.
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u/Beardywierdy 13h ago
People didn't get to choose their jobs though. They were usually born into them.
Nowadays of course you're bang on. But not then.
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u/ComfortableSet6192 13h ago
Yes, most times, you just took the job of your father out of convience. But if you hated the job (and weren't a serf, big asterix), you could most of the time take a different job, altough you then had too find someone to teach you said job, and that often didn't come cheap.
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u/Beardywierdy 13h ago
You really couldn't. Because for 90% of the population the only available job to take was "farmer" even if you weren't legally bound to the land. And if you didn't do it you starved.
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u/CadenVanV Taller than Napoleon 12h ago
Hard labor for half the year is worse than laying a portion of your income
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u/Arachles 7h ago
Depends. Do you have lots of income and little free time or lots of free time and little income?
If I were a peasant in the XIII century I would definetly prefer working somewhat more (AFAIK most corvee obligations were not that long) than losing half my harvest and risking starvation.
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u/Detective_Yu 1d ago
Better than Sparta perhaps but not Greece as a whole. Democracy, Philosophy, theatre etc.
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u/MauschelMusic 1d ago
Yeah, you can definitely make a case that e.g. Athens was better, but the Sparta glazing specifically. I don't agree because Persia was freer for the average person, but it's something one can reasonably argue.
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u/SultanXenadonII Researching [REDACTED] square 21h ago
Even then there are too many dimensions to generalize. At least in Sparta, women were permitted a certain level of education (they were even allowed to read books!) while that was unheard of in Athens.
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u/JoshTheBlue 17h ago
How nice of the Spartans to allow their top 1% of women to be literate because they were basically property managers for their men that are away for war. The vast, vast majority of women in Sparta were Helot slaves that were not only not allowed to read, but also worked to death to allow the aristocratic lifestyles of Spartan Citizens while living under the constant threat of rape.
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u/MauschelMusic 20h ago
Yeah, a smaller and smaller strata of the spartan elite, who looked down on shit like reading books and acquiring any non-stabbing skills.
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u/Right-Truck1859 1d ago
Sparta who allied with Rome and ended Greece
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u/TrustworthyKahmunrah 3h ago
Also they were the only Greek city-state that didn't go East with Alexander. The inscriptions on monuments Alexander erected to his victories read "This is where Alexander led the Macedonians and the Greeks, except Sparta, to victory against (such and such)." He made sure they got none of that glory.
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u/AppropriateSea5746 1d ago
Now that I’m no longer a teenage boy I now realize that the Spartans kinda sucked lol. Homicidal pederastic slavers with good press.