Bret Devereaux

Taking out all of the cruel things Sparta does in our sources renders it a largely unexceptional Greek oligarchy, no more worthy of praise or admiration than Tegea or Elis or a dozen other poleis you've never heard of. 10/18

The second contradiction is in the treatment of the sources: if our - generally pro-Spartan - sources do not know, do not understand, or are not honest about Spartan customs, why on earth would we believe their praise of the Spartan system? 11/18

I saw this line with the agoge - "Oh, the agoge wasn't that bad." Ok, then it was boring, unexceptional and uninteresting Greek education? "Oh no, it was the coolest, bestest Greek education." But the only thing exceptional about it was *how bad it was.*" 12/18

That's practically the sum total of evidence we have about it! The same is true for the helots. There's no way to sanitize this society without reading the helots out of it, which is why that is exactly what treatment after treatment does. 13/18

Or else the violence of what is being related in the sources is covered over with bloodless phrasing - one textbook "the system of helotry...the only polis with an economic system totally dependent upon geographical and social distance between landowners and workers" 14/18

(Points for those who guess which commonly used college textbook that quote is from). But - no mention of the murders, the violence, the cruelty. And no undergraduate is going to know enough to realize that "social distance" here means "Gulag-esque brutality" 15/18

We need to be honest about this society. And if that turns some stomachs - GOOD. It should turn some stomachs - even if you think it achieved equality for the citizens who sat atop their mountain of brutalized slaves. And, to be clear, it didn't. 16/18

This post, of all of these posts, I most want to find its way into the hands of high school world history teachers everywhere - just because their state-mandated textbook ignores the helots doesn't mean they have to. 17/18