Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "Units of History - The Spartan Royal Guard DOCUMENTARY" video.

The idea that the Spartans never actually trained with weapons doesn't pass the common sense test. You can't be an effective soldier without a mastery of your weapon, be it a spear or the M16A4 I carried in the Marines. This is especially true if you're fighting in formation.
22
@ParallelPain You said a lot there that was entirely irrelevant and a lot that was seriously misguided. Weapons training in Napoleanic era armies does not equate to rounds fired. Most soldiers at the time were armed with muskets which were the antithesis of a precision weapon, and as such live fire would have had only limited use as a training tool. What would have been important for them to master was the drills involving reloading and such, drills that can easily have been done dry. Dismissing phalanx fighting as requiring no skill with weapons is absurd, and clearly comes from a position of zero military experience. How, for instance, did a phalanx transition from carrying their spears towards a contact to getting them into attack position smoothly? How did they transition from spear to sword? How did they parry an enemy spear, or learn to thrust accurately with one hand, hitting the enemy while avoiding their comrades in the rank in front of them? You say that "most Greeks" didn't train, and this means something, because reasons. How often did "most Greeks" go to war? How effective were "most Greeks'" phalanxes? The fact that nobody specifically mentions weapons training by no means implies that it didn't take place. Common sense dictates that it must have.
6
@ParallelPain Citing "reenactors" (ie adults who still play dress-up) as "evidence" is a sure sign that you're doing something wrong. From what I've seen of those people, they're absolute clowns who could never be mistaken for any type of actual soldier. That being said, the fact that the Spartan hoplite was an effective soldier is evidence that he trained with his weapons. Your arguments to the contrary are either gross oversimplification of tactics that you don't understand or red herrings - that most casualties occurred during a rout doesn't mean that sloppy and ineffective is a good way to train. You have to get the enemy to rout in the first place, and you do so by being good at fighting. Furthermore, we don't actually know if the spears were held overhand or underhand, and there seems to be compelling evidence for both. My guess would be that both were used, depending on the situation - which, by the way, would be further evidence of weapons training, as how to employ a given weapon in a given situation requires training. Basically, you don't offer any actual evidence that they didn't train with weapons. Common sense would dictate that they did, as well as the known fact that they were effective soldiers who managed, for a time, to maintain military hegemony over vast swaths of territory. This would not have happened but for weapons training (in addition to physical conditioning and formation training). Quite simply, a soldier who is not able to employ his weapons effectively is not going to be very good at fighting. Your dismissal of phalanx warfare as "simple" notwithstanding, this has applied everywhere, throughout history, with zero exceptions - whether you're a hoplite or a legionary or a Balearic slinger or an English archer or Napoleonic grenadier or a modern US Marine. Weapons training is not the be all and end all, but it is an important facet in making an effective soldier.
1
@ParallelPain No weapon operation is "intuitive". It doesn't matter what it is. And there isn't a weapon on earth, in all of history, that you can immediately pick up and be able to use effectively, especially against someone who is simultaneously trying to use his own weapons on you. Right now you are relying on the fallacy that absence of evidence is evidence of absence - we don't have any per se evidence of the otherwise obvious fact that soldiers train with weapons, therefore they didn't. There are many areas of history where we may lack concrete evidence of things that we know must have been true. This is apparently one of them. The fact of the matter is that it isn't feasible that the Spartan army did not train with the tools of their trade. The fact that many Greek city states' armies were apparently known for minimal training is not a relevant data point here. The fact that Spartan hegemony didn't last all that long points far more to their whole unsustainable "master race" thing than their military efficacy. Anyone with any understanding of soldiers, of war, of military history, knows that to be an effective fighter requires a mastery of weapons - whatever those weapons may be. Because despite what you may think, it's never as simple as it looks. Yes, it may be harder to hit someone with a rifle than with a spear. That doesn't mean that hitting someone with a spear - especially when that someone has armor and his own spear that he's trying to hit you with - is something that can be done repeatedly and reliably without training. And training is even more necessary when the fight has come to a scrum, spears have broken, and swords are drawn. You can continue to deny it all you like, you can continue to present an oversimplistic and frankly silly idea of what you think warfare was like back then, but the fact remains that it is very literally inconceivable that weapons training wasn't a thing.
1