I am trying to reconcile the Spartan land dominance of this thread with @BretDevereaux’s fascinating and compelling “The Myth of Sparta” essays and I need help.https://twitter.com/Roelkonijn/status/1412107564452548612 …
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Yes, and there is some very good scholarship on how the things that make them good at pitched battles get misapplied with disastrous results - such as Anaxibios deciding to fight to the death against Iphikrates at Abydos, which just gets a bunch of Spartiates killed for no reason
And honestly, I think the stubborn arrogance that made the Spartiates such awful diplomats was probably a factor in the cohesion of that phalanx too. Sparta really churned out men 'of a type.' Brasidas is, I think, the one ringing spartiate exception.
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I would be very wary of Thuc's extremely self-interested attempt to paint Brasidas as the great exception... If Brasidas was indeed a different type, so was Gylippos, Lysander, and perhaps Klearchos
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True, though I feel like those are the exceptions that prove the rule; Lysander and Gylippus were not Spartiates but mothaces. And all three faced significant resistance from the Spartiate political establishment.
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