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The Strife of Valour: Ares is Lord; Greece has no fear of gold; Austerity and Equality at Sparta
1-3-09
Hi guys.
This post looks at the current economic crisis and what Sparta can tell us about surviving such a crisis.
Like the crisis, the post is long.
But it's in sections.
And to make it easier for folks who want to read one section at a time, there's this Table of Contents:
I hope you'll take the time to read the entire post.
Like Excellence, Honor, and the Molding of Men, this is a post I'll be referring back to, because it introduces the core Warrior concepts of Austerity and Equality, explains how they functioned at Sparta, and looks at how they can enrich our own lives.
Bill
τhis post, which addresses cultural issues brought forward by the credit crunch and the subsequent economic crisis, was inspired by Warrior Brian Hulme, who sent me the following email:
As for the credit crunch, well it will not affect me, because 1) I can not lose my job, as I am already unemployed and on State (Government) benefit. 2) My reason for donating, if you remember, was that the church I was in and at that time leaving was treating me in an un Christian way and not supporting me but I got the support I needed from the Man2Man Alliance and you. The tithe that I paid to them at that time was 10% of my income and I considered it a sacred trust and not for my use. When I left the Church this money was left with "nothing to do" or I could every 4 weeks send it to you as a "tithe" and as much of a sacred trust. I now think of Patrick as my Pastor, you as my Elder and Robert and Naked Wrestler and the many other contributors to the Alliance web site Warrior Brothers in this my new church as we share a new type of love and belief that involves total Manly love, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
The credit crunch can crunch away, but it will NOT crunch my Manhood my Masculinity or my Warriorhood and it will not stop me sending my donations to the Alliance, because I hunger for the establishment of (through setting up of Regional Chapters by Warrior couples) a Warrior Community and that can only happen if we are committed to the cause of Warriorhood in every way we can be, and this includes sending as much in donations as often as we can.
Brian
In his email, Brian is, implicitly I feel, contrasting the values of those who've created the credit crunch -- and of those who fear the credit crunch -- with his own Warrior values of Manhood, Masculinity, and Warriorhood.
And he's being very clear:
A Warrior Community can only exist, he says, "if we are committed to the cause of Warriorhood in every way we can be."
He's right of course.
Which means he's hitting on crucial issues which you need to think about in terms of the choices you're making and will make in your lives.
Now, Brian lives in the UK, and so, while, as I told him, I'm sorry he's unemployed, he's at least getting benefits.
He also, as I understand this, gets medical care, regardless of whether he's currently employed.
Brian was ill recently and had to have an operation.
Because his society provides him with medical care, he didn't have to worry about the cost of that care.
So in the UK, even though the UK is a capitalist country, and even though it too has been hit hard by the credit crunch, there are COMMUNAL VALUES which help protect guys like Brian.
That's good.
And Brian shares in those communal values.
Because from his unemployment benefits, which from the point of view of an American, are meager --
he's tithing.
To which I say: Wow!
But I also recognize that his tithing is a reflection of his values, his communal values, which most of you reading this -- lack.
And in thinking about how to explain this to you, I came upon a phrase in Xenophon describing an aspect of Sparta and the Agogé.
That phrase is "The Strife of Valour."
If you can understand The Strife of Valour and the meaning of The Strife of Valour, then you can understand the values -- communal values -- which powered the Spartan experiment and made it so successful.
"Manhood, Masculinity, Warriorhood" says Brian.
Once again, he's right.
They're all part of The Strife of Valour.
And that's not all.
Because my reading of Xenophon led me to Plutarch's Life of Agesilaus, a Spartan king -- in which I came across this line of ancient Greek poetry:
That too is germane to our discussion.
So -- I've given this post a long title:
Ares is Lord
Greece has no fear of gold
Austerity and Equality at Sparta If you'll bear with me, you'll see how each element comes into play.
And how, in the place where Ares -- that is, the Warrior God -- is Lord; and where the Strife of Valour prevails; the people need have no fear of gold.
ωhat we've been seeing for months now, in the credit crunch and the ensuing collapse of the worldwide financial system, has been the strife of greed.
The strife of selfishness and self-interest.
Struggles among the greedy for an ever bigger piece of the pie are what has brought our world to this brink --
this brink of financial, social, and environmental disaster.
The strife of greed, then, is destructive.
It puts the individual first, no matter how destructive that individual's actions are to the common good.
The Strife of Valour is something entirely different.
As we'll see -- it destroys neither communities nor Men --
rather, it is the SALVATION of both.
The Way of the Warrior is the Way of Salvation;
and the Way of the Warrior is the Strife of Valour.
Again: the strife of greed is destructive.
The Strife of Valour is not, because, as we'll see, it's part of an effort to build both excellence -- Manhood -- and fellow-feeling among Warriors and thus strengthen and exalt their Warriorhood.
Warriorhood which exists in service to a community -- what we may think of as a Warriordom.
A Warrior Realm -- which is what Sparta was.
Now: In our time, the strife of greed is largely about the creation of needs and the creation of things to fulfill those needs.
Which begs the question:
What do human beings actually need?
Answer -- in my view:
Clean air, clean water, wholesome food, and exercise -- the last two in moderation -- and the communion and mutual aid of their fellows.
That's what they need.
They also need the freedom to be sexual -- within limits.
Sex must be genital and consensual.
That means they can't be allowed to rape, or buttfuck, or violate children.
In addition, Men need to be able to Fight.
Women to bear children and nurture.
But, it should be noted, Spartan Women were encouraged to wrestle, to throw the javelin and discus;
while Spartan Men were expected to fully participate in the education, training, and moral acculturation of boys and young men.
At Sparta, both sexes experienced aggression -- and nurturance.
This then is what human beings need:
Clean air, clean water, wholesome food, exercise, and mutual aid;
sex, aggression, and children.
That's what human beings need.
Not SUVs and flat-screen TVs;
but the freedoms, rights, and obligations of their mutual humanity.
The Spartans had that.
We don't.
Yet, even in the midst of the credit crisis, our culture continues to emphasize and value material goods, often and predictably to the exclusion of our mutual humanity.
For example, I wrote that line about "SUVs and flat-screen TVs" back in October;
and in November, the New York Times ran this picture:
It's a photo of a man putting his newly-purchased flat-screen TV into his SUV -- life imitating, as it were, art.
He purchased the TV on "Black Friday" of this year, on the same day that a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a mob of shoppers.
According to the International Herald Tribune:
"They were like a stampede," said Nassau Det. Lieutenant Michael Fleming. "Hundreds of people walked past him, over him or around him."
The reason the Wal-Mart worker was trampled to death is that the shoppers put their acquisition of things
ahead of their individual and mutual humanity.
It was more important to them to get a bargain -- a cheap object -- on the day after Thanksgiving, than it was to concern themselves with what had happened to a fellow human being.
That's a reflection of their values -- values which are cultural.
Cultural values.
The photos I just showed you appeared in the New York Times on Black Friday, and as such are a snapshot, a picture of the culture.
This Spartan drinking cup which I often show you is also a picture -- of its culture.
These guys have not been shopping.
They've been in battle.
True battle.
They've been Fighting.
True Fighting.
And they're happily carrying home the body of a fellow Warrior, one who Fell in the Fight.
He died honorably -- virtuously Xenophon would say.
His death was "kalos" -- noble and beautiful.
The Warriors carrying his body have lived honorably.
Their lives, says Xenophon, are also "kalos" -- noble and beautiful.
That's why they're happy.
Because they've behaved virtuously.
And in accord with the values of their community -- a Warrior community -- which puts human relationships -- including relationships between Warriors, such as those we examined in The Warrior Bond -- ahead of material possessions.
Their happiness depends not on things -- not on objects -- but on behavior, their own behavior, which they control;
and on the way that behavior shapes their relationships with other members of their community -- a Warrior community.
Materially, these people are poor.
The Men are nude and barefoot, their only adornment is their elaborately dressed hair, and as we'll soon see, they live austere lives in every other way as well.
But they're happy.
At Wal-Mart, shoppers stepped over, around, and upon the body of a fellow human being in order to obtain objects -- not food, not water -- but objects, things, stuff -- virtually all of it junk;
At Sparta, Warriors battled and fought -- they risked their lives -- to protect and bring home a wounded comrade or the body of a fallen comrade.
Big difference.
And that's because at Sparta, human relationships based on the core Warrior values of Nobility and Goodness -- aka areté -- were more important -- far more important -- than things.
And to ensure that Nobility and Goodness remained the core values at Sparta -- the Spartans instituted a regime of Austerity and Equality.
That's what they did.
They banned wealth.
And replaced it with areté -- excellence.
Areté -- as it arose from Ares.
Excellence -- as it arose, and by design, from Fighting, Combat, and Strife.
That's what they did.
And what they did worked.
Spectacularly well.
For centuries.
So -- it's like I said:
This is what human beings need:
Clean air, clean water, wholesome food, exercise, and mutual aid;
sex, aggression, and children.
That's what human beings need.
Not SUVs and flat-screen TVs;
but the freedoms, rights, and obligations of their mutual humanity.
The Spartans had that.
We don't.
And the reason we don't is rooted in our code of values -- our "value-system."
Let's start by talking about the credit crunch and values.
We've often heard, in the last few months, that Greed -- which is a value -- is what got us into this mess.
But, fact is, we've been told for years, at least in the US, that Greed is the best motivator in a society -- that Greed is what powers "Free Market Capitalism," and if we just cut Greed loose to do its thing, everyone will prosper.
Well, we did cut it loose.
And a few people prospered.
And the rest of us lost.
We've also been told, repeatedly over the last years, that "the Market is always right."
Well, the market, out where I live, was valuing houses at -- at least -- five, ten, or even more -- times their actual value.
In one case, I saw a "home" -- really just a shack, sitting on a scrubby lot with a chicken-wire fence -- listed for $215,000.
It's not worth more than $12 or $14,000.
And what happened?
Someone bought it for $215,000, he couldn't make the payments, he bailed out, the bank has it, and last I heard the bank was demanding $130,000 for it.
Dream on.
So -- the Markets aren't always right.
I know, I know -- we're told that the Markets are self-correcting.
See, that's like saying, psychiatry is always right, so psychiatry was right in the 1960s when it said that "homosexuality" was a "personality disorder" --
until it "self-corrected" in 1973 and decided that "homosexuality" wasn't a "personality disorder."
No.
Guys having sex with guys is not evidence of a "personality disorder."
It wasn't in the 1960s, and it isn't now.
Psychiatry was WRONG.
And the Markets were WRONG too.
As Alan Greenspan himself, admitted, more or less, at a Congressional hearing in October:
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: October 23, 2008
WASHINGTON - For years, a Congressional hearing with Alan Greenspan was a marquee event. Lawmakers doted on him as an economic sage. Markets jumped up or down depending on what he said. Politicians in both parties wanted the maestro on their side.
But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.
"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief," he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
...
"You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others," said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the committee. "Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?"
Mr. Greenspan conceded: "Yes, I've found a flaw. I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I've been very distressed by that fact."
[emphasis mine]
Mr Greenspan's ideology -- his belief in greed and the markets -- was, he now admits, flawed.
Which means that the two values on which our society runs -- Greed and the Marketplace -- are not reliable.
They just aren't.
What's more, Mr Greenspan's ideology went beyond a simple belief in greed and the markets -- towards something which we can call "dollar-worship."
And I do mean dollar-*worship*.
Because it turns out that Greenspan, who was for so many years head of the Federal Reserve and whose pronouncements not just on the economy but just about anything were given great weight by the Congress, by most of the rest of government, and certainly by American society, is, according to the International Herald Tribune, a follower of Ayn Rand:
Well, that's one way of putting it.
Rand, a White Russian refugee who hated communism and collectivism, put Greed at the center of her philosophic system.
The Tribune refers to it as "the enlightened self-interest of individuals."
But in Rand's work, it comes across as individual Greed.
Indeed, at one point in her writing, Rand, who was an atheist, has a character say that the only symbol worth honoring is the dollar sign.
And Rand means it.
As a consequence, Greenspan was opposed to most government regulation of markets, including the derivatives market -- derivatives are complex financial instruments which are core to the present crisis; and, as I said, Greenspan strenuously and successfully opposed efforts, by the Congress and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to regulate them, because, says the Tribune, he had "a resolute faith that those participating in financial markets would act responsibly."
Why anyone would believe that, given the history of the world and of bubbles in particular -- is beyond me.
But perhaps you would if you believed, as Rand and Greenspan did, that decisions based on Greed, and a society run on Greed, would be sound.
Look: I have said that core to my work is a simple idea:
That you must question the dominant paradigms -- the dominant social models -- of your era.
Whether they be "heterosexuality" or analism.
Now -- one of the dominant paradigms of our present era is that Greed is good and that the Markets are always right.
But use your eyes.
The Markets were NOT right.
And if the markets were not right, then the theory is wrong.
Some of you no doubt believe that the crisis is due to "bad actors."
No no no no no.
It's the theory behind the actors which is the problem.
It's like saying that psychoanalysis couldn't rid me of my Love of Men and Masculinity -- because my psychiatrist was a bad psychiatrist.
Or that I was a bad patient.
No.
It was that the theory behind the pyschoanalysis was wrong.
Because the Love of Man for Man is normal and natural.
Not diseased.
Same with analism.
It's like saying, which many of the buttboys in the person of the AIDS Service Organizations do, that anal would be fine if everyone used condoms.
No.
Anal is an inherently UNnatural act.
It's inherently dangerous.
And if you have to wear a condom to do something -- chances are you shouldn't be doing it.
So -- the theory of Markets and Greed -- is wrong.
And when you look at an event like the present credit crisis, you need to look at the theory behind the event.
Because there's always a theory -- a paradigm or model -- which is guiding the actors.
Analism is one such theory.
Genderism is another.
The medical model of homosexuality was another, which was seemingly done in, but which has survived as sexual orientation.
And the theory of Markets and the salutary effects of Greed -- is another.
So: dollar-worship, greed, the marketplace -- major players in the American value system -- are in fact phoney theologies based on faulty and failed theories.
Which means we face a choice:
We can continue down the disastrous road of dollar worship and greed;
or we can rejoin the human race and behave once again like human beings.
And that means first and foremost looking at other values.
What other values are there?
Communal values.
Including what's called "reciprocal altruism" -- I'll help you if I have a reasonable expectation that at some point in the future you'll help me -- and which we in the Alliance, along with every other Warrior Culture, elevate to Warrior Altruism.
And that's what's powered most societies throughout history -- altruism, reciprocal or otherwise, and mutual aid.
Not greed.
Feminist author Margaret Atwood, with whom I don't often agree, had this to say about reciprocal altruism in an op-ed in the NY Times:
We are social creatures who must interact for mutual benefit, and - the negative version - who harbor grudges when we feel we've been treated unfairly. Without a sense of fairness and also a level of trust, without a system of reciprocal altruism and tit-for-tat - one good turn deserves another, and so does one bad turn - no one would ever lend anything, as there would be no expectation of being paid back. And people would lie, cheat and steal with abandon, as there would be no punishments for such behavior.
Children begin saying, "That's not fair!" long before they start figuring out money; they exchange favors, toys and punches early in life, setting their own exchange rates. Almost every human interaction involves debts incurred - debts that are either paid, in which case balance is restored, or else not, in which case people feel angry. A simple example: You're in your car, and you let someone else go ahead of you, and the driver doesn't nod, wave or honk. How do you feel?
...
Atwood is correct about how reciprocal altruism functions.
And she ends her piece by saying that people need to "recognize that there is such a thing as the common good."
That's something which previous societies took for granted.
Including the Greeks, who, for all their competitiveness and individualism, recognized that communal values -- the common good -- mattered.
Indeed, that's one of the reasons they so admired and respected Sparta.
Now, I'm going to talk about the Greeks, and Sparta, because I think doing so is very helpful for you guys.
But let me be clear.
It's not just the Greeks.
The ancient Hebrews, for example, didn't think that greed and the marketplace were what should govern their society.
Nor did Jesus.
He took a very dim view of greed, and the marketplace, and scourged the moneychangers out of the temple.
That said, let's talk about ancient Greece -- and Sparta in particular.
In Excellence, Honor, and the Molding of Men -- and once again, if you haven't read that article, it's important that you do -- we discussed how "excellence" was the primary value for the Greeks.
What was "excellence" in ancient Greece about?
At first -- in Homer -- "excellence" denoted valour in battle and a sort of courtly morality.
Valour in battle.
Fighting Spirit.
Indeed, in Excellence, Honor, and the Molding of Men, we saw that the Greek word for excellence, areté, was derived from Ares, the Warrior God.
Ares -- Areté
Fighting Spirit -- the Spirit of Battle -- leads to Excellence.
Over time, areté also became identified with Nobility -- "kalos" -- and Goodness -- "agathos."
The Greeks took those two words -- "kalos" and "agathos" -- and combined them into one, by using an abbreviated form of their word for "and" -- kai:
Kalos kai agathos =
Kalokagathia -- Nobility and Goodness.
Noble also meant Beautiful.
While Good was meant in the sense both of moral -- and of brave.
So that "kalokagathia" denoted a morally brave beauty.
Not just beauty, and not just brave, but morally brave.
Morality.
As Brian has said, values and morals and honour.
Which means that over time, excellence -- areté -- became identified with "moral beauty."
Which, in turn, was, basically, moral heroism -- that is, the sacrifice of self for another -- or for an ideal.
For example, to Aristotle, says classicist Werner Jaeger in his great work Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture,
So -- moral heroism -- the utmost sacrifice to an ideal -- is what defines moral beauty -- and excellence.
And it was excellence, the Greeks believed, which should be the prime motivator in society.
Not greed, and not the marketplace, but moral beauty -- excellence.
Now:
When I first introduced the Greek idea of "excellence," I put it in the context of the Latin trio -- Vir, Virilis, Virtus -- Man, Manliness, Virtue.
The Greeks do what is essentially the same thing.
As the standard Greek-English lexicon puts it:
"The first notion of goodness" is "that of manhood, bravery in war."
Manhood is good -- Manhood is goodness.
Fighting spirit is good -- Fighting spirit is goodness.
Bravery in war -- Valour -- is good; it too is goodness.
So that areté -- excellence -- also means "Manhood" -- "bravery in war" -- Valour -- and "Virtus" -- Virtue.
And that's quite plain in the Greek language.
Depending on the context, areté in the plural can mean "the virtues"; and in the singular "the virtuous."
Let's see how that played out in Sparta.
Spartan society, the Spartans believed, had been by-and-large shaped by a single, divinely-inspired individual named Lycurgus.
And as the Spartans told it, Lycurgus had found a society which was faltering -- which was falling apart, riven by class divisions.
Which were driven by greed.
His solution was to do away with greed, and replace it with areté -- excellence, valour, virtue.
Manhood.
Here's the great Greco-Roman historian Plutarch, writing ca 100 AD:
...there was a dreadful inequality in this regard, the city [Sparta] was heavily burdened with indigent and helpless people, and wealth was wholly concentrated in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to banish insolence and envy and crime and luxury, and those yet more deep-seated and afflictive diseases of the state, poverty and wealth, Lycurgus persuaded his fellow-citizens to make one parcel of all their territory and divide it up anew, and to live with one another on a basis of entire uniformity and equality in the means of subsistence, seeking preeminence through virtue [areté] alone, assured that there was no other difference or inequality between man and man than that which was established by blame for base actions and praise for good ones.
~ Life of Lycurgus, translated by Bernadotte Perrin
So: "there was a dreadful inequality ... the city was heavily burdened with indigent and helpless people, and wealth was wholly concentrated in the hands of a few."
Sound familiar?
Lycurgus was "[d]etermined, therefore, to banish insolence and envy and crime and luxury, and those yet more deep-seated and afflictive diseases of the state, poverty and wealth..."
With what did Lycurgus replace poverty and wealth as dividers and demarcators in his society?
Answer : "preeminence through virtue [areté] alone" expressed as "blame for base actions and praise for good ones."
And the word in Greek for "base" actions carries with it the connotation of "greedy" and "evil"; while the word for "good" actions is of course "kalos" -- noble and beautiful.
Basically then, the value system he established, and which was welcomed by the Spartans, was based not on poverty and wealth, which are after all functions of greed, but on areté -- excellence:
That's a value system which centers on areté aka moral beauty aka nobility and goodness aka moral heroism:
a man is praised for his good or noble actions -- which add to his areté -- and blamed for his base or ignoble actions -- which subtract from his areté.
Areté.
Moral heroism.
At Sparta, moral heroism is really Warrior Altruism.
The willingness of the Warrior to die for his fellow Warrior; and for their Warrior cause, which in this case is Sparta itself.
Sparta is a state, a city-state.
But it's also an idea and an ideal -- of Courage, and of Justice -- of the way Men -- and Women -- should live.
To some extent, the sense of the city-state as an ideal can be found throughout ancient Greece.
Jaeger thinks it's true everywhere.
But I think it's more clearly true of Sparta than of other places.
Here's Jaeger, speaking of the polis or city-state in general:
The enormous influence of the polis upon individual life was based on the fact that it was an ideal. The state was a spiritual entity, which assimilated all the loftiest aspects of human life and gave them out as its own gifts. Nowadays, we naturally think first of the state's claim to educate all its citizens during their youth. But public education was not advocated in Greece until it became a thesis of fourth century philosophy : Sparta, alone, at this early period, paid direct attention to the education of the young. Nevertheless, even outside Sparta, the early Greek city-state educated the members of its community, by utilizing the musical and athletic competitions which were held during the festivals of the gods. These competitions were the noblest reflection of the physical and spiritual culture of the age. Plato rightly calls gymnastics [nude athletics] and music 'the old-established culture'. That culture, which had originally been aristocratic, was fostered by the state through great and costly competitions; and these competitions did more than encourage musical taste and gymnastic skill. They really created the sense of community in the city. Once that sense has been established, it is easy to understand the Greek citizen's pride in membership of his state. To describe a Greek fully, not only his name and his father's are needed, but the name of his city.
So -- Jaeger mentions the Spartan system of state-education, and then says that although other states lacked such a system, they still fostered a sense of community.
And that no doubt is true.
But only Sparta had the Agogé.
And the effect of the Agogé had to be an exponential heightening and strengthening of the sense of community, of the webs of interrelationship that constituted the communal bonds.
That's obvious.
And it was something the other Greeks recognized.
As Jaeger himself says:
The rest of the Greeks saw with astonishment and admiration how every institution in Sparta served the same purpose -- to make Spartan citizens the best soldiers in the world. They understood very well that this was not done by incessant drilling and manoeuvring, but by moulding the character from earliest childhood. This education was not only military. It was political and moral in the broadest sense ...
So -- if we paraphrase Jaeger's description of the polis or city-state to make it specific to Sparta, we get an idea of how powerful the Spartan ideal actually was:
The enormous influence of Sparta upon individual life was based on the fact that it was an ideal. Sparta was a spiritual entity, which assimilated all the loftiest aspects of human life and gave them out as its own gifts. Nowadays, we naturally think first of the state's claim to educate all its citizens during their youth. But public education was not advocated in Greece until it became a thesis of fourth century philosophy : Sparta, alone, at this early period, paid direct attention to the education of the young.
And did so through its unique system of Warrior training and education known as the agogé, which moulded character from earliest childhood. This education was not only military. It was political and moral in the broadest sense.
In addition, Sparta educated the members of its community by utilizing musical and athletic competitions which were held during the festivals of the gods. These competitions were the noblest reflection of the physical and spiritual culture of the age. Plato rightly calls nude athletics and music 'the old-established culture'. That culture, which had originally been aristocratic, was fostered by Sparta through great competitions; and these competitions did more than encourage musical taste and athletic skill. Coupled with the agogé, they created the sense of community in the city.
And that's correct.
As we'll see in a forthcoming post, the most important Spartan festival was the Gymnopaidiai, or Festival of the Naked Youths, dedicated to Apollo, and consisting of both musical and athletic competitions.
And it was from those competitions that the Spartan law-giver, Lycurgus, conceived of another type of competition, which he called The Strife of Valour.
So -- Sparta was not merely a city-state.
It was "an ideal [and] a spiritual entity, which assimilated all the loftiest aspects of human life and gave them out as its own gifts."
Let's break that down:
Those "loftiest aspects of human life" included Courage and Heroism, as Jaeger himself says, speaking of Sparta and the great Spartan poet Tyrtaeus, who, he said, was "endeavouring to create a nation of heroes":
The early Greek city-state was small, but it had something truly heroic and truly human in its nature. Greece, and in fact all the ancient world, held the hero to be the highest type of humanity.
And one of those gifts was Equality -- which is a form of Justice.
And thus of Virtue.
Virtue.
We've seen that the word for excellence, areté, also means virtue.
And that the Greek for "the virtues" is "tas aretas."
There are, in Greek thought, four particularly important virtues, which are known as the Divine Virtues.
These Divine Virtues are contrasted by the Greeks with "human goods" -- things like health and strength and beauty -- and wealth.
Plato, writing ca 400 BC, says that if a person -- or a society -- seeks to acquire only the human goods, and ignores the Divine Virtues -- that person and/or society loses both.
Is he right about that?
In my experience, yes.
I've seen that repeatedly in the gay male community, and we're now seeing it in America and to some degree all over the world:
Too much emphasis on material goods and wealth, and too little on the divine virtues, leads to disaster.
Sparta sought to do away with wealth, and replace it with the four divine virtues.
Plato argues that at Sparta, only Courage mattered, but that's clearly not true.
The Spartans strove to produce a Just society -- "to live with one another on a basis of entire uniformity and equality in the means of subsistence";
they certainly valued Self-control;
of Wisdom -- by which the Greeks meant philosophical wisdom -- of Wisdom, said Plutarch,
while, and as we'll see in a forthcoming post, the Spartans were very Pious.
So the Spartans, as much as or more than the other Greeks, valued the four Divine Virtues -- all four.
While they despised greed and wealth.
As they'd been taught to do by Lycurgus:
With the aim of stepping up the attack on luxury and removing the passion for wealth, [Lycurgus] introduced his third and finest reform, the establishment of common [all-male] messes. The intention was that they should assemble together and eat the same specified meat-sauces and cereals. This prevented them from spending the time at home, lying at table on expensive couches, being waited upon by confectioners and chefs, fattened up in the dark like gluttonous animals, and ruining themselves physically as well as morally, and by giving free rein to every craving and excess which demanded lengthy slumbers, warm baths, plenty of rest, and, in a sense, daily nursing.
This, then, was indeed a great achievement, yet, as Theophrastus says, it was an even greater one to have made wealth undesirable and to have produced 'non-wealth' by meals taken in common and by the frugality of the diet. When the rich man would go to the same meal as the poor one, he could have no use nor pleasure from lavish table settings, let alone view them or display them. Thus in Sparta alone of all the states under the sun was seen that proverbial blind Plutus [the god of wealth] lying inanimate and inert, as if in a picture. It was not even possible for the rich to dine at home first and then to proceed to their messes on a full stomach. Rather, the rest were on the look-out for whoever would not eat and drink along with them, and they would abuse him for having no self-discipline and for being too delicate to consume the common fare.
~ Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, translated by Talbert
"This, then, was indeed a great achievement, yet, as Theophrastus says, it was an even greater one to have made wealth undesirable and to have produced 'non-wealth' by meals taken in common and by the frugality of the diet. ... Thus in Sparta alone of all the states under the sun was seen that proverbial blind Plutus [the god of wealth] lying inanimate and inert, as if in a picture."
So: Lycurgus "made wealth undesirable and produced 'non-wealth'"-- the Greek is a-plouton -- which implies a negation of wealth -- by the simple expedient of "meals taken in common and by the frugality of the diet."
In so doing, Lycurgus and the Spartans rendered the god of wealth "inanimate and inert" -- his life, which depended upon the worship of luxury and greed, sucked from him.
Like Plutarch says, that's quite an achievement.
The Spartans had replaced the individual value of wealth -- with the communal value of excellence.
So there are at least four elements to Sparta as "an ideal [and] a spiritual entity, which assimilated all the loftiest aspects of human life and gave them out as its own gifts":
(And it should be noted that, as we'll explore in a future post, the last three of these -- the communal messes, the Agogé, and religious-athletic festivals and competitions like the Gymnopaidiai and Hyakinthia, are intimately intertwined at Sparta with what Brian correctly calls "total Manly love, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual" --
and indeed, all the aspects of what Jaeger calls "the Spartan cosmos" are intertwined and interconnected -- you can't separate the intense same-sex bonds from the Agogé or the Agogé from the communal male messes or either from the great religious-athletic-choral festivals or any of those from the emphasis on economic equality, austerity, constitutional government, and justice which are the hallmarks of Lycurgus' "Eu-nomia" -- his Good Rule.)
For now, however, and what we want to be clear about, is that the goal of all the elements in the Spartan system is to replace the individual value of wealth -- with the communal value of excellence.
As Xenophon, who lived around the same time as Plato, explains in his book The Constitution of the Lacedaemonians -- The Spartan Constitution.
IX. The following achievement of Lycurgus, again, deserves admiration. He caused his people to choose an honourable death [the Greek here is actually "kalon thanaton" which means a noble and beautiful death] in preference to a disgraceful life. And, in fact, one would find on consideration that they actually lose a smaller proportion of their men than those who prefer to retire from the danger zone. To tell the truth, escape from premature death more generally goes with valour than with cowardice: for valour is actually easier and pleasanter and more resourceful and mightier. And obviously glory adheres to the side of valour, for all men want to ally themselves somehow with the brave.
However, it is proper not to pass over the means by which he contrived to bring about this result. Clearly, what he did was to ensure that the brave should have happiness, and the coward misery. For in other states when a man proves a coward, the only consequence is that he is called a coward. He goes to the same market as the brave man, sits beside him, attends the same gymnasium, if he chooses. But in Lacedaemon everyone would be ashamed to have a coward with him at the mess or to be matched with him in a wrestling bout. Often when sides are picked for a game of ball he is the odd man left out: in the chorus he is banished to the ignominious place; in the streets he is bound to make way; when he occupies a seat he must needs give it up, even to a junior; he must support his spinster relatives at home and must explain to them why they are old maids: he must make the best of a fireside without a wife, and yet pay forfeit for that: he may not stroll about with a cheerful countenance, nor behave as though he were a man of unsullied fame, or else he must submit to be beaten by his betters. Small wonder, I think, that where such a load of dishonour is laid on the coward, death seems preferable to a life so dishonoured, so ignominious.
X. The law by which Lycurgus encouraged the practice of virtue up to old age is another excellent measure in my opinion. By requiring men to face the ordeal of election to the Council of Elders near the end of life, he prevented neglect of high principles even in old age. Worthy of admiration also is the protection that he afforded to the old age of good men. For the enactment by which he made the Elders judges in trials on the capital charge caused old age to be held in greater honour than the full vigour of manhood. And surely it is natural that of all contests in the world this should excite the greatest zeal. For noble as are the contests in the Games, they are merely tests of bodily powers. But the contest for the Council judges souls whether they be good. As much then, as the soul surpasses the body, so much more worthy are the contests of the soul to kindle zeal than those of the body.
Again, the following surely entitles the work of Lycurgus to high admiration. He observed that where the cult of virtue is left to voluntary effort, the virtuous are not strong enough to increase the fame of their fatherland. So he compelled all men at Sparta to practise all the virtues in public life. And therefore, just as private individuals differ from one another in virtue according as they practise or neglect it, so Sparta, as a matter of course, surpasses all other states in virtue, because she alone makes a public duty of gentlemanly conduct. For was not this too a noble rule of his, that whereas other states punish only for wrong done to one's neighbour, he inflicted penalties no less severe on any who openly neglected to live as good a life as possible? For he believed, it seems, that enslavement, fraud, robbery, are crimes that injure only the victims of them; but the wicked man [the Greek here is actually "un-man" -- an-andron -- "unmanly"] and the coward are traitors to the whole body politic. And so he had good reason, I think, for visiting their offences with the heaviest penalties.
And he laid on the people the duty of practising the whole virtue of a citizen as a necessity irresistible. For to all who satisfied the requirements of his code he gave equal rights of citizenship, without regard to bodily infirmity or want of money. But the coward who shrank from the task of observing the rules of his code he caused to be no more reckoned among the peers.
~ translated by E C Marchant
So -- says Xenophon -- and these are the key points:
Like I said, the Greek, in Xenophon, for "honourable death" -- is actually "kalon thanaton" -- which translates as a "noble and beautiful death."
Both Marchant, writing in 1925; and Talbert, writing in 1988 -- say "honourable."
And that no doubt makes sense to a modern reader.
But anyone who understands the Greeks, and that very Greek concept, per Aristotle, of striving "to take possession of the beautiful" -- knows that a noble and beautiful death is what Xenophon means.
Here's Werner Jaeger's explanation of what exactly Aristotle meant by "to take possession of the beautiful":
...it is the highest kind of love which makes man reach out towards the highest areté: through which he 'takes possession of the beautiful'.
The last phrase is so entirely Greek that it is hard to translate. For the Greeks, beauty meant nobility also. To lay claim to the beautiful, to take possession of it, means to overlook no opportunity of winning the prize of the highest areté.
...Aristotle's own words are quite clear. They show that he was thinking chiefly of acts of moral heroism. A man who loves himself will (he thought) always be ready to sacrifice himself for his friends or his country, to abandon possessions and honours in order to 'take possession of the beautiful'. The strange phrase is repeated: and we can now see why Aristotle should think that the utmost sacrifice to an ideal is a proof of a highly developed self-love. 'For,' he says, 'such a man would prefer short intense pleasures to long quiet ones; would choose to live nobly for a year rather than to pass many years of ordinary life; would rather do one great and noble deed than many small
ones.'
These sentences reveal the very heart of the Greek view of life -- the sense of heroism through which we feel them most closely akin to ourselves. By this clue we can understand the whole of Hellenic history -- it is the psychological explanation of the short but glorious aristeia of the Greek spirit. The basic motive of Greek areté is contained in the words 'to take possession of the beautiful'. The courage of a Homeric nobleman is superior to a mad berserk contempt of death in this -- that he subordinates his physical self to the demands of a higher aim, the beautiful. And so the man who gives up his life to win the beautiful, will find that his natural instinct for self-assertion finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice.
The speech of Diotima in Plato's Symposium draws a parallel between the struggles of law-giver and poet to build their spiritual monuments, and the willingness of the great heroes of antiquity to sacrifice their all and to bear hardship, struggle, and death, in order to win the prize of imperishable fame. Both these efforts are explained in the speech as examples of the powerful instinct which drives mortal man to wish for self-perpetuation. That instinct is described as the metaphysical ground of the paradoxes of human ambition.
Aristotle himself wrote a hymn to the immortal areté of his friend Hermias, the prince of Atarneus, who died to keep faith with his philosophical and moral ideals; and in that hymn he expressly connects his own philosophical conception of areté with that found in Homer, and with its Homeric ideals Achilles and Ajax. And it is clear that many features in his description of self-love are drawn from the character of Achilles. The Homeric poems and the great Athenian philosphers are bound together by the continuing life of the Hellenic ideal of areté.
So: Xenophon is saying that Lycurgus "caused his people to choose a noble and beautiful death in preference to a disgraceful life."
And to Xenophon, as to the Spartans, a noble and beautiful death means first off a death found facing the enemy -- face-to-face and front-to-front -- a con-fronting -- not a running away.
"No retreat, no surrender."
Only a glorious victory or a noble death.
So: Hector has died honorably -- and nobly.
Please note that neither Achilles nor Hector are fighting for personal gain.
Hector is fighting to defend his city and family.
Achilles is fighting to avenge his dead lover, Patroclus.
The fight therefore is not about self -- it's about self-sacrifice.
And as Jaeger says, to the Greeks, "the man who gives up his life to win the beautiful, will find that his natural instinct for self-assertion finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice."
"his natural instinct for self-assertion finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice."
What is Man's "natural instinct for self-assertion?"
Aggression.
Man's natural aggression finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice.
And, in turn, self-sacrifice -- moral heroism -- is the highest expression of excellence.
We see that all the time in Greek thought, and in Greek art.
For example, and as we've said, the word for noble -- "kalos" -- is also the word for beautiful.
And when we look at this painting of Sarpedon, who's died heroically in battle at Troy, we can see that even in death he's still both noble and beautiful:
So -- a noble death is also a beautiful death.
Sarpedon, too, has sought to take possession of the beautiful -- and has succeeded.
Moreover, says Xenophon, who was a soldier first and foremost, those who choose to face the enemy are LESS likely to die than those who run away.
For "valour is actually easier and pleasanter and more resourceful and mightier."
And then Xenophon says something very striking:
"And obviously glory adheres to the side of valour, for all men want to ally themselves somehow with the brave."
And the word he uses for "valour" is of course areté; while "the brave" are "tois agathois" -- those who are both brave -- and good.
So: glory adheres to the side of valour, virtue, excellence, manhood;
While --
"All men want to ally themselves somehow with the brave."
All Men want to ally themselves with the brave.
Indeed they do.
We know that.
It's core to male psychology because it's core to male socio-biology.
Men -- ALL Men -- seek to be members of a Warrior group -- they seek to ally themselves with the Brave.
Warriorhood.
All Men want to ally themselves with the Brave.
That is a basic male and Manly need and desire which cannot be indefinitely or infinitely denied.
So -- Lycurgus made the life of the brave happy, and that of the coward miserable.
And, as we saw in my reply to Warrior Joe's You people are changing lives, the word for happiness is "eu-daimonia," meaning "having a good guardian spirit"; and the word for misery is "kako-daimonia," meaning "having a shitty guardian spirit."
"Kakos" -- the word for cowardly, evil, and ugly -- comes from "kakke" -- human waste, shit.
And when Xenophon says that Lycurgus made the coward's life miserable, in Greek it's expressed like this: the cowardly -- "kakos" -- had a life of "kako-daimonia" -- shitty misery.
Which was clearly deserved.
Yet in other city-states, says Xenophon, the coward -- someone who'd run away during battle -- remained integrated into society.
Whereas at Sparta, "everyone would be ashamed to have a coward with him at the mess or to be matched with him in a wrestling bout."
So -- not only would no one want to eat with a coward --
but no one would want to wrestle him either.
That too is a very striking statement.
Because it parallels the way we feel about having sex with a male who participates in anal penetration.
Why would you want to do that?
What's the point to wrestling --- or having sex with -- a male who displays that sort of unmanly behavior?
It makes no sense.
What we seek is the union of Man with Man.
The Manly with the Manly.
The Brave with the Brave.
Who would seek to be united with the UNmanly, the coward?
No MAN, of his own free will, would seek such a union.
Because ALL MEN want to ally themselves with the Brave.
The Phallic.
The Martial.
The Honorable.
The Strong.
Phallus and Fidelity.
Strength and Honor.
That's what MEN want.
The mutual exaltation of Manhood which can only come through intimate, mutually genital contact with another MAN.
And while they may seek a Contest with that Man --
what they don't want is to obliterate him as a Man.
For then there can be no mutual exaltation of Manhood.
So -- at Sparta, not only would no one want to take a meal with a coward -- but no one would wrestle him either.
The skin-on-skin and genital contact of nude male wrestling is reserved for MEN -- and youths -- who are brave.
Who display a morally brave beauty.
That was through having a Council of Elders -- who were selected based on virtue aka areté; and through having those Elders judge capital cases.
Key point: to Lycurgus, the unmanly man and the coward are "are traitors to the whole body politic."
And so they are most heavily punished.
And you'll notice the very direct association between unmanliness and cowardice.
"kakon kai an-andron"
"kakos" = cowardly, shitty, evil; "kai" = and; "andros" = man, "an-andron" = un-man, un-manly
"kakon kai an-andron" = the coward and un-man -- the unmanly
Very clear to the Greeks.
The peers or equals -- the Greek is "hoi homoioi" -- and you see the word "homo" meaning same or equal -- the peers were the full-blooded adult male Spartans -- the Spartiatai.
What made you a peer was not money -- that's the key point.
What made you a peer was virtuous conduct -- areté.
Valour.
Manhood.
For the emphasis, in Xenophon's account, is on bravery vs cowardice.
The brave man remained a peer, even if he was infirm of body or poor.
The coward was, in effect, dis-enfranchised -- removed from the ranks of the peers.
He was ruined -- and suicide was often his only recourse.
So: Sparta was not about wealth.
Sparta was about Virtue; Manliness; Valour.
Which were seen, ultimately, as spiritual values.
Xenophon sums it up like this:
Is Xenophon telling the truth about all this?
Oh yeah.
The Spartans themselves said so.
And if we look at the Sayings of the Spartans, compiled by Plutarch ca 100 AD and which we first examined in the 300 message thread, we can see how the emphasis on virtue, and disdain for money, possessions, and greed, plays out:
When one of the Persians by persistent bribery had lured away the person Demaratus was in love with and was saying, "Spartan, I have hunted down your beloved," Demaratus replied, "By the gods, it's not you, it's the fact that you have bought him."
When amongst the spoils some people were amazed at the extravagance of the Persian's clothing, he said: "Better for them to be men of great worth rather than to have possessions of great worth."
After the victory over the Persians at Platea, he gave orders that the Persian dinner which had been prepared beforehand should be served to his staff. Since it was incredibly expensive, he said: "By the gods, with a spread like this what greedy characters the Persians were to chase after our barley-bread."
After Alexander the Great announced at Olympia that all exiles save Thebans [Thebes had resisted Alexander and had been destroyed by him] could go home, he said: "While this announcement is unfortunate for you Thebans, it is an honor nonetheless, since Alexander is frightened only of you."
When someone asked him how much property he owned, he said: "No more than enough."
He said to the man who asked why they wear their hair long: "This is the natural means of personal adornment, and it costs nothing."
When the ephors said, "Haven't you decided to take any action beyond blocking the passes against the Persians?", "In theory, no," he said, "but in fact I plan to die for the Greeks."
When Xerxes wrote to him: "It is possible for you not to fight the gods but to side with me and be monarch of Greece," he wrote back: "If you understood what is honorable in life, you would avoid lusting after what belongs to others. For me, it is better to die for Greece, than to be monarch of the people of my race."
~ Plutarch, Sayings of the Spartans
So: the Spartans, drawing on lessons learned at Lycurgus' knee, are quite consistent, and they're quite damning of the money-driven and greedy world around them:
"By the gods, it's not you, it's the fact that you have bought him."
"Better for them to be men of great worth rather than to have possessions of great worth."
Far better to be a Man of great worth than to have possessions of great worth.
"By the gods, with a spread like this what greedy characters the Persians were to chase after our barley-bread."
Barley was the mainstay grain of the ancient world, and usually the cheapest. Poor people -- and the Spartans -- ate "barley-bread," which was coarse; the rich had access to the more expensive wheaten-bread, which was considered more palatable and more desirable.
It's an honor -- not to be rich -- but to be feared by your enemies: "While this announcement is unfortunate for you Thebans, it is an honor nonetheless, since Alexander is frightened only of you."
Property? "No more than enough."
Long hair: "This is the natural means of personal adornment, and it costs nothing."
Greed: "If you understood what is honorable in life, you would avoid lusting after what belongs to others."
Greed -- greed is dishonorable.
Ugly.
Ignoble.
Virtue is what matters:
"I plan to die for the Greeks."
"For me, it is better to die for Greece, than to be monarch of the people of my race."
In saying that, and then indeed doing it, Leonidas "takes possession of the beautiful."
Jaeger:
...it is the highest kind of love which makes man reach out towards the highest areté: through which he 'takes possession of the beautiful'.
The last phrase is so entirely Greek that it is hard to translate. For the Greeks, beauty meant nobility also. To lay claim to the beautiful, to take possession of it, means to overlook no opportunity of winning the prize of the highest areté.
...Aristotle's own words are quite clear. They show that he was thinking chiefly of acts of moral heroism. A man who loves himself will (he thought) always be ready to sacrifice himself for his friends or his country, to abandon possessions and honours in order to 'take possession of the beautiful'. The strange phrase is repeated: and we can now see why Aristotle should think that the utmost sacrifice to an ideal is a proof of a highly developed self-love. 'For,' he says, 'such a man would prefer short intense pleasures to long quiet ones; would choose to live nobly for a year rather than to pass many years of ordinary life; would rather do one great and noble deed than many small ones.'
These sentences reveal the very heart of the Greek view of life -- the sense of heroism through which we feel them most closely akin to ourselves. By this clue we can understand the whole of Hellenic history -- it is the psychological explanation of the short but glorious aristeia of the Greek spirit. The basic motive of Greek areté is contained in the words 'to take possession of the beautiful'. The courage of a Homeric nobleman is superior to a mad berserk contempt of death in this -- that he subordinates his physical self to the demands of a higher aim, the beautiful. And so the man who gives up his life to win the beautiful, will find that his natural instinct for self-assertion finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice.
Μan's natural instinct for self-assertion -- for Aggression -- finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice.
Indeed.
For in another section of his Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, Xenophon talks about the Agogé, and The Fighting of the Youths which was arranged and structured by Lycurgus:
[Lycurgus] saw that where the spirit of rivalry is strongest among the people, there the choruses are most worth hearing and the athletic contests afford the finest spectacle. He believed, therefore, that if he could match the young men together in a strife of valour [eis erin peri aretes], they too would reach a high level of manly excellence. I will proceed to explain, therefore, how he instituted matches between the young men.
The Ephors, then, pick out three of the very best among them. These three are called Commanders of the Guard. Each of them enrols a hundred others, stating his reasons for preferring one and rejecting another. The result is that those who fail to win the honour are at war both with those who sent them away and with their successful rivals; and they are on the watch for any lapse from the code of honour.
Here then you find that kind of strife that is dearest to the gods, and in the highest sense political -- the strife that sets the standard of a brave man's conduct; and in which either party exerts itself to the end that it may never fall below its best, and that, when the time comes, every member of it may support the state with all his might. And they are bound, too, to keep themselves fit, for one effect of the strife is that they fight whenever they meet; but anyone present has a right to part the combatants.
~ translated by E C Marchant
When we look at the language in this passage, it's very striking.
Lycurgus, we're told, believed that "if he could match [symballoi] the young men [hebontas] together in a strife of valour [eis erin peri aretes], they too would reach a high level of manly excellence [andragathia -- manliness, valour]."
These are "young men" -- hebontas -- or youths.
They are "matched together" -- and the Greek, symballoi, can mean throw or mix together, fight, incite --
and there we have shades of Statius' "nudamque lacessere pugnam" -- "incite to nude fight" -- which we discussed in our first Agoge article.
So -- these young men are incited -- "matched together" says Marchant --
in a "strife of valour" -- and the Greek is erin peri aretes -- a strife among the excellent, a strife of the virtuous --
A Strife of Valour says Marchant.
And through that strife, the men attain a high level of "manly excellence."
The Greek word is "andragathia," which combines "andros" -- man or manly -- with "agathos" -- good and brave.
So anadragathia can be thought of as manly goodness -- or -- brave manliness.
Manly excellence says Marchant.
Lycurgus, then, intends that the *best* young Men of Sparta be incited into a Fight, a Combat, a Strife of Virtue, a Strife of Valour, which will produce in them the highest level of manly good and manly excellence.
This kind of strife, says Xenophon, and which we should note is true strife -- the two groups "fight whenever they meet" -- "is dearest to the gods, and in the highest sense political -- the strife that sets the standard of a brave man's conduct; and in which either party exerts itself to the end that it may never fall below its best, and that, when the time comes, every member of it may support the state with all his might."
So Xenophon -- and of course Lycurgus -- sees Fighting as a path to excellence, to virtue, to moral heroism.
As did all Greeks.
For it "sets the standard of a brave man's conduct."
"A brave man."
At Sparta, says Xenophon, and as *designed* by Lycurgus, a Brave Man learns "that his natural instinct for self-assertion finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice."
Again, what's vital to understand is that this is by design.
The Strife of Valour is part of the Agogé, and was designed by Lycurgus, the Spartans and Xenophon believed, to teach the young Men to excel, to excel in the Fight, and to never fall below their best, so "that, when the time comes, every member of it may support the state with all his might."
To Fight with all their Might.
Not for themselves, but for their Warrior band, and, ultimately, for Sparta.
To Fight with all their Might.
For each other, and for an ideal.
The ideal that was Sparta.
And that they would Fight with all their Might was exactly the sort of thing that would appeal to Xenophon, says Jaeger, because he was the sort of man who when he did anything in his life, did it all-out -- with all his soul and all his strength.
Now -- who was Xenophon?
A pro-Spartan Athenian aristocrat who joined an expedition to overthrow the King of Persia, led 10,000 Greek mercenaries as they fought their way out of Persia after the coup failed, and was eventually awarded an estate by the Spartans, he was, says Werner Jaeger, "the purest embodiment of his age":
So -- Xenophon was basically a military man; he joined a mercenary army and ended up leading it, in great peril, out of Persia, after the coup which was its raison d'etre, failed.
His leadership of that army brought him first to the attention of the Spartans and then within the Spartan orbit; and he ended up banished from Athens and living on an estate which the Spartans had given him.
There he lived the life of a gentleman farmer -- and wrote a great many books.
Says Jaeger:
Xenophon thinks the soldier is the ideal man: fresh and healthy, honest and brave, disciplined not only to resist the elements and the enemy but to conquer his own weaknesses. In a world where the framework of politics and civil security is collapsing, he is the only free and independent man. Xenophon's ideal soldier is not an arrogant domineering fellow who tramples rough-shod over conventions and laws, and violently slashes through every Gordian knot. ... [Rather, he relies on] the love of his friends and the trust of his people. Xenophon's soldier is a man of simple faith in God. ... But also he thinks of soldiering as the best education for a truly noble man.
...
His criticism of contemporary Athenian democracy often comes out in the Memorabilia, despite his patriotic loyalty to his homeland; and it makes him admire many things in Sparta, the political opponent of Athens, which he holds to be wise solutions for problems left unsolved in Athens. All the woes of the democracy of his own time seemed to him to flow from one source, the exaggerated self-assertion of individuals, who appeared to think that citizens of a democracy had no duties, only privileges, and who believed that the essence of liberty was to have these privileges guaranteed by the state. With his ideals of strict soldierly discipline, Xenophon must have found the lack of a sense of duty and responsibility particularly repulsive.
His political thought started not with the individual's claims to
attain his own personal ideals, but with the external conditions that made it possible for the community to exist. The fault for which so many contemporary thinkers criticized the Athenian democracy, the reluctance and inability of its citizens to fight for their country in the midst of a world full of hostility and envy, must have looked to him like preposterous and childish folly, which would soon deprive Athens of the liberty she vaunted so proudly.
...
The "Spartan ideal of civic virtue," says Jaeger, stands, for Xenophon, in stark contrast to the Athenian lack of a sense of civic duty and responsibility:
...In brief, [the Spartan ideal] was that the citizen's greatest contribution to the common good was to join in the defence of his country, and that his rights in the state should be measured, not by privileges of rank or wealth, but by his valour in fulfilling this supreme duty.
Since the Spartan community always had to fight, or to be ready to fight, for its life, this basic conception of the relation between individual and state was never challenged. In the course of centuries it developed its own peculiar system of communal life. (We have no information about the various stages of the development. In the age of Xenophon and and Plato, and indeed long before them, the Spartan cosmos was finished and complete. But it is entirely because of the interest in Spartan paideia which was felt by writers like Xenophon, that any valuable historical information about Sparta has survived.)
The rest of the Greeks saw with astonishment and admiration how every institution in Sparta served the same purpose -- to make Spartan citizens the best soldiers in the world. They understood very well that this was not done by incessant drilling and manoeuvring, but by moulding the character from earliest childhood. This education was not only military. It was political and moral in the broadest sense ...
...
Spartan discipline ... was built into the legislative structure of the state, which, according to Xenophon, was the work of one single genius, the half-mythical Lycurgus. ... [Xenophon] treats the Spartan cosmos as a political work of art, complete in itself; he praises its originality, and believes it a model for others to imitate. ... Sparta was for Xenophon the embodiment of the virtues of Cyrus' camp, in a whole great Hellenic state.
So -- Xenophon was an Athenian who'd been brought into close contact with Sparta by an accident of his history.
From his point of view as a soldier, the Athens of his day suffered from "the exaggerated self-assertion of individuals, who appeared to think that citizens of a democracy had no duties, only privileges, and who believed that the essence of liberty was to have these privileges guaranteed by the state."
Sound familiar?
In other words, there'd been a loss of communal values.
Values which Sparta had retained.
While Athens suffered from "the reluctance and inability of its citizens to fight for their country in the midst of a world full of hostility and envy," -- which to Xenophon looked like "preposterous and childish folly, which would soon deprive Athens of the liberty she vaunted so proudly."
Does that sound familiar?
In the US, we no longer have conscription.
Instead, we have a volunteer military.
Which means that we've de facto privatized and out-sourced Courage.
In the US, Courage is for suckers.
The wealthier classes buy the Courage of the poorer classes, who are sent off to fight and die in wars about which the electorate is divided, and to which they're reluctant or just plain unwilling to commit their own bodies.
That, as Victor Davis Hanson, author of the definitive study of hoplite warfare, points out, is suicidal for a democracy.
A few months back, Russia, which is supposed to be a defunct power, decided to march into Georgia.
Russia has conscription.
Russia was easily able to muster the forces needed to crush Georgia,
while, at the same time, thumbing her nose at the West.
Although Georgia is allegedly an American ally, America, whose military has trimmed down, and which is bogged down in two wars in the Middle East which, many observers have said, have left her dangerously over-extended --
made no attempt to aid the Georgians militarily.
Like I said, America no longer has conscription.
And a significant part of the American elite is deeply suspicious of the military.
Again, our society tends to work against communal values.
Warrior values.
For example, the New York Times ran an article in October about suicide rates among soliders.
Army and Agency Will Study Rising Suicide Rate Among Soldiers trumpeted the headline.
Yet when you looked at the fine print -- there was no there -- there:
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: October 29, 2008
...
Suicides in the Army have been climbing since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2007, 115 soldiers killed themselves, a rate of 18.1 per 100,000 people, or 1 percent lower than the civilian rate.
Of the 115, 36 soldiers killed themselves while deployed overseas, 50 had deployed at some point before the act and returned, and 29 had never deployed. Only a fraction had a prior diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
...
So: The theory is that being in the army and/or experiencing war cause suicide.
Do they?
The numbers don't support either.
First off, the army's over-all suicide rate is LOWER than the civilian rate.
That suggests that the army is actually more cohesive and does a better job of preventing suicide than society at large.
And then there's the fact that of the 115 suicides in 2007, 29 were of folks who'd never deployed.
They were never at war.
So the actual rate of suicide in the army among soldiers who've been at war -- is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the civilian rate.
Do the math.
On my calculator, it comes out to 13.53565217% -- 13.5%.
That's a lot lower than the general civilian rate of 19.1%
DUH.
Faced with those figures, if we were to be intellectually honest, wouldn't we have to conclude that going to war actually decreases your chance of committing suicide?
Yes, Bill, we would.
If the suicide rate, among males of a certain age, is significantly -- almost six points or 33% -- higher among the general population that it is among males who've enlisted in the army and gone to war --
then being in the army and deploying to a war zone actually decreases your chances of committing suicide.
What's really going on here, besides the Times' reflexive desire to print anything which can be construed as critical of the military?
Well, as I discussed in the ledger thread, the Times had run another article earlier this year, complete with lurid graphic
which spoke breathlessly about homicides committed by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The implication in the Times' article was clear:
Soldiers learn to kill while overseas -- and then come home and keep killing.
Once again, the implication was clear -- it's dangerous to teach men how to kill -- even in defense of their country.
Look again at the picture:
Would you give any one of these maniacal males a gun?
Yet, if you did the math with that article, it turned out that, once again, the homicide rate among returned veterans was significantly lower than among males the same age in the general population.
Which would have to lead you to conclude that war -- and/or service in the military -- actually decreases homicidal tendencies.
Is that true?
I don't know.
As Patrick said to me, the people who go into the military, come out, and commit a homicide, are people who should never have been in the military in the first place.
They don't fit in.
And they don't fit in to civilian life either.
But the fact, so helpfully uncovered by the Times, that soldiers who've seen duty in a war zone are LESS likely to commit suicide and/or homicide than their peers in the general population, suggests to me that the "male bonding" -- the Warrior bonding -- which takes place among Men at War is healthy -- and life-giving.
In large part because it's communal.
So maybe our crazed American anti-Warrior individualism -- and its contempt for Courage -- isn't always the answer.
In point of fact, the US has abandoned all four of the Divine Virtues.
Justice is a function of wealth.
Courage, like I said, is for suckers.
Self-control? Nowhere to be found.
Piety, too, and like courage, is generally regarded as suitable only for suckers.
Religious-right pastors manipulate piety for personal gain and societal power.
And more than a few of those pastors preach a "prosperity gospel" which, because it equates worth with wealth, would have been incomprehensible to Jesus -- and just about every other thinker the world has known; and which consitutes its own form of dollar-worship.
Yet there was a time, not so long ago, when entire cultures were governed, and governed successfully, by these four virtues:
Courage
Justice
Self-control
Piety and Wisdom
And the most successful of those societies, like Sparta, understood that you have to devote all of your energies to those values, and to your society.
And they understood too that for a society to marginalize Valour -- Courage -- as we do both with the military and with fight sports like mixed martial arts --
and to actually underwrite "the reluctance and inability of its citizens to fight for their country in the midst of a world full of hostility and envy" --
is "preposterous and childish folly," which could only end by depriving its citizens of their independence, their liberty, and, yes, their prosperity too.
ωhat does any of this have to do with Brian?
A LOT!
Because he understands.
He says:
The credit crunch can crunch away, but it will NOT crunch my Manhood my Masculinity or my Warriorhood and it will not stop me sending my donations to the Alliance, because I hunger for the establishment of (through setting up of Regional Chapters by Warrior couples) a Warrior Community and that can only happen if we are committed to the cause of Warriorhood in every way we can be, and this includes sending as much in donations as often as we can.
So: Look at what Brian says:
1. We're building a new culture based on "a new type of love and belief that involves total Manly love, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual."
2. "I hunger for the establishment of (through setting up of Regional Chapters by Warrior couples) a Warrior Community and that can only happen if we are committed to the cause of Warriorhood in every way we can be, and this includes sending as much in donations as often as we can."
Which means that
We're founding our culture and our community based on "total Manly love, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual" -- which is correct; and,
The establishment of that community "can only happen if we are committed to the cause of Warriorhood in every way we can be."
Which is also correct.
Because, it so happens, that's how the Spartans were.
They were committed to the sacred cause of Warriorhood in every way they could be.
They were devoted to the communal values of Sparta, and they saw to it that every institution in their city, their community, furthered those values.
They did away with inequalities of wealth, because to them those inequalities were the product of greed, and served only to divide and weaken the city.
They did away with luxury of any sort, even in food.
Instead, they instituted communal messes, which kept their Men healthy while further strengthening their Warrior bonds.
They made the education of the young a communal task.
Children were not handed off to slaves or tutors.
Rather, every adult Spartan was expected to take part in their training.
That training was both physical and moral.
Jaeger: The Spartans were "moulding the character from earliest childhood. This education was not only military. It was political and moral in the broadest sense ..."
So: The education of the young was based on Fighting and the cultivation of Fighting Spirit;
*and* on areté -- excellence -- kalokagathia -- nobility and goodness -- andragathia -- manly excellence -- Manhood.
Qualities which are, ultimately, spiritual.
The physical and the spiritual came together in many places, including the great religious-athletic festivals, The Fighting of the Youths in Plane-Tree Grove, and in what Xenophon calls The Strife of Valour -- The Strife of the Virtuous --
"the strife that sets the standard of a brave man's conduct; and in which either party exerts itself to the end that it may never fall below its best, and that, when the time comes, every member of it may support the state with all his might."
It was this strife which set the standard of a brave man's conduct.
And which involved Fights between two groups of young Men.
These Fights and this Strife of Valour have to been seen in the essentially agonistic context of Greek life.
Greek life was organized around the Agon -- the Contest: one man's strenuous physical struggle to overcome another.
So: Men fought.
In any fight, there's a winner and a loser.
What's important to understand, however, was that the Greek Fighter, the Warrior, did not seek to obliterate his opponent.
The Fights were conducted, as such Fights are conducted today, in a spirit of mutual respect and camaraderie.
In which it was recognized, as Jaeger says, that the two combatants in this strenuous physical struggle were
Manhood against Manhood Man against Man.
Manhood against Manhood.
Men struggling to bring their Manhood to Perfection.
Their mutual Manhood;
a mutual Manhood which, in this case, would then serve and defend their community -- their sacred Sparta.
Xenophon:
"either party exerts itself to the end that it may never fall below its best, and that, when the time comes, every member of it may support the state with all his might."
That was the goal of the Agogé, of The Fighting of the Youths, and of The Strife of Valour.
Men struggling together to bring their mutual Manhood to Perfection -- that they might serve an ideal.
And the paradox of the Agon is that while one Man struggles strenuously to overcome another;
there can be no Agon without TWO MEN.
The TWO MEN must be equally matched.
And they must be equally committed to the goal of bringing their Manhood to Perfection.
Only then is there a true Agon:
TWO MEN struggling strenuously to bring THEIR MANHOOD to Perfection.
And that goal can only be achieved if each of the Two Men --
Struggle and Fight with all their Might.
Let's look at this a bit further.
Again, and remember, Lycurgus, Xenophon says, got the idea for the Strife of Valour from the great religious-athletic competitions, which would have included the pan-Hellenic festivals such as the Olympics, with which Lycurgus is also linked, at least mythically, since some credit him with having helped implement the famed Olympic truce.
Xenophon:
And regarding the Olympics and similar festivals, one authority has said,
The Games gave birth to yet another Greek idea, a whole attitude to life -- the attitude of a free man competing with his peers, naked, unfettered by any element foreign to his own body, conforming only to the rules of the game, with the sole aim of winning for himself an olive crown -- in other words a purely moral victory -- and the praise of his fellow men.
~ Andronikos, The Greek Museums, 186
That too describes the Strife of Valour.
The young Men are Fighting to gain a purely moral victory.
There's no other reward.
There's no money, no prizes, no product endorsements, no other form of material gain involved.
There's no equipment.
No uniforms.
No elaborate gyms.
Not even any wrestling mats or boxing rings.
The guys fight and wrestle on dirt.
Ideally it's a mix of sand and oil.
But not always, of course.
That pickaxe for breaking up the clumped sand of the fight pit was about as high-tech as these guys got.
So again -- there's no equipment, no uniforms, no fancy gyms, not even any mats.
Or a ring.
All there is -- is guys Fighting -- nude, free Men; unfettered by any element foreign to their own bodies; conforming only to the rules; with the sole aim of winning a "purely moral victory" -- and the praise of their fellows.
The Fight is Moral; the Victory is Moral.
The Strife of Valour is not about goods or objects or medals or product endorsements or anything else other than itself:
It's a test of areté -- of excellence, of virtue, of valour, of Manhood.
Each Man in the test, the con-test, Fights with All His Might --
so that he may someday defend his sacred Sparta.
Which is not just a piece of land.
But an ideal -- once again, an ideal of Justice and Courage -- of how Free Men and Women can and should live:
And every Spartan youth and young man who Fights in the Stife of Valour has been taught that the sacrifice of self to that lofty ideal and that spiritual entity is the highest good.
That's what matters -- self-sacrifice and moral heroism.
NOT objects and possessions and things.
But VIRTUE -- VALOUR -- MANHOOD.
Think, if you can, how very contemptuous a Spartan would be of our dependence upon objects and our ranking of each other by our possessions.
"Far better to be a Man of great worth than to have possessions of great worth."
Think how contemptuous a Spartan would be of our efforts to buy love.
When one of the Persians by persistent bribery had lured away the person Demaratus was in love with and was saying, "Spartan, I have hunted down your beloved," Demaratus replied, "By the gods, it's not you, it's the fact that you have bought him."
Think how contemptous a Spartan would be of our dependence on rich and superfluous food.
Think how contemptuous a Spartan would be of our refusal to FIGHT for our FREEDOM:
Eudimidas, late fourth-century king:
After Alexander the Great announced at Olympia that all exiles save Thebans [Thebes had resisted Alexander and had been destroyed by him] could go home, he said: "While this announcement is unfortunate for you Thebans, it is an honor nonetheless, since Alexander is frightened only of you."
Leonidas of Sparta, ruled 491 - 480:
When the ephors said, "Haven't you decided to take any action beyond blocking the passes against the Persians?", "In theory, no," he said, "but in fact I plan to die for the Greeks."
Think how contemptuous a Spartan would be of our ceaseless quest for ever more property and bigger houses, our McMansions:
When someone asked Teleclus how much property he owned, he said: "No more than enough."
Think how contemptuous a Spartan would be of bling:
Charillus said to the man who asked why they wear their hair long: "This is the natural means of personal adornment, and it costs nothing."
And think how contemptuous a Spartan would be of our constant lusting after that which belongs to others:
Leonidas of Sparta, ruled 491 - 480:
When Xerxes wrote to him: "It is possible for you not to fight the gods but to side with me and be monarch of Greece," he wrote back: "If you understood what is honorable in life, you would avoid lusting after what belongs to others. For me, it is better to die for Greece, than to be monarch of the people of my race."
~ Plutarch, Sayings of the Spartans
Think how contemptuous a Spartan would be of virtually every element of our puny, fearful, possession-ridden, junk-filled, lives.
In some recent letters, Frances referred to our "garbagey" society, and said, "The Ancients would have trouble with how many men live their lives nowadays."
That's putting it mildly.
She added, "Manly love now resides in Hell, where most refuse to follow. It must be freed to benefit men, the women in their lives, and the children they will create, who will know a better world."
Frances is right that Manly Love now resides in Hell.
And she's right that it must be freed : "to benefit men, the women in their lives, and the children they will create, who will know a better world."
But that cannot be brought about by fearful males whose lives are devoted to defending not their Freedom and not their Love, but their things.
The Spartans, by freeing themselves of wealth and greed and things, became FREE to be MEN.
FREE to realize their MANHOOD.
In all its glory.
Finally, Xenophon is suggesting that excellence -- virtue -- valour -- manhood -- devolves upon the participants in The Strife of Valour, whether there are two combatants -- or two groups of combatants.
And he goes even further, to suggest that virtue -- excellence -- can be the attribute of an entire city.
~ translated by E C Marchant, 1925
Again, that's Marchant's translation.
But in the Greek, Xenophon, in his last sentence, is actually saying this:
And The Strife of Valour is very much part of that public duty.
It's part of the Lycurgan plan, as Xenophon sees it, to produce a state which suppasses all others in areté, because it makes a public duty of nobility and goodness.
Even when -- indeed, to Xenophon, especially when -- that means Fighting in the Streets.
Street Fights -- to the end of setting the standard of a brave man's conduct -- are, for Xenophon, an expression of nobility and goodness, beauty and bravery.
So: all of Spartan society, of which the Strife of Valour is simply one part, works to the end of producing excellence, an entire city governed by standards of nobility and goodness.
Αn entire city -- indeed, a great Hellenic state -- governed not by greed and the marketplace, but by a Warrior code which called for acts of brave beauty and noble worth.
That, according to both Plutarch and Xenophon, was Sparta.
Sparta.
Settled in 950 and conquered by Rome in 162 BC, Sparta existed as an independent state for 758 years.
Sparta was the first constitutional state; one in which, says classicist W. G. Forrest, "the interests of all Spartans, rich and poor, were homogenous and constant."
Sparta was also, despite being small, militarily very powerful.
For almost 200 consecutive years, the Spartan hoplite line was never broken and never defeated in fixed battle.
What's more, prior to 370 the city of Sparta itself was never invaded.
The reputation of the Spartan Warrior was so fearsome, and the communal spirit of Sparta so strong, that the city didn't even have walls for most of its seven and a half centuries of independent existence.
Plutarch:
When [Lycurgus was] asked how they could ward off an invasion by enemies, he answered: "By remaining poor, and by not desiring to be greater the one than the other." And when they asked about fortifying their city, he answered: "A city will be well-fortified which is surrounded by brave men and not by bricks."
During the period of its military superiority, Sparta without question saved Greece from being over-run by the Persians, first at Thermopylae, and then at Platea.
Indeed, it was a Spartan, Pausanias, who commanded the combined Greek forces at Platea, which was the decisive Greek victory.
And at Platea, Pausanias had each man of the allied Greek armies take what was in essence a Spartan oath:
'I shall fight to the death; I shall put freedom before life.' That stopped Persia, the greatest empire of its day.
This map shows the relative sizes of Greece -- a disunited collection of indepedent city states; and the vast, unified Persian Empire, ruled by the unquestionable will of a single individual.
Kinda Bambi meets Godzilla isn't it?
But in this case, Godzilla's the one who got stomped.
And it was a united Greek army under Spartan command that did the stomping.
Here's Victor Davis Hanson's description of the battle in The Ancient Greeks at War:
The next summer the Hellenic alliance agreed to meet the [Persian] army of Mardonius in Boeotia, and filed into the small town of Plataea, mustering the greatest army in the entire history of hoplite warfare, a force of at least 60,000 heavy infantry and perhaps an equal number of light-armed auxiliaries -- even Alexander the Great never fielded forces of such size. Yet the Greek hoplites were still outnumbered, and the army had no cavalry of the number or caliber to match Mardonius' horsemen -- it was left to Philip II a century and a half later to develop heavy cavalry, armored and equipped with a lance, to overwhelm eastern mounted archers and javelin-throwers.
The allied commander, the Spartan regent Pausanias, was not about to expose his lumbering infantry in the wide plains of Boeotia, and sought instead to keep his army near the flanks of Mount Cithaeron, where reinforcements from throughout Greece poured in daily over the mountains, each man swearing formally,
'I shall fight to the death; I shall put freedom before life.' Each side jockeyed for positions. Finally the Persians sent their cavalry against the Greek right wing, while the Medizing [pro-Persian] Boeotians attacked the Athenians over on the left. The Spartans and the nearby men of Tegea endured repeated cavalry and archery attacks, and then slowly went on the offensive, crashing into the enemy light infantry, destroying their left wing, killing Mardonius, and causing the entire Persian line to crumble and scatter to the north. Casualty ratios of thousands to a few hundred again revealed the superiority of hoplite infantry.
...
The verdict of Plataea, and the subsequent Greek victory in Asia Minor at Mycale, brought a climactic end to the entire dream of eastern conquest in Europe. This was no accident. Plataea reflects a general -- and inescapable -- truth at the heart of the Persian dilemma: ultimately, the finest infantry in the world stood between their idea of conquest, and sooner or later thousands of Greek hoplites had to be faced, battled against, and killed off. The subsequent history of the city-state confirmed there was not an army in the world that was up to the task.
So -- the Persians were stopped by "the finest infantry in the world" -- and the Spartan component of that infantry was the finest of the finest.
The Spartans fought brilliantly at Platea.
As they had at Thermopylae.
And before her defeat of Persia, by the way, Sparta helped eliminate the group of rulers known as "tyrants" from Greece.
Part of the reason for that was that many of the tyrants were just a tad too cozy with the Persians.
In 545 BC -- that is, 65 years before Thermopylae -- the Spartans sent a delegation to the Great King warning him that they would never allow Greeks to become his subjects.
Given the relative size of Persia vs Sparta, that was brave -- to say the least.
In the years that followed, Sparta took a number of actions against Greek tyrants, including and most famously sending an army to Athens to finish what the Athenian tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton had started: the deposing of Hippias, the last Athenian tyrant.
So it was the Spartans who made Athenian democracy possible.
The Spartans themselves had an Assembly; an upper house called the Gerousia, which was a sort of combination Senate and Supreme Court; a dual kingship, which the Romans emulated in their dual consuls; and five ephors who were elected annually *by the Assembly* and who could serve for one year only.
So I guess we can say the Spartans invented term limits too.
Those *elected* ephors were quite powerful -- they could call kings to account.
Demaratus, former Spartan king who was an exile in Xerxes' court:
When someone asked why he, a king, was an exile from Sparta, he replied, "Because her laws are more powerful than I am."
~ Plutarch, Sayings of the Spartans
That's a remarkable statement -- because other than Sparta's, there were virtually no kings prior to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 who had to live with those sorts of constitutional restraints.
The Spartans steadfastly defended their freedom against first the Persians and then the Macedonians and then the Romans.
Of course they were eventually conquered by Rome.
But, looking at the long sweep of Spartan history, you have to say that they valued freedom -- in the constitutional sense -- and their own independence -- above all.
So what did the Spartans achieve?
W. G. Forrest says that
Sparta was the first state we know of to accept the idea that all citizens, qua citizens, were equal and to devise a constitution which allowed these citizens a defined and substantial say in running their city.
That was ca 676 BC.
About a hundred years later, Forrest says, Sparta was again "at the head of Greek political development" when it accepted the growth of a federal constitution among its Peloponnesian allies.
Sparta made a mess of things abroad after the Persian wars and particularly after winning the Peloponnesian War against Athens.
However, Sparta's loyalty to its egalitarian constitution and its devotion to the idea of freedom made it the leader when, in the following century, the lack of social mobility was destroying Greece.
Forrest:
It was again a Spartan who took the first steps to remedy [the situation], not an underprivileged Spartan but a king [Agis]. And while there were sporadic attempts at change elsewhere, it was again only in Sparta that we see a strong and persistent revolutionary movement running right through to the last collapse [ -- the Roman conquest.] A touch of the old stubbornness, perhaps, but in a better cause, and with very much more than a touch of the real spirit of Lycurgus.
A true Greek revolution fueled by Lycurgan -- that is, Spartan -- ideals of equality -- would have been something.
In addition, it was a Spartan king, Agesilaus, who first attempted to conquer Persia -- a full 60 years before Alexander the Great -- and thus remove Persia as a player in Greek affairs.
And it's worth taking a look at Agesilaus' life just in terms of the political aspects -- we'll look at the same-sex aspects of his life in a subsequent post.
Agesilaus -- ruled 398 to 360 BC -- was unusual among the kings of Sparta in that he had been raised in the Agogé.
The sons of Spartan kings were, in general, exempt from the Agogé.
But Agesilaus was a younger son.
He wasn't expected to ever rule.
Which meant -- he got to go through the Agogé.
Lucky Agesilaus.
Says Plutarch:
~ Life of Agesilaus, translated by Scott-Kilvert
Plutarch then paints for us a picture of Agesilaus as the ideal Spartan youth:
2. During the year that he spent in one of the companies [herds] of boys who were brought together under the Spartan system, he had as his lover [the great Spartan general] Lysander, who was especially struck by his natural modesty and discretion. Agesilaus was more aggressive and hot-tempered than his companions. He longed to be first in all things, and he had in him a vehemence and impetuosity which were inexhaustible, and carried him over all obstacles; yet at the same time he was so gentle and ready to obey authority that he did whatever was demanded of him. He acted in this way from a sense of honour, not of fear, and he was far more sensitive to rebuke than to any amount of hardship. He was lame in one leg, but the beauty of his physique in the prime of his youth made the deformity pass almost unnoticed, and the ease and light-heartedness with which he endured it went far to compensate for the disability, since he was the first to joke and make fun of himself on this subject. In fact his lameness served to reveal his ambition even more clearly, since he never allowed it to deter him from any enterprise, however arduous it might turn out. ...
So: Agesilaus is aggressive and hot-tempered, longing to be first in all things, with a vehemence and impetuosity which are inexhaustible and carry him over all obstacles;
while, at the same time, he's ready to obey authority and do whatever is demanded of him, not out of fear, but from a sense of honour;
and he's far more sensitive to rebuke than to any amount of hardship.
Plus -- though lame, he's possessed of a beautiful physique in the prime of his youth.
Lucky Lysander!
Later in life, however, Lysander and Agesilaus had a falling out, and I suspect that, since Lysander was plotting revolution, one would have died at the other's hands -- had not Lysander been killed in battle.
Nevertheless, and what we see here, in effect, is the ideal Spartan youth, aggressive and full of fighting spirit, eager to excel but always ready to obey, not out of fear, but from a sense of honor -- and far more sensitive to rebuke than to hardship.
And I think it's worth noting that Agesilaus was teased by his peers about his lameness -- and learned young how to handle that teasing:
So -- Agesilaus, like many humans before and since, learned to turn his disability to his advantage.
He even used the teasing of his peers to his advantage.
Nowadays of course that wouldn't be allowed.
Teasing has been banned as politically incorrect and psychosocially insensitive.
And yet, according to UC Berkeley professor of psychology Dacher Keltner, writing in the New York Times
Because, he adds, it enhances "social connection."
The Spartans understood that.
We no longer do.
Plutarch ends his description of the youth of Agesilaus by giving us a glimpse of the Spartan system of eugenics -- which favored, among other attributes, height -- in action:
it is worth noting that [Agesilaus'] father Archidamus was fined by the ephors ... for having married a small woman. They complained, 'She will bear us a race of kinglets, not of kings.'
~ Life of Agesilaus, translated by Scott-Kilvert
In 394 BC Agesilaus, recently raised to the dual Spartan kingship, was granted permission by the Spartan Assembly to take "thirty Spartans to act as commanders and advisors, a picked body of two thousand Helots, and a force of six thousand men drawn from Sparta's allies in Greece," to oppose the Persians on their home turf in Asia Minor.
Why?
Because, having been defeated in their attempt to invade Greece at Platea in 479 BC, the Persians had spent the next eighty years using their money to meddle in Greek affairs and keep the Greeks divided.
Agesilaus understood that that had to be stopped.
In two years of campaigning he enjoyed great success in freeing the Greek cities of the region from Persian rule.
Here's Plutarch:
14. Agesilaus was now nearing the end of the second year of his command in Asia. By this time his fame had spread far and wide within the Persian empire, and he gained an almost legendary reputation for self-discipline, for moderation, and for the simplicity of his way of life. Whenever he travelled, he made a point of taking up his quarters in the most sacred precincts by himself, and in this way he made the gods the witnesses of the most private details of his life. Among all the thousands of soldiers in his army, it would have been hard to find one who slept on a harder bed than the king, and in his resistance to the variations of heat and cold he seemed to be constituted as though nature had given him alone the power to endure whatever seasons or weather the gods might send.
In particular it delighted the Greek inhabitants of Asia to see their former tyrants, the Persian governors and generals, who had long been intolerably harsh and who had reveled in wealth and luxury, now bowing and trembling before a man who walked about in a coarse cloak, and to watch them obsequiously change their whole bearing and appearance in reponse to a single curt and 'laconic' speech from him. For many of them this sight called to mind the words of the poet Timotheus
15. By this time Asia Minor was in a state of ferment, and many regions were ripe for revolt. Agesilaus now re-established order among the cities of the coast, and restored to them the constitutional forms of government without resorting to any executions or banishments.
Next he determined to advance further into the interior and to transfer the theatre of the war from the Greek seaboard to the heart of Persia, to fight for the person of the king and the wealth of Ecbatana and Susa, and above all to make it impossible for him to sit on his throne playing the arbitrator between the Greek states in their wars and corrupting their leaders with gold. But just at this moment [396 BC] the Spartan Epicydides arrived to report that Sparta had become embroiled in a great war with Thebes and other states, and to summon him to return at once and rescue his fellow-countrymen.
How else can one describe the spirit of envy which now diverted the attention of the Greeks to forming alliances and conspiracies against one another, which laid hands on fortune at the very moment when she was bearing them up on her wings, and which turned against themselves the very weapons that had been trained on the barbarians, and brought back to their native land the wars which had only recently been banished from it? I certainly cannot agree with Demaratus the Corinthian, who said that those Greeks who did not live to see Alexander seated on the throne of Darius had been deprived of a great pleasure. On the contrary, I believe they would have been more likely to weep when they remembered that the triumph was left for Alexander and his Macedonians, while they themselves squandered the lives of Greek generals on the battlefields of Leuctra, Coroneia, Corinth, and Arcadia.
At any rate, nothing in Agesilaus' life was greater or nobler than his conduct on this occasion, and history has no finer example to show of just obedience to higher authority. ... Sparta deserves, then, to be congratulated on the honour which Agesilaus paid her and the respect which he showed for her laws. The moment the dispatch roll was handed to him, although he was then at the height of his power and good fortune, he abandoned these, gave up the great hopes which beckoned him on, and immediately sailed away, 'leaving his task unfulfilled' [Homer].
He left many regrets among his allies in Asia, and gave the lie to the saying ... that the Spartans are the better men in public life, but the Athenians in private. Agesilaus proved himself an excellent king and general, but those who knew him most intimately valued him highly as a friend and companion.
The gold coins of Persia at this time were stamped with the figure of an archer, and Agesilaus declared that the [Persian] king was driving him out of Asia with the help of ten thousand archers : this was the sum of money which had been sent to Athens and Thebes and distributed to the demagogues, and it was for this reason that their peoples now went to war with the Spartans.
...
When the news reached [Agesilaus] that a great battle [between Greek and Greek] had been fought near Corinth [394 BC], that some of the finest soldiers in Greece were suddenly no more, and that the losses of the Spartans had only been slight, he showed no signs of pleasure or exultation, but sighed deeply and exclaimed, 'Alas for Greece, how many brave men have you killed with your own hands! If these men were still alive, they could have conquered all the barbarians in the world.'
So: Agesilaus' grand design, to stop the Persian meddling in Greek affairs, had been thwarted by -- Persian meddling in Greek affairs.
But: when he was summoned back to Sparta by his government -- he obeyed.
Agesilaus was king in a constitutional state.
He was subject to the law, and he obeyed it.
It's difficult to convey to people today, just how unusual that was.
Indeed, and as I said, it was unique.
Sparta was the only constitutional state to have kings subject to her laws -- prior to the English 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688.
Nevertheless, by obeying the law, Agesilaus put off by sixty years the successful invasion of Persia.
And when, sixty years later, in 334 BC, Persia was invaded, it was by an absolute monarch, Alexander of Macedonia, who, along with his father Philip, had conquered the free and constitutional states of Greece in 338.
We can only wonder what would have happened had Agesilaus been allowed to go forward with his plan of leading a coalition of FREE Greeks against the despotic Persians.
The history of the world might have been very different.
Now, while we're talking about Agesilaus, let's note a few things.
You'll notice that when he was triumphant in Asia Minor, he remained true to his Spartan ways, wearing "a coarse cloak" and ordering the Persian satraps about in curt and 'laconic' fashion.
And that
So -- when Agesilaus arrives in Asia, he brings with him his Spartan ways, ways of Austerity and Equality.
He lives no differently than his soldiers, he shares with them a hard bed and the extremes of weather; and he continues to wear just a single, threadbare, cloak.
With an army based on these principles of Austerity and Equality, he defeats the Persians, and completely reverses the situation of the Greeks:
Under the Persians, Plutus, the god of wealth and greed, was, we might say, lord; and society was a tyranny.
Under the Spartans, however, Ares is Lord.
And the Greeks no longer need fear gold.
So -- and remembering that the Greeks believed in and practiced "mythic identification" -- that is, they identified with the gods and with mythic heroes and sought to emulate them -- Ares comes to Asia Minor in the person of Agesilaus and his Spartans, Men who've been raised in an Austere and Equal society.
They defeat the Persians.
Warriors defeat Wealth --
Ares defeats Plutus.
Plutus no longer rules; as at Sparta, he's been rendered lifeless and is without force.
Plutarch:
Plutus has been overthrown.
Ares is now Lord.
And the Greeks of Asia Minor no longer need fear gold.
Rather, they are now ruled by the Warrior Virtues of Courage and Justice -- which take the form, in this instance, of the Spartan principles of Austerity and Equality.
True to those principles, "Agesilaus now re-establishe[s] order among the cities of the coast, and restore[s] to them the constitutional forms of government without resorting to any executions or banishments."
Agesilaus behaves Justly.
And Courage in this case -- as in every -- has enabled Justice.
For, as one of our Warriors has said to me, you cannot have Justice without Courage.
Winston Churchill agrees:
Plutarch:
So: the point of the Spartan way of life, the way of life devised by Lycurgus, was not to make its people miserable, but to put Virtue -- Excellence -- Manhood -- first.
"The valour of the Spartans gave them happiness both in living and dying" says Plutarch.
It's Valour -- which, remember is Virtue is Excellence is Manhood is Areté -- it's Valour which gives the Spartan happiness -- both in living and dying.
Valour -- the Strife of Valour -- in which the Spartan had been trained from childhood.
And, in his Persian expedition, Agesilaus was the embodiment of that Valour.
He was so recognized by the Greeks he liberated from the rule of Persia and Plutus.
And was so recognized by his own countrymen.
For as Agesilaus got closer to Sparta on his return from Asia
Those young men would have still been participating in the Agogé and thus in The Strife of Valour.
They would have been in superb physical condition -- "of the finest physique" -- because that's what fighting gifts to fighters; and, says Plutarch, "of the most active" -- that is, showing the greatest Fighting Spirit.
Now -- why am I certain that these fifty young men would have been part of The Strife of Valour?
Because that's what Xenophon tells us:
For those who had reached the prime of life [Lycurgus] showed by far the deepest solicitude. For he believed that if these were of the right stamp they must exercise a powerful influence for good on the state. He saw that where the spirit of rivalry is strongest among the people, there the choruses are most worth hearing and the athletic contests afford the finest spectacle. He believed, therefore, that if he could match the young men together in a strife of valour, they too would reach a high level of manly excellence [andragathia -- manly goodness, brave manliness, valour].
It was for "the young men," those in "the prime of life," for whom Lycurgus showed the deepest concern.
And thus it was for them that he instituted The Strife of Valour.
It was, then, fifty of the finest among these young men, Warriors, to again quote Plutarch, "of an age when the human physique reaches the flower of its beauty, as boyhood merges into manhood," of the greatest Fighting Spirit, a Spirit forged in the The Strife of Valour, Men who'd been raised, as had Agesilaus, in a community which championed Austerity and Equality, who were sent by Sparta to join Agesilaus as he returned from Asia.
Again, as in Asia, Agesilaus stays true to the simple and socially-level Spartan ways.
Austerity and Equality.
He's king, but king in a society of equals -- hoi homoioi, the equals or peers --
where simple living is cherished.
Because it's an expression of Justice.
Of Virtue.
There was those who claimed, like Plato, that the Spartans valued only Courage and ignored the other Divine Virtues.
But Agesilaus himself, who was a contemporary of Plato's, said otherwise:
~ Plutarch
Now -- I know that I just said that Justice must be enabled by Courage.
And here's Agesilaus saying that "courage is of no use unless it is accompanied by justice, and if all men would only act justly, then there would be no need for courage."
And of course he's correct.
The problem is, as Agesilaus well knew, that all men don't act justly -- that like Xerxes and the other Great Kings, they too often covet, they "lust after," says Leonidas, what is not theirs, what belongs to others, and will try to take it by force.
Justice must be enabled by Courage.
Once again Churchill, who for years led another small state embroiled in wars:
Again: Justice must be enabled by Courage.
Ares is the source of that Courage:
And for many, many, years, it was Spartan Courage which enabled Greek Justice.
So:
And they did it long before the other Greeks.
The adoption of that constitution was a revolution, and it was carried out with far less resistance from the "aristocracy" than most revolutions have seen before or since.
They were conquered by Rome and so they didn't succeed.
But what they were attempting to do was extend the benefits of their Lycurgan Eunomia -- their good and equal rule -- to all Greece.
It was the Spartans who stopped the Persians and who rid Greece of the tyrants.
And who beat Athens -- which, in theory, was a far more "forward-looking" state -- in the Peloponnesian War.
Spartan Men-at-Arms and Spartan military prowess were both feared and respected.
While the Spartan system of Warrior training -- the Agogé -- was greatly admired;
and formed the basis for the Greek philosophical discussion of "paideia," or culture, from the fourth century forward.
And at the heart of the Agogé was Eros -- Manly, same-sex, Love.
As Jaeger says,
Plutarch:
~Plutarch, Life of Agesilaus, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert
Furthermore, it was that same Spartan king -- Agesilaus -- who made the first serious attempts to conquer Persia at the close of the Peloponnesian War.
Had Agesilaus, leading a united Greek army, succeeded, it would have eliminated Persian meddling in Greek affairs a full sixty years before Alexander the Great;
and, Persia would have been conquered by a group of constitutional states.
What that would have meant for subsequent history we'll never know, but we do know that instead Persia was conquered by a monarchy and monarch -- Alexander of Macedon.
And that the kingdoms which succeeded Alexander were just that -- kingdoms -- not republics.
As such, Sparta was regarded as a model, guide, and arbiter for the rest of Greece.
Plutarch:
While [the laws of Lycurgus] remained in force, Sparta led the life, not of a city under a constitution, but of an individual man under training and full of wisdom. Nay rather, as the poets weave their tale of Heracles, how with his club and lion's skin he traversed the world chastising lawless and savage tyrants,
so we may say that Sparta, simply with the dispatch-staff and cloak of her envoys, kept Hellas in willing and glad obedience, put down illegal oligarchies and tyrannies in the different states, arbitrated wars, and quelled seditions, often without so much as moving a single shield, but merely sending one ambassador, whose commands all at once obeyed, just as bees, when their leader appears, swarm together and array themselves about him. Such a surplus fund of good government and justice did the city enjoy.
...
People did not send requests to [the Spartans] for ships, or money, or hoplites, but for a single Spartan commander; and when they got him, they treated him with honour and reverence, as the Sicilians treated Gylippus; the Chalcidians, Brasidas; and all the Greeks resident in Asia, Lysander, Callicratidas, and Agesilaus. These men, wherever they came, were styled regulators and chasteners of peoples and magistrates, and the city of Sparta from which they came was regarded as a teacher of well-ordered private life and settled civil polity.
Plutarch:
It was not, however, the chief design of Lycurgus then to leave his city in command over a great many others, but he thought that the happiness of an entire city, like that of a single individual, depended on the prevalence of virtue [areté] and concord within its own borders. The aim, therefore, of all his arrangements and adjustments was to make his people free-minded, self-sufficing, and moderate in all their ways, and to keep them so as long as possible.
His design for a civil polity was adopted by Plato, Diogenes, Zeno, and by all those who have won approval for their treatises on the subject, although they left behind them only writings and words. Lycurgus, on the other hand, produced not only writings and words, but an actual polity which was beyond imitation, and because he gave, to those who maintain that the much talked of natural disposition to wisdom exists only in theory, an example of an entire city given to the love of wisdom, his family rightly transcended that of all who ever founded polities among the Greeks.
So: the Spartan achievement was impressive -- and solid.
It was real.
And the other Greeks recognized it as such.
While their philosophers incorporated Spartan ideas about social-leveling into their own thought.
For example, in this excerpt from Plato's dialogue Lysis, Socrates asks questions of two boys, Lysis and Menexenus, who are friends.
The setting is the palaistra -- the wrestling school -- and Socrates and the boys are in the apodyterion -- the undressing room.
Socrates:
I turned to Menexenus, and said, Son of Demophon, which of you two youths is the elder?
That is a matter of dispute between us, he said.
And which is the nobler? Is that a matter of dispute too?
Yes, certainly.
And another disputed point, which is the fairer.
The two boys laughed.
I shan't ask which is the richer, I said; for you two are friends, are you not?
Certainly, they replied.
And friends have all things in common, so that one of you can be no richer than the other, if you say truly that you are friends.
They assented. I was about to ask which was the juster of the two, and which was the wiser of the two; but at this moment Menexeus was called away by someone who came and said the gymnastic-master wanted him. As I imagine, he had to offer sacrifice.
So he went away, and I asked Lysis some more questions. ...
~ translated by Jowett, re-translated by O'Connor
"Friends have all things in common, so that one of you can be no richer than the other, if you say truly that you are friends."
That's Socrates, an Athenian, speaking.
But it could be Lycurgus, the Spartan law-giver.
And you'll notice, the boys agree.
"One of you can be no richer than the other, if you say truly that you are friends."
To which -- "they assented."
So -- the achievements of Sparta were solid, and extremely influential.
Yet, when we talk about a city governed by a Warrior code based on nobility and goodness, which is what Sparta was --
some of you are no doubt thinking -- this is not realistic, this is idealism, our system of greed and the marketplace is at least, for all its faults, practical.
Is it?
I mentioned the shack surrounded by chickenwire in my neighborhood which someone had bought for $215,000.
Not only was the house grotesquely over-valued, but the buyer didn't have remotely enough income to support a mortgage of that size.
Here's International Herald Tribune columnist Roger Cohen's take on that situation:
Risk no longer existed. The penniless could afford a $200,000 house. Real estate prices could only go up. Securities full of toxic loans would prove benign. Debt was desirable, leverage lovely, greed great. Two and two made five. And streets were lined with gold.
...
A close friend wrote to me suggesting I take a look at Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Gods of the Copybook Headings," in the light of current events. Written in 1919, when Kipling was 53, in an England drained by the Great War, which had taken the life of his teenage son, the poem makes sobering reading.
A copybook was a school exercise book used to practice handwriting. At the tops of pages, proverbs and sayings (like "Stick to the Devil you Know"), appeared in exemplary script to be copied by pupils. The truisms were called "copybook headings."
The poem begins:
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
And what are the qualities of these "Gods of the Copybook Headings?" The fourth verse sets them out.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
The seventh verse reads:
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
...
"The Gods of the Copybook Headings" ends as follows:
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man -
So -- there are, per Kipling, The Gods of the Marketplace, or, per the Greeks, Plutus, the god of wealth;
and there's reality.
The Spartans understood that you have to tame wealth, that you can't let it run your society, that you have to "render a Plutus blind."
In order to render Plutus blind, the Spartans resorted to a sort of social leveling which many Americans would find abhorrent.
I don't.
What they did -- worked.
It wiped out a distinction which had threatened to destroy their state, and replaced it with one which created excellence, virtue, and valour.
The question was no longer how much money a man had, but how he behaved -- basely, or nobly?
That was all that mattered.
Education in excellence and judgments about excellence began early, and it wasn't just physical.
As we saw in A Nation of Heroes, as part of the Agogé, Spartan boys were brought to the Men's Messes and then asked
~ Life of Lycurgus, translated by Talbert
So: a crucial part of a Spartan boy's education was "judging excellence" -- "and making a critical appraisal of the citizens right from the start."
Right from the start.
A Warrior Society cannot be based on wealth or greed.
It must be based on Excellence.
Nobility and Goodness.
Moral Heroism.
Courage.
The Strife of Valour.
And it must be austere -- as Lycurgan Sparta was.
What then about happiness?
Don't we need things to make us happy?
Not according to Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert, who studies happiness at that prestigious university, and was interviewed by the New York Times:
Q. As the author of a best seller about happiness, do you have any advice on how people can achieve it?
A. ...
We know that the best predictor of human happiness is human relationships and the amount of time that people spend with family and friends.
We know that it's significantly more important than money and somewhat more important than health. That's what the data shows. The interesting thing is that people will sacrifice social relationships to get other things that won't make them as happy -- money. That's what I mean when I say people should do "wise shopping" for happiness.
Another thing we know from studies is that people tend to take more pleasure in experiences than in things. So if you have "x" amount of dollars to spend on a vacation or a good meal or movies, it will get you more happiness than a durable good or an object. One reason for this is that experiences tend to be shared with other people and objects usually aren't.
Q. Have you just expressed a very anti-american idea?
A. Oh, you can spend lots of money on experiences. People think a car will last and that's why it will bring you happiness. But it doesn't. It gets old and decays. But experiences don't. You'll "always have Paris" -- and that's exactly what Bogart meant when he said it to Ingrid Bergman. But will you always have a washing machine? No.
[emphases mine]
So: human relationships are a lot more important than things.
And Gilbert is hardly alone in expressing this idea.
Well, while I must say that I doubt our present crisis "is a final reckoning with the lie that happiness can be purchased" -- I think that lesson will have to be driven home time and again before the world's people accept it --
nevertheless, it's clear that when Dr Gilbert of Harvard says that "the best predictor of human happiness is human relationships" -- not money and not things -- he's on target.
And Sparta was full of such relationships -- Warrior relationships as it happens -- among guys who grew up together and trained together in the Agogé, fought together, and, as mess-mates, spent the rest of their lives together.
And who loved each other.
The Women too had their own training.
And their own same-sex relationships; as well as the relationships they had with their husbands -- and of course children.
So this was a communal society with webs of relationships: male-male, male-female, female-female;
plus all sorts of relationships between and among the children, youths, and young adults who were enrolled in the agogé;
And the adults of course were relating to the children and youth and young adults.
Because all of the adults participated in the rearing of all of the children.
And, clearly, those webs of relationship functioned harmoniously.
We know that because, as I said in A Nation of Heroes, people didn't defect from Sparta --
If Sparta had been an unhappy place, people would have defected to other city-states and told tales of how miserable life was in Sparta.
That didn't happen.
Why not?
Plutarch:
No wonder people didn't want to leave.
Now, I know that someone will say to me, Yeah, but the system was built on slavery.
That's true.
ALL the Greeks, including the Athenians -- who were among the most brutal -- used slaves.
Why?
Because they lived in a world in which it was believed that slavery was "natural" -- they believed it was natural for the strong to enslave the weak; and because the rule in such a world was that you either enslaved -- or became a slave.
Still -- and no question -- slavery is morally heinous.
What about us?
Do we use slaves?
Well, this quote from a "peak oil" site, which used to be fringe and has now become very mainstream, says that oil has given us "ghost slaves":
Agriculture and Slavery
In discussing these issues [of agriculture, oil, and peak oil] with a statistics professor friend of mine, he made a comment that made me think. I had told him my favorite statistic (Price 1995)
"Today, the extrasomatic energy used by people around the world is equal to the work of some 280 billion men. It is as if every man, woman, and child in the world had 50 slaves. In a technological society such as the United States, every person has more than 200 such 'ghost slaves.' "
I also told him that the energy in one gallon of gasoline represents the physical labor of one human for 3 weeks. After hearing this, my friend then asked me if the modern world doesn't have slavery because of cheap energy. I must admit that was something I wish I had thought of. Slavery still exists in the world, but it exists in the poorer parts of the world. Looking at the calculation about planting corn above, one can understand the need for cheap labor, whether that labor is one's children or property. I must make it clear that I think this is absolutely horrible, but every society in the past was a slave-holding society. If we lose our energy and have to live the life they lived, are we naive enough to think our descendants will avoid the mistakes they made?
...
References:
David Price, "Energy and Human Evolution", Population and Environment, Volume 16, Number 4, March 1995, pp. 301-19
So: The Spartan use of slaves was heinous.
But in our eagerness to obtain and maintain a high standard of living, a standard of living which requires each of us to have more than 200 "ghost slaves" a piece, we've de facto destroyed the planet.
And I mean destroyed.
I live in a part of California that was heavily impacted by the more than 1000 wildfires burning as a result of global warming.
It was no joke.
The damage was incredible -- and the air quality terrible.
Those fires were created by a storm which showed up unexpectedly from the west -- most such storms in California come out of the southeast -- and hit the state with more than 8000 lightning strikes.
That's a very high number.
That's why there were so many fires.
And we're just at the start of this process.
Lots more to come.
Said one California fight fighter:
And then there are the vast oceanic storms.
Like Gustav and Ike.
Fact is, human beings used to be one species among many which *shared* a planet; now other species exist only at our sufferance.
And having turned loose so many very dangerous environmental forces, we don't know if even our species can survive.
As David Suzuki points out:
Today, the oceans are depleted of fish while "dead zones", immense islands of plastic, and acidification from dissolving carbon dioxide are having untold effects. We have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere with our emissions, causing the planet to heat up, and have cleared land of forests, along with hundreds of thousands of species. Using air, water, and soil as dumps for our industrial wastes, we have poisoned ourselves.
For the first time in four billion years of life on Earth, one species has become so powerful and plentiful that it is altering the physical, chemical, and biological features of the planet on a geological scale. And so we have to ask, "What is the collective impact of everyone in the world?" We've never had to do that before, and it's difficult. Even when we do contemplate our global effects, we have no mechanism to respond as one species to the crises.
Driving much of this destructive activity is the economy itself. Years ago, during a heated debate about clear-cutting, a forest-company CEO yelled at me, "Listen, Suzuki: Are tree huggers like you willing to pay to protect those trees? Because if you're not, they don't have any value until someone cuts them down!" I was dumbstruck with the realization that in our economic system, he was correct.
You see, as long as that forest is intact, the plants photosynthesize and remove carbon dioxide from the air while putting oxygen back -- not a bad service for animals like us that depend on clean air. But economists dismiss this as an "externality". What they mean is that photosynthesis is not relevant to the economic system they've created!
Those tree roots cling to the soil, so when it rains the soil doesn't erode into the river and clog the salmon-spawning gravels, another externality to economists. The trees pump hundreds of thousands of litres of water out of the soil, transpiring it into the air and modulating weather and climate -- an externality. The forest provides habitat to countless species of bacteria, fungi, insects, mammals, amphibians, and birds -- externality. So all the things an intact ecosystem does to keep the planet vibrant and healthy for animals like us are simply ignored in our economy. No wonder futurist Hazel Henderson describes conventional economics as "a form of brain damage".
In the meantime, despite our unthinking exploitation of the oil and mineral wealth of the planet, we do NOT live anywhere near as well as did the Spartans, who had
The Spartans had "equal enjoyment of plenty, and the sense of ease which comes from simple living."
A sense of ease -- isn't that worth more than the finest and costliest object?
Plutarch notes that because such objects were not allowed among the Spartans, "it came about that such common and necessary utensils as bedsteads, tables, and chairs, were most excellently made among them."
Which makes them sound a bit like the Shakers, and reminds us of this line from a Shaker hymn: 'tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free.
'Tis the gift to be simple,
" 'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free"
The Spartans had both "the sense of ease which comes from simple living";
and freedom:
"all their time was taken up by choral dances, festivals, feasts, hunting expeditions, physical exercise and conversation"
Most Americans are wage-slaves in one form or another.
Yes, we have the freedom to change jobs -- sometimes; and we have a lot of things -- a lot of possessions -- but we're in thrall to them.
Aside from the increasingly small group who manage to amass vast wealth and can stop working, most Americans have to work forever to maintain their "lifestyle."
And more and more, that includes working past "retirement."
If an American stops or is forced to stop working, chances are in many cases that he or she will end up homeless.
That's the system.
Please do let me know, if you're able, how the Spartan system was inferior to ours.
Cause I don't think it was.
Fact is that each full-blooded Spartan was given a plot of land -- a "kleros" -- at birth.
This land was, in theory, enough to sustain him.
And his family?
We don't know.
But the kleros constituted a sort of guaranteed annual income.
And provided the Spartan made sure that his kleros produced enough food for him to meet his obligation to his mess -- he was set for life.
Leading me to repeat that the Spartan system was in no way inferior to ours.
Nor was their impact anywhere near as destructive as ours has been.
Fact is, by any objective standard, the Spartans had a good life.
Which is why people tended to stay in Sparta -- and enjoy feasts, festivals, choral singing, physical exercise, and good conversation.
"feasts, festivals, choral singing, physical exercise, and good conversation"
These are all activities which are heavy on human relationships -- and short on things.
Hmmmmm.
Looks like the Spartans -- led by Lycurgus -- got there way before Harvard and Dr Gilbert.
And America.
That's why the Times asked Dr Gilbert if he hadn't "expressed a very anti-american idea" when he said that things don't make you happy.
He tried to temper what he'd said by saying, Oh, you can spend lots of money on experiences.
Because, that, after all, is what we're told to do if we want to be happy -- and patriotic: go shopping and spend money.
But there's no getting around Gilbert's core finding: "the best predictor of human happiness is human relationships and the amount of time that people spend with family and friends."
And that experiences make us happy -- when they're communal:
"One reason for this is that experiences tend to be shared with other people and objects usually aren't."
Nor can we escape Gilbert's warning: "The interesting thing is that people will sacrifice social relationships to get other things that won't make them as happy -- money."
They do that, of course, because their culture tells them to do it -- it tells them to put more value on individual success than on communal life.
And more value on things than on people.
And that's been prominent in the culture for a long time.
W G Forrest, for example, writing in 1968, was very critical of the communal aspect of Sparta -- particularly of the agoge, and its adult aftermath:
The Spartan did not work -- he trained, with the men of his mess; he fought, with the men of his mess; or he was idle, again for the most part, one would imagine, with the men of his mess.
Yet -- that's why the Spartans were happy.
And so willing to die -- for each other -- and for Sparta.
Maybe we should re-visit that Shaker hymn:
'Tis the gift to be loved and that love to return,
Refrain:
When true simplicity is gained,
'Tis the gift to have friends and a true friend to be,
According to the Simple Gifts web site, "Tis the Gift" was actually a work song.
The Shakers would have sung it while they were making "such common and necessary utensils as bedsteads, tables, and chairs."
Did the Spartans sing?
Yes.
They had festivals which featured choral singing and dancing.
And as we'll see in a future post, they even had a special "dancing ground" called "Choros," where the "boys of fighting age danced [naked] to Apollo."
That's in Pausanias (3, xi, 9).
And some of the most famous not just Spartan but Greek poetry -- that of Alkman -- was written to be sung by Spartan choruses.
Girls' choruses.
Indeed, for several centuries the Spartans were the leaders in poetry and poetic development among the Greeks.
Again, what we today think of as Greek poetry was written to be sung and to be danced to -- either by soloists --
but more often by troupes and choirs.
The Spartans worshipped the twelve Olympian gods, of course, but I think it's fair to say they were followers of Apollo -- they believed that Apollo had given Lycurgus the outline of his Eu-nomia, his Good Rule;
and their three chief festivals were dedicated to Apollo;
while the Shakers were followers of Christ -- who they believed, would soon come again, this time as a Woman.
An interesting cultural convergence.
The Shakers were sexually abstinent; the Spartans married and had passionate same-sex love affairs.
But both groups lived in agrarian, and relatively static, societies;
which paradoxically, were very inventive.
It's a question, ultimately, of what the Marxists used to call "Being determines consciousness."
Meaning that if you're a shop-keeper you think one way, and if you work in a factory, another.
And clearly if you spend all your time jockeying for economic advantage -- and things -- against other poor smurfs, as Patrick would say -- that's what you think about, that's what your consciousness becomes --
how you're doing, whether you're a winner or a loser, in the great game of greed.
That's what Lycurgus wanted to get rid of.
Determined, therefore, to banish insolence and envy and crime and luxury, and those yet more deep-seated and afflictive diseases of the state, poverty and wealth, Lycurgus persuaded his fellow-citizens to make one parcel of all their territory and divide it up anew, and to live with one another on a basis of entire uniformity and equality in the means of subsistence, seeking preeminence through virtue alone, assured that there was no other difference or inequality between man and man than that which was established by blame for base actions and praise for good ones.
And, by the way, I think there was a Lycurgus -- in other words, I don't think he's mythical -- because there's an inner logic to what was done which suggests the working of a single mind.
Not that he may not have been building on pre-existing institutions and customs.
But he was also thinking.
He was thinking about the way people think.
And he determined to change consciousness.
To move the citizenry from thinking about social position based on greed, to social position based on virtue.
Because if in your life you look always to take possession of costly objects and other indicators of wealth, that becomes your consciousness -- a consciousness of material wealth and greed.
But if, instead, in your life you seek always "to take possession of the beautiful" -- in the sense of noble behavior -- that's what your consciousness becomes.
A consciousness of virtue, of self-sacrifice and moral heroism.
"Far better to be a Man of great worth than to have possessions of great worth."
That's your consciousness.
And that's what's lacking in contemporary America.
As Roger Cohen remarked in another op-ed:
So that's what "financial killing" really means. No better illustration exists of a culture where private gain has eclipsed the public good, public service, even public decency, and where the cult of the individual has caused the commonwealth to wither.
That's right.
In our culture, "private gain has eclipsed the public good, public service, even public decency, and ... the cult of the individual has caused the commonwealth to wither."
This is hardly the first time that's happened.
Remember what Xenophon, per Jaeger, thought about Athens:
...
The fault for which so many contemporary thinkers criticized the Athenian democracy, the reluctance and inability of its citizens to fight for their country in the midst of a world full of hostility and envy, must have looked to him like preposterous and childish folly, which would soon deprive Athens of the liberty she vaunted so proudly.
That too is right.
Cohen: in America, "the cult of the individual has caused the commonwealth to wither."
Xenophon: in Athens, it was "the exaggerated self-assertion of individuals, who appeared to think that citizens of a democracy had no duties, only privileges, and who believed that the essence of liberty was to have these privileges guaranteed by the state."
In Sparta, there was no cult of the individual.
As a consequence, the commonwealth didn't wither.
And Sparta won the Peloponnesian War.
Afterwards, with Sparta holding the hegemony of Greece, money, according to Xenophon and Plutarch, began flowing in, and the Lycurgan system was greatly weakened -- by wealth.
Indeed, there had been those in Sparta who'd opposed the war with Athens for just that reason.
They feared that victory would destroy the system Lycurgus had instituted.
And they were right.
Thirty years later, Sparta itself was defeated by the Greek city of Thebes and its Sacred Band, at Leuctra -- and Sparta's days as a great power were over.
But Sparta never forgot the Agoge and Lycurgus' Good Rule, his Eu-nomia, and the late Kings Agis and Cleomenes tried hard to revive it.
What they tried to do was popular.
Indeed, says Plutarch, when Agis proposed restoring Sparta to her old way of austerity and equality,
The younger men responded quickly, and more eagerly than he had expected: as a group they stripped to show their mettle, as if their clothes represented a way of life which they were all discarding in the cause of liberty.
Clothes discarded in the cause of liberty.
Remember what Xenophon had said about an earlier Sparta:
Two hundred years later, the young men remembered, and were quick to strip -- "to show their mettle, as if their clothes represented a way of life which they were all discarding in the cause of liberty."
It's a stirring scene, but it was in vain.
First Agis failed -- he was killed by a group of rich men greedy to maintain their wealth; and then Cleomenes failed -- he too was resisted by the wealthy and greedy vested interests, and was forced to commit suicide in Egypt.
And then Sparta was conquered, along with the rest of Greece, by Rome.
And though Sparta had a resurgence under Roman rule, it was never again a great power.
But -- Sparta was tiny.
It's amazing that it did what it did.
And that's what Xenophon says at the beginning of his Lacedaemonian Constitution:
that Sparta was a small state which had managed nevertheless to, in effect, become the ruler of Greece.
And that success was because of the Agoge and the other elements of Lycurgus' Eu-nomia -- Good Rule:
Lycurgus, who gave them the laws that they obey, and to which they owe their prosperity, I do regard with wonder; and I think that he reached the utmost limit of wisdom. For it was not by imitating other states, but by devising a system utterly different from that of most others, that he made his country pre-eminently prosperous.
~ translated by E C Marchant
So: Sparta achieved prominence not by following the crowd --
but by following, as Joseph Campbell might say, its own bliss -- which was areté -- excellence, virtue, and the Strife of Valour.
ιn following their bliss -- which was Warrior areté -- Virtue-Valour-Manhood -- Lycurgus and his Spartans created a society very UN-like our own, a society in which, says Plutarch,
In our society, by contrast, riches are emphatically both envied and esteemed -- which is a very large part of the problem.
And of course, that's a huge difference between our society and theirs -- it means the two cultures are diametrically opposed.
Moreover, at Sparta, and because riches were emphatically neither envied nor esteemed,
That too is a major difference.
We have both greed and want, and, despite our democratic rhetoric, our "enjoyment of plenty" is most unequal, which results in more greed and envy.
Nor do we have "the sense of ease which comes from simple living."
Rather, our lives are very complicated and often uneasy.
And we spend most of our time working.
Whereas, reports Plutarch,
So -- what we've seen is that at Sparta there was a relationship between and among egalitarianism, austerity, the Agogé, the Agon, same-sex love aka Eros -- and the creation of a Warrior State, a Warriordom, built on Manhood and Warriorhood, which in turn created a true and constitutional government -- which could not be subverted by the rich.
Again, the state was a Warriordom which sought to promote "excellence " -- that is, Virtue-Valour-Manhood -- through the cultivation of Fighting Spirit and Warriorhood.
We discuss that at more length in A Nation of Heroes.
For example, in A Nation of Heroes, we learned, via Plutarch, that the boys in the Agogé were organized into Troops or Herds -- Herds is the Spartan word -- in which they were accustomed to
So -- the boy with the "soundest judgement and best fighting spirit" was made group captain.
And the elders were constantly "spurring the boys on to fight and contend with each other."
Fighting then was part of the daily training of the youths.
As it was, it must be said, in every polis.
The Spartan boys were also questioned at the Men's Messes on subjects such as
...
Whether a boy's standing was good or bad, his lover shared it. There is a story that once when a boy had let slip a despicable cry in the middle of a fight, it was his lover whom the magistrates fined. Sexual relationships of this type were so valued that respectable women would in fact have love-affairs with unmarried girls.
~ Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, translated by Talbert
So: Fighting was part of the boys' daily training, and it was overseen by both the Herd-leader and the other adult male Spartans -- the Spartiatai.
And the youth's lover was held responsible for, in effect, making sure that the boy showed the proper Fighting Spirit.
And there were other levels of institutionalized fighting in Sparta, including The Fighting of the Youths at Plantanistas, or Plane-tree Grove -- which we also discuss in A Nation of Heroes;
and The Strife of Valour.
Again, in creating such a state, the Spartans were, in Joseph Campbell's phrase, "following their bliss."
These were the things they believed in and which they believed constituted bliss: excellence as expressed in Virtue-Valour-Manhood; equality based on true Warriorhood; and austerity as an expression of Warriorhood and their Warrior Ethos.
And their dedicated practice of Austerity had the further value of not allowing wealth and greed to divide and weaken their Warrior Realm.
Warriordom -- their Sacred Sparta, which was a manisfestation of their Sacred Warriorhood -- always came first.
So -- the Spartans followed their bliss, they did what they believed in and what made them happy -- and they were very successful.
Which begs the question:
What about you?
What's your bliss?
Well, if you're on this site, I think it's safe to say that your bliss is Manhood.
Part of that Manly bliss, your Manly bliss, is Frot -- Phallus against Phallus -- and, more to the point, Manhood against Manhood.
Because when you think of Frot you think of it in terms of Man against Man, Manhood against Manhood.
And, chances are that another part of that bliss of Manhood is Fidelity.
That when you think of Manly Love and Manhood against Manhood, you think of it as the Greeks did, in terms of Warriors and Fidelity.
So you think in terms, as they did, of the celebration and exaltation of Manhood by two Men -- who are Faithful to each other.
Fidelity was a given among Men who Loved Men in the ancient world.
Remember what John Boswell says in Same-Sex Unions in PreModern Europe:
Plutarch adduces with evident disapproval cases of husbands who allowed their wives to be unfaithful to gain some advantage, and then notes, "By contrast, of all the many [same-sex] lovers there were and have been, do you know of a single one who surrendered his beloved, even to gain favor from Zeus? I do not." (Erotikos 760B).
The proponent of same-sex passion in the Hellenistic Affairs of the Heart says that wisdom and experience teach that love between males is the most stable of loves. This prejudice [sic] was doubtless influenced by the Symposium of Plato, in which heterosexual relationships and feelings are characterized as "vulgar," and their same-sex equivalents as "heavenly."
This contrast exercised wide influence on subsequent discussions of love.
~ Boswell, 74.
What about the Martial and Heroic aspect of Manly Love among the Greeks?
Is that a Bill Weintraub fantasy?
No.
Here's Boswell:
Boswell goes on to note that in Plato's Symposium, the character named
~ Symposium 179
And of course what Phaedrus is describing is Sparta.
The Encyclopedia Britannica:
Jaeger:
It is very significant that the first time we have an opportunity of studying the Dorian [the Spartans were Dorian] aristocracy closely we should find that homosexual love is the ruling motive in their character.
...
It is, after all, easy to understand how a passionate admiration of noble bodies and balanced souls could spring up in a race which for countless years had prized physical prowess and spiritual harmony as the highest good attainable by man, and which had striven by grave and ceaseless rivalry, by exertion involving the utmost energies of mind and body alike, to bring those qualities to the greatest possible perfection. Men who loved the possessors of those enviable qualities were moved by an ideal, the love for areté. Lovers who were bound by the male Eros were guarded by a deeper sense of honour from committing any base action, and were driven by a nobler impulse in attempting any honourable deed.
The Spartan state deliberately made Eros [same-sex love] a factor, and an important factor, in its agogé.
Grant:
When these young [Spartan] men joined the Assembly, at the age of thirty, they had become ruthless, taciturn and unquestioning. Their predominant ethos was homosexual...
No kidding:
Those quotes are specific to Sparta.
And of course their use of the term "homosexual" is anachronistic and silly.
But there's no question that among the Spartans and the Greeks in general, same-sex Love -- Eros -- was inextricably bound up with athletics and military service.
It was all of a piece -- "they made sport training for war and war training for sport" -- the palaistra was used for military training as well as training in wrestling and other combat sports -- and love affairs which began at the palaistra -- and in the Agogé! -- continued when the Men were on active military duty.
What about Equality and Austerity?
Do they have any relevance for you as a Man into Frot?
Yes.
We've said for years that Frot is equal -- that there no tops and bottoms, no doms and subs, just two FREE and EQUAL MEN doing what comes naturally:
And as to Austerity -- Frot is Free in that sense as well.
Like we say in What's Hot About Frot,
And that's right.
Remember what the Spartans said about their hair:
We can say the same of Frot -- This is the Natural Way for Men to Love, the Warrior Way -- and it costs nothing.
Frot stands completely outside the greed-driven paradigm of wealth and markets, of getting and spending.
So: I've spoken before of our society as being caught in a sloppy hedonism -- of which analism, with its emphasis on the rectum and hook-ups and effeminacy -- is a prominent part.
And I've contrasted that with the Masculine Rigor of Phallus against Phallus.
I've said that analism is consumerist -- which is true.
That it treats people like objects and values objects over people.
Which is also true.
Analism is an offshoot, product, and reflection of the majority culture.
And remarkably uncaring about human beings.
That's been abundantly clear throughout the AIDS crisis, with the preservation of anal penetration and promiscuity consistently trumping the saving of human life.
That too is a reflection of the majority culture.
Representatives of which, on the day after Thanksgiving, trampled another human being to death in order to -- buy some junk.
That's why they did it.
They weren't starving and desperately trying to get food.
Nor were they drought-stricken and desperately trying to get water.
What they were after -- was a "bargain" on "consumer goods" -- worthless crap.
Truth is, there's no way to get a bargain on it because it's not worth anything to begin with.
Any time, effort, or money you put into getting it -- is basically lost.
It's just as Professor Gilbert of Harvard, the happiness expert, said: human relationships and the time we spend within those relationships -- are the best predictors of happiness;
while things -- objects -- get old and decay.
But just as buttboys will kill each other and even kill themselves in the pursuit of a "sexual" act which isn't "sexual" --
so the American consumer will kill in the pursuit of something which isn't worth consuming.
And there's been no sign of abatement in greed and the belief in wealth which is behind the present crisis.
I started writing this article in October -- well before the election -- and things weren't good, economically or otherwise, then.
They've since gotten worse.
Just this week, we learned that U.S. home prices fell at their sharpest pace in October; and we were warned that More Economic Pain Seen in 2009.
I know that many people put a lot of faith in Barack Obama.
But the day Mr Obama is inaugurated, gold is not going to rain from the heavens.
Mr Obama is a Harvard lawyer, and he's part of the system.
The system isn't stable -- and I don't believe anyone can make it so.
Of course he'll try -- and he may stabilize it for a time.
But even so, changing it more than just a little bit is well beyond Mr Obama's powers.
Moreover, what we're seeing is that the system works to reward greed -- even when greed is culpable.
For example, a recent article in the New York Times was titled Veterans of '90s Bailout Hope for Profit in New One.
And when they say "profit" -- they mean *profit*:
WASHINGTON -- A tight-knit group of former senior government officials who were central players in the savings and loan bailout of the 1990s are seeking to capitalize on the latest economic meltdown, enjoying a surge in new business in their work now as private lawyers, investors and lobbyists.
With $700 billion in bailout money up for grabs, and billions of dollars worth of bad debt or failed bank assets most likely headed for sale or auction, these former officials are helping their clients get a piece of the bailout money or the chance to buy, at fire-sale prices, some of the bank assets taken over by the federal government.
"It is a good time to be me," said John L. Douglas, a partner in Atlanta at the law firm Paul Hastings and a former lawyer for bank regulators who helped create the agency that administered the last federal bailout, the Resolution Trust Corporation.
Some of these former federal officials, like L. William Seidman, the first chairman of the R.T.C., are serving as advisers -- sharing ideas with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama -- even while they are separately directing investors or banks on how to best profit from this advice.
"It is an enormous market," said Mr. Seidman, who has already joined two such potential money-making efforts and is evaluating proposals to participate in a third. "I am enjoying this."
David B. Iannarone, a former R.T.C. lawyer who is managing partner at a firm that handles defaulted commercial real estate loans, said, "The people who worked on this back in the early 1990s are back in vogue."
The agency was set up by the government in 1989 to sell off what ultimately grew to $450 billion worth of real estate and other assets assembled from 747 collapsed savings banks.
What is obvious to former R.T.C. officials is that, like the last go around, a great deal of money will be made by a select group of investors and business operators, particularly those with government contacts. The former government officials said in interviews that much of what is motivating them is a desire to help the nation recover from this latest stumble. But they acknowledge they intend to be among the winners who emerge.
"Fortunes will be made here, no doubt about it," said Gary J. Silversmith, one of more than a dozen former R.T.C. officials interviewed who now are involved in enterprises seeking to profit from bank bailouts.
The busiest money-making arena so far for these R.T.C. alumni is in helping distressed banks line up cash infusions from the Treasury, as they seek a piece of the bailout.
...
[emphases mine]
So: the same greedy people are rewarded over and over and over again.
And -- they're treated with kid gloves.
For example, a recent article about a computing consulting firm in NYC's exclusive and very gay Chelsea district, a firm which helps out-of-work hedge fund managers set up home-computing systems, said that the boss
It would make a Spartan vomit.
But that's how the rich -- including the very same rich who created this crisis -- are still treated.
In such a society, the people fear gold.
And with good reason.
Their lives are constantly being bought and sold.
As is, dear reader, your life.
While the vast majority of those who do the buying and selling go scot-free.
There are no communal values at work.
Just individualism and greed.
Political democracy is praised, while economic democracy is looked upon as highly suspect.
Yet the Spartans had both.
They had both because their lives were about Freedom -- not possessions.
Not the freedom to have possessions -- which is how it's often framed in the US;
but the Freedom to be Free.
The Freedom to be Men.
The Freedom to fully realize their MANHOOD.
Xenophon tells us that the purpose of The Strife of Valour is to prepare the young Men so that they may someday defend their sacred Sparta.
Which is not just a piece of land.
But an ideal -- once again, an ideal of Justice and Courage -- of how Free Men and Women can and should live:
And every Spartan youth and young Man who Fights in the Strife of Valour has been taught that the sacrifice of self to that lofty ideal and that spiritual entity is the highest good.
That Man's natural instinct for self-assertion -- for Aggression -- finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice.
That's what they're taught.
That's what matters.
And that's what they value -- self-sacrifice and moral heroism.
NOT objects and money and possessions and things.
But VIRTUE -- VALOUR -- MANHOOD.
And I would suggest to you that to the extent that you or your society values its things -- it devalues MANHOOD.
Beyond a certain very basic point, material possessions weaken -- they effeminize -- as the ancients well understood -- and they detract from MANHOOD.
Is it any wonder that as our society has become richer and richer and richer -- Manhood is more and more and more devalued?
I don't think so.
And that devaluation continues apace.
The Times, for example, even as it appears, in the midst of the economic crisis, to condemn individual and corporate greed, continues to maintain, most recently in an editorial titled Recruiting the Best, that the American army "must remain an all-volunteer force."
Why?
The Times likes to present itself as the pre-eminent promoter in print of social justice in America.
But where's the social justice in bribing the working poor into dying to
defend America in unpopular wars while everyone else goes shopping?
That's neither social nor just.
All it is -- is convenient for the Times' readership and its writers, who are overwhelmingly middle to upper middle class.
It permits the Times to rail about individual greed in the credit crisis -- while ignoring the role of greed and selfishness in maintaining our "all-volunteer" military.
So: despite the credit and economic crisis, our society continues and consistently to reject communal values.
But communal values, in a place like Sparta, are what protected the society while promoting Manhood.
Manhood and Warriorhood.
The Spartans, by freeing themselves of wealth and greed and things, became FREE to be MEN.
FREE to realize their MANHOOD.
In all its glory.
And their WARRIORHOOD.
In all its glory.
And you have to have that Freedom too.
That's why I titled this last section "Manhood."
Because, like I said, if I asked our core Man2Man Alliance membership in what was their bliss, the answer would be Manhood.
And if that's your bliss, you must be free to pursue it.
For Men, Manhood is the fount of Virtue.
And for us, Manhood against Manhood is a Virtuous act.
Which means that like the Spartans, we need to live in a world in which Ares is Lord.
Not Plutus.
Not Wealth.
Where Wealth is Lord, Wealth defeats Manhood.
Greed destroys Manliness.
Until such time as, like the Spartans, MEN REBEL.
And say NO.
For MEN to LIVE and LOVE, ARES must be LORD.
Spartan youth were raised in an austere and equal society in which Ares -- the Warrior God -- was Lord.
In which Plutus -- the god of wealth and greed -- had been rendered inert.
In such a society -- a society where Ares was Lord -- neither Men nor Women had fear of gold.
And youth, instead of being instructed in the strife of greed -- were raised in the Strife of Valour.
A Strife which taught them to strive for the Good of their country.
That Strife was an Agon -- it was a contest.
Remember what Xenophon said:
[Lycurgus] saw that where the spirit of rivalry is strongest among the people, there the choruses are most worth hearing and the athletic contests afford the finest spectacle. He believed, therefore, that if he could match the young men together in a strife of valour [erin peri aretes], they too would reach a high level of manly excellence.
Lycurgus was thinking specifically of the great choral and athletic contests which were such a huge part of Greek life when he fashioned the Strife of Valour, in which young men together would reach the highest level of manly excellence.
The Strife of Valour was an Agon.
The Strife of Valour was a struggle, a combat, a contest of the Virtuous.
The Strong.
The Noble.
The Good.
The Brave.
It was that Contest -- that Agon -- which dominated and shaped Sparta.
That Strife insured that Ares, not Plutus, would be Lord.
And that Ares' Lordship would lead to areté.
Once again, the Strife of Valour was an Agon -- a contest.
Morally pure.
And both an expression and amplifier of Manhood.
As we've seen, for the Greeks areté can be synonymous with Manhood.
To be sure, Women too can express excellence.
But a Man's expression of excellence -- of virtue -- is synonymous with his Manhood.
In the Agon section of this post, we talked about how the Agon -- the Contest -- is Manhood against Manhood.
That the contest requires Two Men.
And that it's always Man against Man.
It's TWO MEN struggling to bring their Manhood -- their mutual Manhood -- to perfection -- by struggling Manhood against Manhood.
And that's how we conceive of sex.
As a Phallic struggle, as a Phallic contest --
Man against Man
Manhood against Manhood.
That to us is What Sex Is.
A Phallic Struggle, a Phallic Contest.
Schwanz gegen Schwanz say the Germans;
lul tegen lul say the Dutch.
Cock against Cock.
Dick against Dick.
Phallo-Machia the Greeks would say.
Phallic Fight.
Phallic Battle.
I titled this post "The Strife of Valour."
The phrase is from Marchant's translation of Xenophon's book.
As I read the original Greek, however, the phrase in Xenophon is "The Strife of the Virtuous."
Marchant was translating in 1925 -- and I like what he did -- it's poetic.
Either way, what comes across is that this is strife between two groups of Men who are equally noble.
That's core to the way we think in our own Warrior band, our own Man2Man Alliance.
I've said that we seek a contest, but not the obliteration of our opponent.
The Homeric heroes, according to Jaeger, "treat each other with constant respect, since their whole social system depends on such respect."
That may sound strange, given that they're trying to kill each other.
But to them, victory in battle only has meaning if your opponent is worthy and noble.
Killing an unworthy and ignoble foe is degrading.
Particularly if you have to stab him in the back.
That sentiment is in Tyrtaeus, the great poet of the Spartan revolution:
Come, take courage, for your stock is from unconquered Herakles -- not yet does Zeus hold his neck aslant [likely meaning: Zeus has not turned his face from you] -- and do not fear throngs of men or run in flight, but let a man hold his shield straight toward the front ranks, despising life and loving the black death-spirits no less than the rays of the sun.
You know how destructive the deeds of woeful Ares are, you have learned well the nature of grim war, you have been with the pursuers and the pursued, you young men, and you have had more than your fill of both.
Those who dare to stand fast at one another's side and to advance towards the front ranks in hand-to-hand conflict, they die in fewer numbers and they keep safe the troops behind them; but when men run away all excellence is lost. No one could sum up in words each and every evil which befalls a man, if he suffers disgrace. For to pierce a man behind the shoulder blades as he flees in deadly combat is gruesome, and a corpse lying in the dust, with the point of a spear driven through his back from behind, is a shameful sight.
Come, let everyone stand fast, with legs set well apart and both feet fixed firmly on the ground, biting his lip with this teeth, and covering thighs, shins below, chest, and shoulders with the belly of his broad shield; in his right hand let him brandish a mighty spear and let him shake the crest above his plumed head in a fearsome manner.
By doing mighty deeds, let him learn how to fight and let him not stand -- he has a shield -- outside the range of missles, but coming to close quarters let him strike the enemy, hitting him with long spear or sword; and, also, with foot placed alongside foot and shield pressed against shield, let everyone draw near, crest to crest, helment to helmet, and chest to chest, and fight against a man, seizing the hilt of his sword or his long spear.
~ translated by Douglas Gerber
[emphasis mine]
So: Tyrataeus, whose war poems influenced not just the Spartans, but ALL Greeks, says first off that the Men, being of the unconquered blood of Herakles, should not flee, and that in battle they should despise life and love death no less than the rays of the sun.
For he says,
Those who dare to stand fast at one another's side and to advance towards the front ranks in hand-to-hand conflict, they die in fewer numbers and they keep safe the troops behind them; but when men run away all excellence is lost. No one could sum up in words each and every evil which befalls a man, if he suffers disgrace. For to pierce a man behind the shoulder blades as he flees in deadly combat is gruesome, and a corpse lying in the dust, with the point of a spear driven through his back from behind, is a shameful sight.
So -- like Xenophon, who almost certainly got the sentiment from Tyrtaeus, and who says, "escape from premature death more generally goes with valour than with cowardice: for valour is actually easier and pleasanter and more resourceful and mightier" -- Tyrtaeus states flatly that "Those who dare to stand fast at one another's side and to advance towards the front ranks in hand-to-hand conflict, they die in fewer numbers and they keep safe the troops behind them."
Whereas he adds, "when men run away all excellence is lost. No one could sum up in words each and every evil which befalls a man, if he suffers disgrace. For to pierce a man behind the shoulder blades as he flees in deadly combat is gruesome, and a corpse lying in the dust, with the point of a spear driven through his back from behind, is a shameful sight."
So: Tyrtaeus, the Spartan muse, says point blank, that to pierce a man from behind is gruesome, "and a corpse lying in the dust, with the point of a spear driven through his back from behind, is a shameful sight."
He's right.
It is.
And even more gruesome and shameful on a living male.
To penetrate a male anally is gruesome.
And shameful.
For both "partners."
Because when a male is penetrated anally, his manhood is obliterated.
And that's what analism strives for:
The ruination of the male.
Because anal penetration humiliates, degrades, and ultimately obliterates the male.
Further, it should be noted that the Spartans were famous for NOT pursuing males who were running away.
When they had conquered and routed an enemy, they pursued him far enough to make their victory secure by his flight, and then at once retired, thinking it ignoble and unworthy of a Hellene to hew men to pieces who had given up the fight and abandoned the field.
And this was not only a noble and magnanimous [kalon kai megalopsychon] policy, but it was also useful. For their antagonists, knowing that they slew those who resisted them, but showed mercy to those who yielded to them, were apt to think flight more advantageous than resistance.
~ Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus
So -- obviously, this was, as Plutarch notes, good strategy.
But that's not all that was going on.
The Spartans clearly had a genuine distaste for killing from behind -- that is, killing an unworthy adversary.
It's one thing to kill a Man who's facing you bravely.
Quite another to slaughter a male who's running away.
Plutarch says the Spartans considered the latter "ignoble and unworthy of a Hellene" -- that is, a Greek.
And that their policy was both noble -- "kalos" -- and magnanimous -- and the word in Greek is "megalo-psychon" -- meaning "great-souled."
So that their refusal to "hew men to pieces who had given up the fight and abandoned the field" was actually spiritual -- it showed the Spartans to have "big souls" -- "great spirits."
And this was very much part of their culture:
their understanding of war as a contest -- an agon.
Once again, the famous saying is that the Greeks made "sport training for war and war training for sport."
And as I've said before, the Greek word for athletic contest -- agon -- is also used for a battle; while the word for a fight -- mache -- is also used for an athletic contest.
So -- the contest is a fight, the fight a contest.
And I think if we compare, for example, the Greeks and the Romans, we see that there's a fundamental cultural difference here.
That there are Contest cultures;
and Conquest cultures.
The Archaic and Classical Greeks were a Contest culture.
The Agon, the Contest, was core to who they were.
And the Contest, as I said earlier, was about ONE MAN's strenuous physical struggle -- to overcome one other MAN.
And that the Greeks saw this as TWO MEN struggling to bring THEIR MANHOOD to Perfection.
In order for there to be a struggle which would lead to perfection, the Fight had to be Fair.
It had to be Just.
It has to be between equals.
And between TWO equals.
And that though there was always a winner and a loser, it wasn't about one man destroying another.
Because they were both Warriors.
Honorable, strong, heroic, and noble.
They respected those qualities in each other -- and therefore each other.
And they knew, consciously and openly, that there was the potential that they might LOVE each other.
Aggression and Attraction --
Both were open and openly displayed.
And it was understood that one might well lead to another:
Ancient Greece, again, was a Contest culture.
Imperial Rome, by contrast, was a Conquest culture.
Rome started out as a Warrior culture.
We know that because of Vir, Virilis, Virtus.
And because of the many stories which have survived of Roman Warrior Virtue -- Cincinnatus, Coriolanus, the Horatii.
As a Warrior culture, Rome would have been a Contest culture.
But over time, it became a Conquest culture.
Once in Conquest culture mode, the Romans weren't interested in a fair fight.
Nor did they have much interest in the Greek tradition of nude wrestling.
They thought it was a waste of time.
Nor were they enamored of the one-on-one contest.
They were interested only in winning.
And to win, they fought dirty.
They were notoriously dirty fighters.
And they fought to obliterate.
To totally destroy and wipe out the enemy.
And they were cynical.
Often, Romans themselves didn't fight.
Instead, they used auxiliary troops made up of native peoples from the land they were trying to subdue.
In such a culture, and even though it was forbidden, some males -- not all, but some -- would inevitably be drawn into anal penetration.
Because the culture was basically about dominance and submission.
Obliteration was a prominent part of it.
And anal penetration obliterates the male.
In addition, of course, and over time, wealth came to dominate Rome.
Wealth allied to power destroyed the Roman republic and what was left of the Warrior virtues.
The Warrior ideal remained -- but it had been corrupted by money and power.
Imperial Roman writers like Tacitus make that very clear, when, for example, they compare the decadent Romans to the virile Germans, who still retain their Warrior ways.
For example, in writing about the Germans, whom he views as having retained the Warrior virtues which the decadent Romans of his day had lost, Tactitus notes that
They have only one kind of public show, which is performed without variation at every festive public gathering. Naked youths, trained to the sport, dance about among swords and spears levelled at them. Practice begets skill, and skill grace; but they are not professionals and do not receive payment. Their most daring flings have their only reward in the pleasure they give the spectators.
~ Germania, 24.
So -- what Tacitus is talking about is a manifestation of Nude Warriorhood; and he notes, approvingly, that the youths who participate in the sport, are not paid.
Rather, their reward is the pleasure their fellow Warriors derive from seeing this display of nude Warrior skill and naked Warrior courage.
Bravery.
And, when Tacitus talks about naked youths dancing about among swords and spears, we can't help but be reminded of these lines from the Roman poet Statius we examined in a previous post:
He means to go
So you have this recurring image of naked Men nakedly exposing their naked bodies to swords and spears.
Which it's suggested by both Statius and Tacitus, is one of, if not simply the, truest and bravest manifestations of Valour -- Warrior Virtue.
Again: his valour plain to see.
Genitals exposed in combat or in combat sport -- exposed along with the rest of the body -- equals Valour equals Manhood equals Masculine Virtue.
But, said the Romans, the barbarian warrior virtues of peoples like the Germans persisted only so long as they were unconquered.
They lost their valour with their freedom, said Tacitus.
Valour and Freedom, then, are inextricably linked and intertwined; to lose one is to lose the other.
So: the Roman ideal is a Warrior ideal.
To Tacitus, the Empire, which had flooded the city with money and
destroyed political freedom, had corrupted that ideal.
As it corrupted the peoples whom it conquered.
But the ideal remains.
Tacitus wrote a short biography -- what I would call an encomium -- of his father-in-law Agricola, who had been the Roman governor of Britain.
Tacitus admired the man -- greatly.
Why?
Clearly, because in Tacitus' eyes, he possessed virtus.
Again: in Rome, the ideal remains.
But the practice was often very different.
So:
Archaic and Classical Greece is a Contest culture.
Imperial Rome a Conquest culture.
Greece is characterized by the great religious-athletic festivals of one-on-one competition such as the Olympics.
In which nude men, their genitals proudly displayed,
struggle to bring their Manhood to perfection.
A pristine world, as we've said, of flesh and spirit:
Rome is characterized by the arena.
In which males, their genitals concealed by loincloths, are forced to kill each other for the amusement of a debased mob.
There is a lot of flesh in Rome, but like flesh in America, it can't be called pristine.
This gladiator's costume -- which he was forced to wear, by the way -- is meant to titillate:
That's not remotely the same as a Greek athlete, whose valour was plain to see:
Among the Greeks, valour is associated with and linked to the Man's open display of his genitals -- and particularly his testicles -- in nude contest and nude combat.
The link between Valour and Manhood is explicit and "plain to see."
There's nothing coy about the Greek presentation of the body.
Manhood is displayed openly, and proudly, and that display is linked explicity to both Freedom and Virtue.
Andronikos:
The Games gave birth to yet another Greek idea, a whole attitude to life -- the attitude of a free man competing with his peers, naked, unfettered by any element foreign to his own body, conforming only to the rules of the game, with the sole aim of winning for himself an olive crown -- in other words a purely moral victory -- and the praise of his fellow men.
~ The Greek Museums, 186
Think about it:
It's to that ethos, that Manly Ethos of Free Men --
who Fight each other Nude, unfettered by any element foreign to their bodies --
with the sole aim of Winning a Moral Victory and the Praise of their Fellow Men --
that Pindar gives voice in his Victory Songs.
He sings of Pytheas:
I am not a sculptor, so as to fashion stationary
Rather, on board every ship
And of Alkimedon:
He was beautiful to behold, in action he did not discredit
And of Aristokleidas:
If, being fair, and performing deeds to match his form,
...
Zeus, yours is the blood, and yours the contest, which
And of all the boys, youths, and men like them.
Of all those who, in their moral life, strive to drive a team of four virtues:
Courage, Justice, Self-knowledge, and Wisdom.
And the games -- in which free men compete with their peers, naked, unfettered by any element foreign to their bodies, conforming only to the rules of the game, with the sole aim of winning an olive crown, that is, a purely moral victory -- are sanctioned and overseen by the gods themselves, and in particular Zeus, the chief and most mighty of the gods.
Who always stands by the Greeks, and by Men who are struggling to bring their Manhood to Perfection.
Thus the gods sanction and make holy by their presence the Agon -- one man's strenuous physical struggle to overcome another.
Which has at its core a MORAL purpose:
a free man competing with his peers, naked, unfettered by any element foreign to his own body, conforming only to the rules of the game, with the sole aim of winning for himself an olive crown -- in other words a purely moral victory -- and the praise of his fellow men
"the praise of his fellow men"
Remember that I said that every boy and man seeks a Band of Brothers, a Band of Heroes, a Sacred Band.
Why?
Because the Masculinity of Men flows from their group, their homosocial group.
Men need the company of other Men --
while seeking, nude and unfettered by any element foreign to their bodies -- a moral victory.
And with it -- a Moral, Male, Intimacy.
Plato: The young Wrestler at the palestra is "not less worthy of praise for his beauty than for his nobility and goodness"
Pindar: The Warrior "performs deeds to match his form," "utmost deeds of Manhood."
It is those utmost deeds of Manhood which makes the Warrior worthy -- of his Warrior brother.
So: the Contest culture is about Virtue -- achieved through those utmost deeds of Manhood which are both the expression and the source of Moral Heroism.
Such a culture exalts the Male.
Analism is a conquest culture -- a rape culture -- in which males are systematically degraded and debased.
By each other.
Our Man2Man Alliance is a Contest culture.
Brian: in which "we share a new type of love and belief that involves total Manly love, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual."
In which Men are exalted.
By each other.
So there's this:
And there's this:
And there's a huge difference.
We seek to re-establish the Contest between Men.
We seek to exalt the Male, the Masculine, the Manly.
Through Warriorhood.
Warriorhood.
Warriorhood is instinctive for Men.
Men evolved and were designed to be part of a
Warrior Band within a tribe.
We're all Warriors.
Just the word "Warrior" is incredibly powerful for Men.
That's been one of the great revelations of doing this work.
I always knew that "Warrior" was powerful for me.
There's no other word in the language that has that power for me.
But once I started doing this work I found out how incredibly powerful the word is for virtually all Men.
Warrior.
Men really respond to it.
And what I've seen is that Men want to be Warriors.
All Men.
They need that.
They want that.
Robert Loring: We ARE Warriors.
Guys -- I know that once we show Men a way to have sex with another Man which honors and exalts their Male, Manly, Warrior Nature -- they'll be
ours.
Through, as Brian says, "total Manly love, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual."
Manly love.
That's what our Man2Man Alliance is about.
And that's what our New Sparta will be about too.
Brian said, "The credit crunch will NOT crunch my Manhood my Masculinity or my Warriorhood."
How can he say that?
Because he's a true Warrior.
And a true Warrior will not allow anything to come between him and his Manhood his Masculinity or his Warriorhood.
Spartans certainly didn't.
And neither will we.
In talking with NW about this, he remarked that "a lot of the younger males don't have the sense of having to fight."
That's right.
In our individualist, greed-driven culture, in which, as Cohen says,
"private gain has eclipsed the public good, public service, even public decency, and where the cult of the individual has caused the commonwealth to wither," many young males -- and many who are not-so-young -- have lost all sense of the need to fight.
But nothing is given you in this world.
You have to fight for it and earn it.
And you will never have what you want unless you fight.
Your life may seem "peaceful" -- but its the peace of the grave, of defeat, of an existence which is empty and soulless.
Brian fights.
And, therefore, he will win what he wants.
Like a true Spartiate, he won't allow anything to crunch his Manhood his Masculinity or his Warriorhood.
He'll FIGHT -- and in fighting, achieve what his heart desires.
Will you?
The Greeks understood that to be happy in this world, Men must experience The Strife of Valour.
The Strife of the Virtuous.
That's what their culture was about.
The Struggle between Two Equally Virtuous and Valorous Men -- to bring their Manhood to Perfection.
They had that Perfection.
We can have it again.
You can have it again.
If you will only FIGHT for it.
Let's look again at the encomium Plutarch delivers at the end of his Life of Lycurgus -- an encomium not just to Lycurgus, but to Sparta itself:
...so long did his city have the first rank in Hellas for good government and reputation, observing as she did for five hundred years the laws of Lycurgus ...
But [at the close of the Peloponnesian War], gold and silver money first flowed into Sparta, and with money, greed and a desire for wealth prevailed through the agency of Lysander, who, though incorruptible himself, filled his country with the love of riches and with luxury, by bringing home gold and silver from the war, and thus subverting the laws of Lycurgus.
While these [laws] remained in force, Sparta led the life, not of a city under a constitution, but of an individual man under training and full of wisdom. Nay rather, as the poets weave their tale of Heracles, how with his club and lion's skin he traversed the world chastising lawless and savage tyrants, so we may say that Sparta, simply with the dispatch-staff and cloak of her envoys, kept Hellas in willing and glad obedience, put down illegal oligarchies and tyrannies in the different states, arbitrated wars, and quelled seditions, often without so much as moving a single shield, but merely sending one ambassador, whose commands all at once obeyed, just as bees, when their leader appears, swarm together and array themselves about him. Such a surplus fund of good government and justice did the city enjoy.
Wherefore, I for one am amazed at those who declare that the Lacedaemonians knew how to obey, but did not understand how to command, and quote with approval the story of King Theopompus, who, when some one said that Sparta was safe and secure because her kings knew how to command, replied: "Nay, rather because her citizens know how to obey." For men will not consent to obey those who have not the ability to rule, but obedience is a lesson to be learned from a commander. For a good leader makes good followers, and just as the final attainment of the art of horsemanship is to make a horse gentle and tractable, so it is the task of the science of government to implant obedience in men. And the Lacedaemonians implanted in the rest of the Greeks not only a willingness to obey, but a desire to be their followers and subjects. People did not send requests to them for ships, or money, or hoplites, but for a single Spartan commander; and when they got him, they treated him with honour and reverence, as the Sicilians treated Gylippus; the Chalcidians, Brasidas; and all the Greeks resident in Asia, Lysander, Callicratidas, and Agesilaus. These men, wherever they came, were styled regulators and chasteners of peoples and magistrates, and the city of Sparta from which they came was regarded as a teacher of well-ordered private life and settled civil polity.
It was not, however, the chief design of Lycurgus then to leave his city in command over a great many others, but he thought that the happiness of an entire city, like that of a single individual, depended on the prevalence of virtue [areté] and concord within its own borders. The aim, therefore, of all his arrangements and adjustments was to make his people free-minded, self-sufficing, and moderate in all their ways, and to keep them so as long as possible.
His design for a civil polity was adopted by Plato, Diogenes, Zeno, and by all those who have won approval for their treatises on the subject, although they left behind them only writings and words. Lycurgus, on the other hand, produced not only writings and words, but an actual polity which was beyond imitation, and because he gave, to those who maintain that the much talked of natural disposition to wisdom exists only in theory, an example of an entire city given to the love of wisdom, his family rightly transcended that of all who ever founded polities among the Greeks.
Therefore Aristotle says that the honours paid him in Sparta were less than he deserved, although he enjoys the highest honours there. For he has a temple, and sacrifices are offered to him yearly as to a god. It is also said that when his remains were brought home, his tomb was struck by lightning, and that this hardly happened to any other eminent man after him except Euripides, who died and was buried at Arethusa in Macedonia. The lovers of Euripides therefore regard it as a great testimony in his favour that he alone experienced after death what had earlier befallen a man who was most holy and beloved of the gods.
Lycurgus was the first Greek statesman to actively oppose wealth, and instead to base his society on virtue empowered by austerity and equality.
The result was a Warrior culture which, for hundreds of years, was fearless, incorruptible, and unstoppable.
A culture which celebrated Fighting, Combat, and the Strife of Valour -- because it understood that they led to Virtue.
A culture which worked to make Ares Lord -- so that the people need have no fear of gold.
A culture in which Austerity and Equality didn't merely trump but eliminated wealth and greed.
A culture which equated both Valour and Virtue with Manhood.
And which put Manhood first.
Manhood.
MANHOOD.
Isn't that what matters to you?
Both in yourself -- and in the Man you'll Love?
Would you trade your Manhood -- for anything?
Is there any object or possession in the world worth more to you than your sense of yourself as a Man -- your Manhood?
And what about your testicles?
If someone offered you a million or a billion dollars to cut off your balls --
Would you do it?
I don't think so.
And if you were the richest male on earth, and I came to you in the guise of a god and said, in return for all your money, I'll take you back to Sparta and to boyhood and let you go through the Agogé and grow up to what you were meant to be -- a Warrior among Warriors --
Wouldn't you do it?
I think you would.
Think about it.
If you could live your life over again --
if at the age of seven, you could join the Agogé --
wouldn't you do it?
To be raised with other boys -- freely and in nature -- by Warriors.
To know that every Spartan Warrior -- every Spartiate -- was your friend, your guide, there to lead you to Manliness and Manhood.
To instill you with Courage and Temperance and Righteousness.
And Wisdom and Piety too.
To teach you to be Brave.
Self-controlled.
Just.
To teach you to reason.
And to honor the Gods.
To teach you how to Fight -- and Live -- as a Man.
To know that your family was the Spartan people.
And that those Pindar calls "the holy race of the Spartoi" were your spiritual ancestors -- and your guides.
Not to have to search for Love -- honorable love, worthy love -- for ten or twenty or thirty years --
but to have Love given you as a gift from another Warrior --
by decree of your people's Lawgiver --
the Lawgiver -- Lycurgus -- who decreed that men should love one another.
And not to worry about money and possessions.
To know instead that your value as both a youth and a Man resided in your Virtue -- your Valour -- your Fighting Spirit -- your Manhood.
I think you'd do that.
I think you'd give anything -- including all your gold -- for the chance to live like a Man.
And not a castrato, a eunuch -- a semi-virens.
Which is what you are now.
And there's a terrible possibility ahead of you --
that having already lost your manhood, you'll lose your money too.
Then what'll you do?
Wise up.
The merest Spartan Warrior, naked, barefoot, with the hard earth to sleep on and barley bread to eat -- lived better than you do.
Because he LIVED.
When will you start living?
When?
You've been part of the strife of greed all your life --
and what has it gotten you?
Nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
But you could have --
VIRTUE.
VALOUR.
MANHOOD.
You can have Manhood.
Or you can have money.
You can't have both.
This is the Market's conception of God:
This is the Greek conception of God:
What makes these statues so vibrant, as I've said before, is that they contain and express areté -- Virtue, Valour, Manhood.
These are, as Jaeger says, Gods in human shape.
Gods in human form.
Gods in the form of Men --
Men who are vibrant with Manhood.
And remember that these statues were modeled upon real people -- real Men.
Men who were vibrant with Manhood because their culture made it possible for them to be so.
If, instead of suppressing your Manhood every minute and every hour of every day -- you could be vibrant with Manhood -- All your Life -- wouldn't you do that?
So -- which will it be?
More pursuit of the almighty and emasculating dollar?
Or the chance of finally living like a MAN?
Choose.
And don't dither.
Because every day you get a little older and a little grayer --
and your Life -- your one sweet precious life -- slips further and further and further from your grasp.
Before it's too late --
FIGHT BACK.
Like the Spartans did.
Fight against Wealth and Greed.
FIGHT with all your MIGHT -- for your RIGHT -- to be a MAN.
Bill Weintraub
January 3, 2009
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People did not stop to help the employee as he lay on the ground, and they pushed against other Wal-Mart workers who were trying to aid the man. The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said.
A woman who's been engaged in a culturally-mandated activity, shopping,
sits wearily alone in a mall, her only companions the things she's bought.
Ares, the Warrior God and the source of areté
in Spartan panoply
Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation
A professed libertarian, he counted among his formative influences the novelist Ayn Rand, who portrayed collective power as an evil force set against the enlightened self-interest of individuals.
Rand's conception of God
the utmost sacrifice to an ideal is a proof of a highly developed self-love. 'For,' he says, 'such a man would prefer short intense pleasures to long quiet ones; would choose to live nobly for a year rather than to pass many years of ordinary life; would rather do one great and noble deed than many small ones.'
From the same root [ARES] comes areté [excellence] ...the first notion of goodness being that of manhood, bravery in war; cf. Lat. virtus.
there was no other difference or inequality between man and man than that which was established by blame for greedy, base, and ignoble actions and praise for noble and beautiful ones
love of wisdom rather than love of bodily exercise was the special characteristic of a Spartan;
A Noble Death
Achilles and Hector, the two greatest heroes of the Trojan War, Fight
Achilles slays Hector, man-to-man, face-to-face, and manhood-to-manhood
Sarpedon
As beautiful in death as he has been noble in life
Indeed, how should wealth be a serious object there, when [Lycurgus] insisted on equal contributions to the food supply and on the same standard of living for all, and thus cut off the attraction of money for indulgence' sake? Why, there is not even any need of money to spend on cloaks: for their adornment is due not to the price of their clothes, but to the excellent condition of their bodies. Nor yet is there any reason for amassing money in order to spend it on one's messmates; for he made it more respectable to help one's fellows by toiling with the body than by spending money, pointing out that toil is an employment of the soul, spending an employment of wealth.
L e o n i d a s
Spartan Hero
will find that his natural instinct for self-assertion
finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice.
Xenophon, in spite of his homely respectability [as an author], was not merely an average man ... the 'man in the street'. He was an individual in his own right. He had his own strange destiny, arising logically out of his nature and his relation to his environment. He was born in the same Attic deme as [the rhetorician and philosopher] Isocrates, and had the same unhappy experiences as Isocrates and Plato during the last decade of the Peloponnesian War, while he was growing to manhood. Like many young men of his generation, he was attracted to Socrates; and although he was not strictly a pupil of Socrates, the old man made such a deep impression on him that in later life, after he returned from his Persian expedition, he made more than one lasting memorial to him in his books. But it was not Socrates that moulded his fate. It was his own burning ambition for adventure and for war, which drew him to the young [Persian] prince Cyrus, that romantic rebel, and made him join the mercenary army fighting under his banner. This enterprise, which he described in his most colorful book, the Anabasis or Expedition of Cyrus, brought him suspiciously close to Spartan political influences, and he was compelled to pay with banishment for the inestimable military, ethnological, and geographical experience he had gained on the Asiatic campaign. In the Anabasis he tells of the estate the Spartans gave him at Scillus, in the farming country of Elis in the northwest of the Peloponnese. It became his second home. He stayed there for many peaceful years, living as a gentleman farmer and writing books. His love for the varied life of the farmer is as strong a characteristic of his nature as his memory of Socrates and his interest in history and in soldiering; and, like them, it is an important element in his writing. ...
[W]e share a new type of love and belief that involves total Manly love, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
[Lycurgus] saw that where the spirit of rivalry is strongest among the people, there the choruses are most worth hearing and the athletic contests afford the finest spectacle.
Working out at the palaistra.
On the left, wrestlers and their trainer; to the right, a boxer wraps his hand in soft leather thongs,
while another athlete softens the sand of the fight pit -- the skamma -- with a pickaxe.
Sparta is a spiritual entity, which assimilates all the loftiest aspects of human life and gives them out as its own gifts.
"By the gods, with a spread like this what greedy characters the Persians were to chase after our barley-bread."
[Lycurgus] observed that where the cult of virtue is left to voluntary effort, the virtuous are not strong enough to increase the fame of their fatherland. So he compelled all men at Sparta to practise all the virtues in public life. And therefore, just as private individuals differ from one another in virtue according as they practise or neglect it, so Sparta, as a matter of course, surpasses all other states in virtue [areté], because she alone makes a public duty of gentlemanly conduct [kalokagathia].
Sparta, as a matter of course, surpasses all other states in areté, because she alone makes a public duty of nobility and goodness.
it was expected that Agesilaus would spend his life as a private citizen, and he was therefore brought up according to the regular Spartan system of education, which is austere in its way of life, full of hardships, and designed to train young men to obey orders. ... The law exempts the heir-apparent to the throne from the necessity of undergoing this training, and so Agesilaus was exceptional in this respect, namely that by the time he came to rule, he had already been taught to serve. The result was that he was on more harmonious terms with his subjects than any of the other kings of Sparta, because the commanding and regal qualities that he possessed by nature were tempered by a kindliness and a regard for his people which he had acquired through his public training.
and the ease and light-heartedness with which he endured [his lameness] went far to compensate for the disability, since he was the first to joke and make fun of himself on this subject. In fact his lameness served to reveal his ambition even more clearly, since he never allowed it to deter him from any enterprise, however arduous it might turn out.
... teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life's ambiguities and conflicts. And it is essential to making us fully human.
it delighted the Greek inhabitants of Asia to see their former tyrants, the Persian governors and generals, who had long been intolerably harsh and who had reveled in wealth and luxury, now bowing and trembling before a man who walked about in a coarse cloak, and to watch them obsequiously change their whole bearing and appearance in reponse to a single curt and 'laconic' speech from him. For many of them this sight called to mind the words of the poet Timotheus
Spartan Warrior wrapped in his red cloak;
notice the elaborately dressed hair and bare feet
Thus in Sparta alone of all the states under the sun was seen that proverbial blind Plutus lying inanimate and inert.
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.
[A citizen of Sybaris once remarked] that is was no great sacrifice for the Spartans to lay down their lives fighting, if this meant an escape from the innumerable hardships and generally wretched existence they endured. Of course, to the Sybarites, a people completely ennervated by their soft and luxurious way of living, it was natural to suppose that these men, whose ambition and ardent desire for renown had banished the fear of death, could only feel as they did because they hated life; but the truth was that the valour of the Spartans gave them happiness both in living and dying, as the following epitaph shows us. These men died, it says
Not seeing death or life in itself as the object of striving,
But to accomplish both nobly, this they considered true honour.
the Spartans at home, who wished to do him honour, issued a proclamation, that any young man who wished to volunteer might enlist to serve the king. All of the young men who were eligible came forward eagerly, and of these the ephors selected fifty of the finest physique and the most active, and sent them to join him.
When [Agesilaus] returned home [from his Persian expedition] his behavior and his mode of life soon earned him the love and admiration of his fellow-countrymen. In contrast to most of Sparta's generals [in this period following the Peloponnesian War], Agesilaus came back from foreign countries the same man as he had gone out; he was neither changed nor influenced by foreign customs, nor was he dissatisfied or impatient with those of his own country, but honored and loved the Spartan traditions just as much as those who had never crossed the Eurotas [the Spartan river]. He made no changes in his habit of dining at the public table, in his baths, his attendance on his wife, the ornaments of his armour, or the furniture of his house : on the contrary, he made a point of preserving its doors, although they were so ancient that they might appear to be the very door originally put there by Aristodemus [the great-great-great grandson of Herakles].
...Agesilaus often declared the justice is the first of all the virtues, for courage is of no use unless it is accompanied by justice, and if all men would only act justly, then there would be no need for courage. Whenever he was told, 'Such and such is the pleasure of the Great King [of Persia],' Agesilaus would ask, 'How can he be greater than I am, unless he is also more just?' Here he was rightly and nobly expressing the view the justice constitutes as it were a regal standard, which serves to measure the superiority of one ruler to another.
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.
From the same root [ARES] comes areté [excellence] ...the first notion of goodness being that of manhood, bravery in war; cf. Lat. virtus.
The Spartan state deliberately made Eros [same-sex love] a factor, and an important factor, in its agogé.
Whenever the kings of Sparta are at home it is their custom to eat together in the same phiditium, or public mess. Agesilaus knew that his colleague [the young king Agesipolis], was prone to form attachments to boys, just as he was himself, and so he often turned the conversation to the subject of boys who were of an age to take part in love affairs. He would encourage the young king and even share with him in pursuing these relationships and act as his confidant, for the general view in Sparta is that there is nothing disgraceful in these attachments, but on the contrary such a love inspires modesty, ambition, and a burning desire to excel, as I have described in my Life of Lycurgus.
A Spartan Warrior-Envoy addresses other Greek soldiers --
the figure is modeled on the statuette we saw above.
Notice the Spartan's simple red cloak, elaborately dressed hair, walking stick, and bare feet
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began -
That the Dog return to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
"Who among the men is the best?" or "What is your opinion of so-and-so's action?" Thereby boys grew accustomed to judging excellence and making a critical appraisal of the citizens right from the start. ... Answers had to be reasoned, supported by argument, and at the same time expressed with brevity and conciseness.
"In elevating to a level of demiworship people with big bucks, we have been destroying the values of our future generation," he said. "We need a total rethinking of who the heroes are, who the role models are, who we should be honoring."
Capitalism is founded on an illusion. It is not only the delayed pain of the credit card bill that comes later, but the inevitable regret when, once home, the purchase disappoints. Is it possible that the present economic crisis is a final reckoning with the lie that happiness can be purchased?
Spartiates' training extended into adulthood, for no one was permitted to live as he pleased. Instead, just as in a [miltary] camp [while at war], so in the city they followed a prescribed lifestyle and devoted themselves to communal concerns. They viewed themselves absolutely as part of their country, rather than as individuals, and so unless assigned a particular job they would always be observing the boys and giving them some useful piece of instruction, or learning themselves from the elders. Abundant leisure was unquestionably among the wonderful benefits which Lycurgus had conferred upon his fellow citizens. While he totally banned their involvement in any manual craft, there was equally no need for them to amass wealth (with all the work and concentration which that entails), since riches were emphatically neither envied nor esteemed. ... As might be expected, legal disputes disappeared along with coinage, since there was no longer greed or want among them, but instead equal enjoyment of plenty, and the sense of ease which comes from simple living. Except when they went on campaign, all their time was taken up by choral dances, festivals, feasts, hunting expeditions, physical exercise and conversation.
"It's gotten worse and worse every year. I can't keep track of them anymore," Grill said of the region's wildfires. "These used to be the out-of-the-ordinary fires, once-in-a-career kind of fires. Now they're every year."
Ike from space
Ike from earth
Ike vs human
equal enjoyment of plenty, and the sense of ease which comes from simple living. Except when they went on campaign, all their time was taken up by choral dances, festivals, feasts, hunting expeditions, physical exercise and conversation.
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
It will be in the valley of love and delight.
Shaker furniture --
or Spartan?
'Tis the gift to be taught and a richer gift to learn,
And when we expect of others what we try to live each day,
Then we'll all live together and we'll all learn to say,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come round right
'Tis the gift to think of others not to only think of "me",
And when we hear what others really think and really feel,
Then we'll all live together with a love that is real.
Statuette of a nude Spartan ephebe or "youth of fighting age"
He may be taking part in a choral dance dedicated to Apollo
A Spartan hoplite drinks from a Kothon, a specially-crafted drinking cup meant to be taken on campaign: "the Laconian 'kothon,' or drinking-cup, was in very high repute for usefulness among soldiers in active service, as Critias tells us. For its colour concealed the disagreeable appearance of the water which they were often compelled to drink, and its curving lips caught the muddy sediment and held it inside, so that only the purer part reached the mouth of the drinker." ~ Plutarch
All the woes of the democracy of his own time seemed to him to flow from one source, the exaggerated self-assertion of individuals, who appeared to think that citizens of a democracy had no duties, only privileges, and who believed that the essence of liberty was to have these privileges guaranteed by the state.
Why, there is not even any need of money to spend on cloaks: for their adornment is due not to the price of their clothes, but to the excellent condition of their bodies.
It occurred to me one day that Sparta, though among the most thinly populated of states, was evidently the most powerful and most celebrated city in Greece; and I fell to wondering how this could have happened. But when I considered the institutions of the Spartans, I wondered no longer.
riches were emphatically neither envied nor esteemed.
... there was no longer greed or want among them, but instead equal enjoyment of plenty, and the sense of ease which comes from simple living.
Except when [the Spartans] went on campaign, all their time was taken up by choral dances, festivals, feasts, hunting expeditions, physical exercise and conversation.
live together and be brought up together, playing and learning as a group. The captaincy of the Troop was conferred upon the boy who displayed the soundest judgement and the best fighting spirit. The others kept their eyes on him, responded to his instructions, and endured their punishments from him, so that altogether this training served as practice in learning ready obedience. Moreover, as they exercised, boys were constantly watched by their elders, who were always spurring them on to fight and contend with one another; in this their chief object was to get to know each boy's character, in particular how bold he was, and how far he was likely to stand his ground in combat.
"Who among the men is the best?" or "What is your opinion of so-and-so's action?" Thereby boys grew accustomed to judging excellence and making a critical appraisal of the citizens right from the start. ... Answers had to be reasoned, supported by argument, and at the same time expressed with brevity and conciseness.
Most ancient writers -- in striking opposition to their modern counterparts -- generally entertained higher expectations of the fidelity and permanence of homosexual passions than of heterosexual feelings.
Doubtless the most surprising and counter-intuitive aspect of same-sex eroticism was not its frequency or duration, but its long and hallowed relationship to democracy and military valor, which modern military officials tend to find improbable or even unbelievable.
Phaedrus argued that no one's behavior is better than that of those [same-sex] couples who are in love, because they would rather behave badly in sight of father or comrade than in view of those they love. He even advanced the idea that:
if we could somehow contrive to have a city or an army composed of lovers and those they loved, they could not be better citizens of their country than by thus refraining from all that is base in a mutual rivalry for honor; and such men as these, when fighting side by side, one might almost consider able to make a little band victorious over all the world. For a man in love would surely choose to have all the rest of the host rather than the one he loves see him forsaking his station, or flinging away his arms; sooner than this, he would prefer to die many deaths: while, as for leaving the one he loves in the lurch, or not succoring him in peril, no man is such a craven that the influence of Love [Eros] cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born; and without doubt what Homer calls a "fury inspired" by a god in certain heroes is the effect produced on lovers by Love's peculiar power. Moreover, only such as are in love will consent to die for others.
A system of homosexual pair-bonding maintained the normal hoplite bonds at a level of ferocious intensity.
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Why, we ask for example, is it better to dominate (or be dominated by) your partner? Doesn't make sense for guys into frot. What we value is the intense and complete equality we feel with our buds and lovers, the face to face, heart to heart, cock to cock contact, in which neither partner is controlling the other. What we seek, as I've said often in my own writing, is the union (or contest) of two equally strong and noble beings, not a master and slave. If that's romantic, so be it. For many of us, frot is the ultimate expression of romance.
Frot is natural and free, equal and masculine, there's no role play or pain, no need for lube or condoms or drugs or a trip to the clinic afterwards. Just two hot men makin it cock to cock and dick to dick.
"This is the natural means of personal adornment, and it costs nothing."
requires his workers to take their shoes off before entering clients' homes (God knows how much their carpets cost), and to avoid using their bathrooms, waiting instead for a lunch break outside the home.
Sparta is a spiritual entity, which assimilates all the loftiest aspects of human life and gives them out as its own gifts.
Where swords are thickest and the attack most pressed
And guard the walls he loves with naked chest.
Spartan Hoplite vs Apulian (Italian) Cavalryman
the Spartan is nude even though his opponent is clothed
statues that stand on their same base.
and in every boat, sweet song,
go forth from Aigina and spread the news that
Lampon's mighty son Pytheas
has won the crown for the pancratium in Nemea's games,
not yet showing on his cheeks late summer,
the mother of the grape's soft bloom.
his looks, and by winning in the wrestling match
he proclaimed long-oared Aigina as his fatherland,
where Themis, the saving goddess
enthroned beside Zeus, respecter of strangers, is
venerated most among men...
the son of Aristophanes has embarked on utmost
deeds of manhood, it is no easy task to go yet further
across the untracked sea beyond the pillars of Herakles,
which that god-hero established as famed witnesses
of his furthermost voyage.
this hymn has struck
with young men's voices as it celebrates this land's joy.
Loud acclaim is in order for victorious Aristokleidas,
who has linked this island to glorious praise
and the hallowed delegation of the Pythian god
to splendid ambitions.
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