The Spartan Way

To some, the Spartans represent the ultimate warriors — fierce, fearless, liberty-loving, physically-ripped superhero-esque figures. The epitome of rough and ready virility.

To others, the Spartans are a repugnant people — brutish, cruel, one-dimensional proto-totalitarians. Holders of slaves, exacters of infanticide, practitioners of pederasty.

Neither view captures the complexities — not to say conflicting accounts — of the city-state known anciently as Lacedaemon.

While plenty of mystery remains, what we can know for certain is that Spartans lived a truly unique way of life. As scholar Paul Rahe puts it: “Classical Lacedaemon was no ordinary polis. No one thought so in antiquity; no one should think so today.”

Even in their own time, the Spartans were praised, admired, and revered by their peers and neighbors. So, it's worth considering what it was that drew that praise. If the details of the Spartan way of life are sometimes in dispute, or embellished, they still point to underlying principles — values and lessons we can't and wouldn't want to exactly replicate today, but which nonetheless impart insights on how to better live our lives. As Rahe observes:

«we may prefer the Athenians, regarding them as more like ourselves, and we may well be right not only in that judgment but in our moral and political preferences as well. . . . however, we name sports teams after the Spartans, and it is about them (and not the Athenians) that we ordinarily write novels and make films—which says a great deal about the ancient Lacedaemonians and perhaps also something about the unsatisfied longings that lurk just below the surface within modern bourgeois societies.»

A city the Roman historian Livy called “memorable not for the magnificence of its buildings, but for its discipline”; protected by what the mythical founder of its military described as a “wall of men, instead of bricks”; populated by those who considered themselves the descendants of “Heracles the unconquered” — a tiny warrior community that managed to command the respect of its neighbors and leave a legend for all time — undoubtedly has much to teach about the nature of these longings, and how they might be fulfilled, at least slightly, in the present age.

The Spartan Way, explores their ancient way of life and some lessons it can provide to us moderns. It's not a long book, but it's chock-full of interesting insights, susses out some of the myths and realities of Spartan life (at least those we can know), and will motivate you and inspire you to think about the ways you can embody some of their martial and brotherly spirit.