Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "The Rise and Fall of Sparta - From Superpower to Tourist Attraction DOCUMENTARY" video.

  1. Tourist: "Where for Sparta?" Spartan: "THIS IS SPARTAAAA!" Tourist: "Ok, thanks."
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  2. "every guest will receive the 'earth and water' gift pack".
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  3. It was debated even at their time. For most of their history they had been nothing special. The Thermopilae had been a great propaganda coup for them, and they mostly built their warrior mith from there, bur their allies complained that, in the end, they always chose the easiest side of the formation, leaving to them the elite enemy units.
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  4. Only full citizens could fight in the army, and to be a full citizen you must have a certain income. The Spartan laws on inheritage were bound to reduce the full citizens (Spartiates), and so the army since: 1) Spartans could only own land, not commerce. 2) inheritance had to be equally divided among sons. 3) Spartiates had to sit in a Syssitia, and each member was required to contribute monthly with 77 litres of barley, 39 litres of wine, three kilograms of cheese, 1.5 kilograms of figs, and ten Aegina obols, so you had to be pretty rich to sit in one. This way, families with many sons (that could have contributed to the army) became too poor to be full citizens, while the wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer families with few sons.
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  5. He invaded their lands and divided part of them among their neighbours, weakening them further. So yeah, badass answer, but not really a victory.
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  6. Tourists: "Where for Sparta?" Spartan: "THIS IS SPARTAAAA!" Tourist: "Ok, thanks."
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  7. Yeah, absolutely. The pre-Thermopilae agoge was nothing so dramatic. Spartans were rich loafers that, in the Olympyc games, shined only in the chariot race (the competition of the rich loafers). After the Thermopylae, they begun to build the mith of the "tough warriors", hardening the agoge and trying to live up to the mith. In Roman times they took that to the extremes.
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  8.  @rayne_brown  Spartan army in Philip's time was not large at all. That had been precisely the problem that led to the fall of the Spartan power. There were very few citizens that had the right to fight in the army. At Mantinea the entire Spartan army was composed of 3584 men. As for "well trained", they could be marginally better trained than the other Greek formations Philip crushed, but they were still oplites (and very conservative ones). The Macedonian phalanx was a change of paradigm.
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  9. The Spartan laws on inheritage were bound to reduce the full citizens (Spartiates), and so the army since: 1) Spartans could only own land, not commerce. 2) inheritance had to be equally divided among sons. 3) Spartiates had to sit in a Syssitia, and each member was required to contribute monthly with 77 litres of barley, 39 litres of wine, three kilograms of cheese, 1.5 kilograms of figs, and ten Aegina obols, so you had to be pretty rich to sit in one. This way, families with many sons (that could have contributed to the army) became too poor to be full citizens, while the wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer families with few sons.
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