We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Go tell the Spartans what a bunch of Nazis they are If it were not for the fact that I saw ‘300’ on its UK opening night (i.e. last night), then this hilariously PC review would have me thrusting my hand into my pocket to whip out the price of a ticket:
It’s an ugly business: brutal, racist, homophobic – dare I say fascist? Harmless escapism indeed.
Damn those warmongering Neo-Spartans!
I am sending an email to the producers with my suggested title for a sequel – “300 II: the Persians are back and this time they’re Islamic!!” The cultural cringe alone will be worth the budget.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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It’s a comic book movie, folks. Relax.
– Josh
The real Spartans were not very nice guys. Nazi-like seems rather appropriate. The treatment of the Helots, including the execution by the Spartans of Helot volunteers who had helped them during the war against the Persians in order to avoid having to emancipate them, was amazingly vicious by modern stanards. The Spartans were also pretty nasty to each other — they were by no means free to live their own lives and the male Spartan citizen was essentially a member of an elite fascist/collectivist overclass.
I’m not particularly comfortable with comic books or films glorifying them any more than I would be comfortable if, 2200 years hence, someone wrote a comic book glorifying Stalin. Saying “it is just a comic book” makes me think back to people who wear Che on their clothing and say “but it is just a T-shirt”.
“…someone wrote a comic book glorifying Stalin.”
Funny you should mention that…
I saw that drivel posing as a review which seems to view everything through the PC-looking glass but what do you expect from someone who is as ignorant to try and dismiss Thermoplyae a greek myth? There are things the movie could be criticised but not the turd of a non argument she presents.
Perry M – the key phrase of yours is “amazingly vicious by modern standards.” I know the Spartans weren’t the sort of people you’d find at a church fete, but the trying to fit historical peoples / figures into a into a modern philosophy is lazy and reduces the them into something they are not.
And yet, despite their heroic stand at Thermopylae, the Spartans, through Plato’s “The Republic” are the fathers of totalitarianism as we know it. I know Victor Davis Hanson’s arguments on this one but they don’t convince. I stand by Popper’s slant (Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol 1 & Vol 2), any day.
I didn’t go to see 300, although I was invited, because I am scared of anything that even might be a slasher movie. But, I greatly prefer a movie about Spartans that makes them seem like the actual Spartans as they really were, rather than like 1950s Americans, for instance.
Recently, and I didn’t see that one either, wasn’t there a movie called Troy, in which the whole religion thing was glossed over, presumably because American teenagers wouldn’t get it?
And now there is Wilberforce, in which (and again I’ve not seen this yet, maybe because nobody has yet, don’t know) the religion thing is again downplayed, or so I have read.
I dare say that the Hollywood movie about the 9/11 attackers, which I’ve not seen because they’ve yet to make it, will omit all but the most fleeting mentions of Islam.
One of the good things about Gladiator was that they did at least try to get into the mind of a Roman by alluding to the Elysian Fields, etc., even if they did only bolt that on afterwards. That movie I did see.
Hear hear Hovis, 2500 years ago the world was a brutal, vicious and dangerous place. The Spartans politcal and social structure was necessary to their culture’s survival. Trying to compare their situation and society to today’s is like comparing an elephant to a ballet dancer.
Methinks Armanidinnerjacket doth protest too much. Maybe he realises how close his culture actually is to that of the ancient persians. Brutal, oppressive, amoral* and theocratic.
*Yes I do mean amoral, I would be extremely surprised (as I think I’ve said before) if those in charge in Iran (the theocrats) actually believed the tosh they feed their young men and women. Religion is a tool to them, they impose a set of morals on their people which I have no doubt they do not follow themselves.
I don’t get the “racism” charge, either. As much as Greece and Persia have been invaded and massacred ad infinitum over the centuries, it may well be that the ethnic Greeks and Persians of 2500 years ago no longer exist.
Well, I saw 300, and thought it was alright!
I don’t think nazi is too strong a word to describe the Spartans, really. Highly militaristic, racially inclined, etc. I don’t really care, 300 nazis versus 1 million slaves would still be the stuff of legend. Also Way Back Then its not like they had enlightenment values to defend. Compared to the absolutism of the Persian Empire the Spartans seem preferable to me, especially as they looked upon themselves as the protectors of Greece as a whole, including such things as the Athenian democracy.
re. Brians point on Troy, the Greek gods were specifically pissed on in one of the scenes. I put that down to Hollywood’s Judao-Christian god values, still, it did totally wreck the movie for me. The gods were kinda the point. The ephors in 300 didnt look so good either but then they were supposed to be somewhat villainous so, was OK with me.
And being comic-booky everything is played up like LOTR. Ogres and such on the Persian side, elephants four times bigger than real elephants. Still, good stuff. If you like overblown heroism then you’ll like 300.
Go stranger tell reviewers this
Their feeble left-wing thoughts are piss
Might one add that Leonidas died with them?
Also, to admire the good that they sought to do is not to dismiss their regrettably 19th century attitude to the lower orders.
Oh, to hell with it! It’s obviously just your standard ogre-raping, pink-gay-Persian-emperor-bashing, elephant-inflating, feelgood movie.
I’m sure that, on the day Iran kidnapped 15 British sailors and marines, we can all get behind it.
I saw it with Thaddeus and sundry other members of the Libertarian Phalange and whilst we applauded the modernist pro-reason message of the movie, we did have a chuckle at the notion of the Spartans, of all people, rabbiting on about freedom! In reality it was a brutal military dictatorship.
But then this was not a film about history, it was a film of a graphic novel about the battle of Thermopylae… and unlike the other Perry, I will take my propaganda wherever I can find it. The mere fact it seems to be outraging the Iranian government is reason enough to go see it 🙂 Still, how weird is that? A government in 2007 getting upset over the portrayal of something that happened in 480 BC!!!
I was also rather entertained by the fact many of the Persian soldiers appeared to be, well, orcs! I thought it was good dumb fun with many good lines (some straight out of Herodotus).
Why is modern man so afraid to speak honestly of the past. We all have one, every empire has had one, every ideology has a past, albeit by different names.
All empires had their lawmakers, their thinkers and their enforcers.
For the Greeks it was originally the Spartans, then the Macedonian s, the Roman’s raised enforcing armies from its colonies, and the British used the Scots, Welsh and Irish as its prime enforcers around the globe.
As horific and bloodthirsty as much of those times were, the fact is that they were.
The past is gone, what was done was done, nothing we can do about it, other than learn from it.
No-one should try to hide it by rewriting history, nor decry it by trying to denounce it now.
To get a better idea of what this narrow pass looked like, I found a modern photo at:
http://www.livius.org/a/battlefields/thermopylae.jpg
This gives a good view of the scene looking eastwards, so that the mountains are on the left and the (not visible) sea is on the right. The narrow mountain track can just be seen where the steep rockface begins.
What is to me interesting is that the sea has retreated so far north that there is now plently of room for a modern highway and agricultural land, a breadth that would have been impossible for a small group to defend. Moreover, the highway is significantly higher than the land to the north of it, and the overall landmass appears so large and substantial that it would be hard to explain as mere landfill.
My feeling is that there has either been substantial uplift of the land since ancient times or that the sea level has declined. If the latter, it might support the argument against global warming and glacier melting.
To reiterate some of the common sense written above, it is a movie adaption of a graphic novel created for an American audience. Should fetching Lena Heady start rabbiting on about the swing member of the gerousia or the how they should launch an impromptu public relations campaign to force that 5th ephor to side with Leonidas’ foreign policy strategy? That would be to remake the Phantom Menace.
The Spartan example is many things to many peoples. There is an interesting book about it published by OUP. The title is something similar to the ‘Spartan example in post-Enlightenment Europe’; apologies, I am away from my library at the moment. It details the Spartan pedagogic approach as an influential factor in the German primary secondary system, English public schools and continental educational theory. Happily, it is subdivided into geographically and chronologically-specific chapters, so you can skip the bits you find tedious.
And lest we tar the Spartans , remember the Athenian authors of last half of the 5th century and their attitudes towards the Spartans. I can not remember any animus in Thucydides, the old Oligarch or in Plato against Spartans as a people, even though they were Dorians and not Ionians. There is a grudging respect for the Spartan consitution and their faithfulness to the laws of Lycurgus, even though the authors held Spartan society in contempt.
As for being xenohpobic, all archaic Greece was xenophobic. Check Meiggs, de Saint-Croix, Kagan or even VDH’s new book, about the percentage of metics in the fielded armies during the Pelopennesian war. Greece was not late imperial Rome. Being a citizen with full rights was the exception, not the rule.
I should say that I am inclined to think favourably of any culture which records its greatest triumph with a simple inscription: speak, stranger, to the Lacedaemonians that we lie here obedient to their laws (bad paraphrase). Contrast that with Voelkerschlachtdenkmal in Leipzig or all that mawkish neo-classical marble on the Mall. It’s really quite nice.
As a cultural aside, there does seem to be a cultic appreciation of the Spartans in the deep South. Growing up I was told repeatedly that Spartan mothers demanded their sons come back with their shields or on them and the story about the Spartan child with wolf (he was called to attention and had secreted the wolf in his tunic. the wolf started eating him and he refused to flinch, since having a wolf was contra legem. The wolf killed him, but he stood at attention, God bless em). The first story I group with such helpful paternal advice as ‘Dont pull a gun unless you are ready to use it’, the second I think stems from the War between the States. Had the Confederacy a coherent war strategy and much less faction, Jeff Davis and Lee could have won it. The non pre-literate branches of my family were told the same stories…
The Spartans politcal and social structure was necessary to their culture’s survival.
Um,
The Spartan culture was killed by their political and social structure. Prior to their going totalitarian their culture was as vibrant as that of any other Greek society. Within 100 years that was all dead, gone, all creativity quashed, never to return.
While other Greek societies flowered Spartan culture stultified.
But what else would you expect from a vicious totalitarian state?
It’s clear and unambiguous. There are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys are westerners.
They’re brave, and they’re willing to die for their city, and take as many of the bad guys with them as they can.
It doesn’t matter what the Spartans were or were’nt in real history—in this comic book movie, they are courage and virtue.
No wonder it drives the PC crowd nuts. Good.
That was true, once upon a time.
And the bad guys are the multi-culti bar scene from Star Wars, transported back to ancient times. Yes, some people would do well to duct tape their heads before venturing off campus to see this flick.
Incidentally there were quite a few battles at that pass throughout history – including one in 1941 between Australians and Germans. Swap the Immortals for the SS and ANZACs for Spartans and you could bring 300 up to date. 😉
Regardless of the rather dismal acting, coupled with some truly amazing cinematography effects and brilliant editing I’m 100% with this movie if only for the fact that it has seriously pissed off Iran, for instance:
Well, Xerxes might not have been a 10′ black man but Herodotus’ account, of a ruler who when faced with his failure to bridge the Hellespont ordered the water to be lashed 300 times and fetters to be thrown into the waves, doesn’t exactly do him any favours either. Perhaps when Ahmadinnerjacket revises Persian history he can paint Xerxes as a kind, sharing, ruler who didn’t really slaughter a large number of Egyptians, Greeks, Babylonians and anyone else whom he objected to. Any movie that manages to provoke Ahmadinejad into denouncing it gets my vote anyway – bad acting notwithstanding.
Its funny the way people here criticise cultural relativism, but then proceed to deploy it in defense of the totalitarian regime of the Spartans.
It was not a system necessary for the survival of their culture, other than in their culture being absolute state control over the lives of everyone.
There were other political systems less brutal which led to flourishing culture and the survival of culture.
Sparta is the liberal/libertarian enemy number one in Ancient Greece, it is the antithesis of all liberal thought, to defend it using cultural relativism is the same as defending the slavery of women in parts of the modern world as being part of their culture.
tristan, thanks for repeating the points already made by others but one does need to keep in mind the fact this was ‘the-movie-of-the-graphic-novel’ and I do not think the idea was to honestly convince anyone than in reality the Spartans were libertarians any more than the Persians were actually so corrupt they had physically turned into orcs.
Spartans/Nazis? I can see that, even if it is back to front. I’ve no doubt there were Nazi conceptions of militarised society consciously modeled on Spartan example.
But homophobic? Maybe the movie is, but the Spartans had universal, institutionalised homosexuality.
mandrill,
2500 years ago the world was a brutal, vicious and dangerous place
It still is.
Perry wrote,
“I saw it with Thaddeus and sundry other members of the Libertarian Phalange and whilst we applauded the modernist pro-reason message of the movie, we did have a chuckle at the notion of the Spartans, of all people, rabbiting on about freedom! In reality it was a brutal military dictatorship.”
Yes and No. Clearly Sparta was an illiberal society. I would not want to live in it. However it was not a dictatorship. It was a constitutional republic-monarchy, though an extreamly militaristic one. Read John Adams’ coments on the Spartan Constitution in his Defense of the Constitutions. He points out its flaws and sees it virtues.
Tristan wrote
“Its funny the way people here criticise cultural relativism, but then proceed to deploy it in defense of the totalitarian regime of the Spartans.”
It is not relativism to point out that things must be judged in context. The Spartans do not live in the 21st Century. They had only Athins, not the Unted States, Great Britian, and even god help us france to as an example of a relativly free society.
“There were other political systems less brutal which led to flourishing culture and the survival of culture.”
True, but would western civilization even exist without the 300? Maybe, Maybe not. We can not help but be thankful that they saved greek civilisation from conquest.
“Sparta is the liberal/libertarian enemy number one in Ancient Greece, it is the antithesis of all liberal thought, to defend it using cultural relativism is the same as defending the slavery of women in parts of the modern world as being part of their culture.”
This would be relativism only if we were defending a Sparta that existed today, in fact it is contextualism. Further, may I add, I think that people who belong to barbaric cultures are partly excused from the enomity of their crime. However that is an arguement for ending or changing their culture, not pretending that all cultures are equal.
Hmm, even if one does not want to fall into the cultural-relativist trap, one can judge what was the lesser of two evils. The Spartans held out for long enough at Thermopylae and set a brave example for the rest of the Greek cities, which set the stage for the Athenian naval victory at Salamis. It was also in these wars that the Greek city-states started to think of themselves as Greeks and not just as products of their specific areas.
The Athenians are to whom we owe the idea of institutional democracy, but the Spartans allowed that idea to survive because of their actions at Thermopylae. One can condemn the Soviet Union and what it stood for, but one can hardly minimize the Soviet contribution in defeating Nazi Germany. Also, one can appreciate a common soldier’s courage and sense of duty without endorsing everything they fight for.
No, the standard image of Che is nothing to do with communism. It was done by Andy Warhol for fuck’s sake. It turned the “heroic revolutionary” into a consumer product.
Thermopylae is so far in the past that it is to all intents and purposes almost a legendary event and if the retelling in 300 glorifies them as defending values they in reality didn’t have then who cares? You might as well slag off Shakespeare for not presenting a true picture of Agincourt or certain dynastic issues in Denmark, Scotland and England.
Our identity is essentially mythic. In a very real sense we embody those myths when we struggle and fight and die. 300 represents a truth which is more relevant now because it has been re-jigged as a defense of freedom because whether you like it or not we Westerners are actually engaged in a battle against an ancient tyranny from the East right now.
My favourite book is The Lord of the Rings. It is fiction but still contains many truths about friendship, freedom and the nature of evil. It’s well worth reading regardless of whether or not there ever was a Dark Lord called Sauron.
If you watch “trailer 2” to 300 the voice-over states that “We Spartans are descended from Hercules himself”. Well I doubt that’s true either but that myth, that idea was enough to make them utterly hard bastards.
I’m going to see 300 tomorrow, at the IMAX in Manchester and I’m really looking forward to it.
This is where WE fight, this is where THEY die
Oh dear.
Toryboy.
Really.
Enlightenment?
Where on Earth did those of the enlightenment get the scientific method from, if not Ancient Greece?
Am I wrong?
If I need to know, tell me.
Of course when Iranian state television depicts real Jews today as deformed monsters who eat children, that’s dandy. What a bunch of retarded dipshits these people are, if I was leading them I’d use them as human minefield clearers too.
Of course Sparta is not worthy of admiration, but it’s worth remembering why they so commonly are, namely the propensity of Athens’ self-appointed intellectual elite to praise them. Plus ca change.
I find no problems in admiring the defenders of Stalingrad, so don’t be surprised if I admire the 300!
The 300 need not be democratic (which army ever is? Spartans were bascially a professional army) but they fought to preserve proto-democracy.
As for the Spartan system, IIRC, the Spartans had dual kings to prevent totalitarianism and were forbidden property or wealth but could vote. Those who were allowed wealth, trade and property could not vote or decide in matters of state.
That is one answer to the problem of corruption and the lust for territory or treasure that drove so many Kings.
That to me is not “fascistic”, but if someone can enlighten as to why it might be, I am all eyes.
My preferred solution for today is to revert to the pre-1908 idea that those who draw an income from the State are not permitted to vote.
Bugger
Life as a Spartan citizen would certainly not be to my taste, but this is not the main point. I’m sure most samizdatists would agree that the primary problem with Sparta is that its existence was predicated on the systematic subjugation and exploitation of a far more numerous quantity of serfs with no rights, legal or otherwise.
If you don’t think a military caste having untramelled power over everyone else is fascistic, perhaps you’d like to enlighten me as to a better term. (I agree, incidentally, if this is your point, that throwing around the F word is lazy and un-illimunating so I, too, am all eyes).
Better
For Thaddeus Tremayne:
I’m tired to see films with manipulations against conservadurism and liberalism, film which pretends that the socialism and the sinesters ways are the ways to freedom and ilberty (what is false). Nazi is from National SOCIALISM. ¿Did you know it? And what about U.S.S.R (United SOCIALIST Soviet Republic)? If you want to live under a true totalitarism go to Cuba. I want to live truly free in my civilization and I respect those who fight against the yihad.
Oh, well… maybe if I am a fascist you sure are a deformed…
You gotta admit that the rallying cry, ‘give them nothing. take from everything’, is the only thing in the entire trailer that sounds remotely like what a Greek might say. As an english approximation of ancient Greek, it is a lovely symmetrical men/de construction.
Personally, I think these three hundred heroes who willingly laid down their lives to save the western world from two thousand years of oriental despotism adopted the wrong tactic.
I think they should have leafletted the Persians, instead, or perhaps sold them some red spongey noses.
That would have done the trick. Yes, it would have prevented King Leonidas from uttering the immortal words, Molon Labe, Come and take them!, which later inspired the American revolutionaries to throw off the British imperial yoke, but perhaps, We willingly wish to lay down our weapons and subject our families to enduring despotic tyranny was too difficult to say in ancient Greek?
The Hellenes believed that NO man was a God, that all were subject to the human condition. Even the Spartans, brutal slave owners that they were, recognized peerage and “freedom” for a class of its citizens.
Like the early United States, which also existed in bizarre duality of freedom and slavery, once a culture has admitted that a certain class of people is naturally free, then there exists the possibility for further inclusion in this class.
In Persia, ALL were subject to the God-King.
Today it may sound like a hard choice, fascistic Spartans or slave driven Persians, but as someone else has mentioned, there was little other in the way of better examples. As for me, I would have sided with the Hellenes.
Gabriel,
I think it is clumsy. There are three layers. The militaristic totalitarian (for themselves) somewhat authoritarian (for themselves) hereditary and democratic (for themselves) Spartans. The merchant classes IIRC were not bound by the authoritarian, totalitarian and militaristic aspects but were disenfranchised democratically. The Serfs were…serfs. The Spartans were not corporatist and did not control business AFAICT.
A militaristic hereditary cult? Yes. Fascist? I think it really is misleading to use that term IMHO.
Someone else made the point that once you allow people to vote, to question and veto the leaders (as Spartans evenntually could do), then the door is open for ALL. Rome took the ideas forward, allowing non Romans, sons of freed slaves to rise up to the highest levels. It does appear to me that Spartans actually wanted their system to work for the best using what means and ideas they could subject to reason.
I agree, but it is perhaps no more misleading than the very common elision of ‘Democracy’ as we understand the term and how the Greeks did (for example, Aristotle pointed out that elections were not characteristic of democratic government in the Greek sense). Nonetheless, I do not think it is worthless to contemplate the lessons of Athens when we try to sheer our current ship of state.
If we take the idolisation of the military life or devotion to hierarchy as the essence of Fascism then the Spartan analogy makes more sense, naturally, than if we judge the idolisation of autocracy or a centrally planned economy to be its raison-d’etre. No-one is seriously suggesting that a response to the conditions of 20th century European nation-states would be the *same* as a response to the predicament of Greek city-states. (Ideologies are not, as the vulgar believe, a set of doctrines, but a collection of answers to implicit questions). However, that does not mean that all analogies between movements in different time-periods are wrong, it just means that people like Murray Rothbard who work their way through history books dividing people into ‘my gang’ and ‘baddies’ are wasting their time.
In general, historical understanding is never advanced by bringing present day concerns into the matter. However, present day concerns can very well benefit from the application of historical analogy … it’s a fine line.
It would be easy enough to make a P.C. film about Ancient Greece.
For example, one could make one about the time that the Spartans defeated the men of Argos and a poetess (name, I can not remember the name) led the women, metics (non citizens) and slaves of Argos to the successful defence of the city (of course Argos, like Sparta, was a Dorian city – so the women would have been less sat on than they were in Athens, although oddly enough Athens got worse over time)
However, I doubt the feminists (and other such) would be interested in this any more than they are interested in Ethelfleda (Aethelflaed) daughter of Alfred the Great, Lady of the Mercians, and great war leader of Anglo-Saxon armies (and what a film her life might make – the first fight being a desperate defence of a roadside embankment when the Vikings tried to eliminate her on her way to wed the King of Mercia).
As for the Spartans:
They remind us that there are many different political systems – not just “democracy and dictatorship”.
There are two Kings. They did not undergo the special education (from age 7) shown in the film – only the last King of Sparta (before its defeat by Thebes) had undergone such an education (and he was not rightfully king – and he was not much good). By the way the last King (before the defeat) was also born with a defective leg – so the Spartans were not totally ruthless about aborting imperfect babies.
But the Kings (as the film correctly showed) were not all powerful (far from it).
What the film calls “the council” would have been the Gerousia (the elders of families – a Senate). But of course there was the Assembly where all male citizens over 30 could gather (assemble) to make their wishes known (although this did not tend to mean changing the law – Sparta had a respect for the law).
The five main Judges (the Ephors) were elected by the citizens and formed what might be called an Executive Council – as far as I know they were not inbred mutants (but the film and the comic book may have access to something I have forgotten).
It is quite true that the Helots were treated badly. Indeed the Ephors declared war on them every year – without this declaration of war they could not be treated like this (under Spartan law).
Indeed the conquest of Messenia (730-710 B.C.) meant the decline of the old aristocratic Sparta – one of the cities most know in all of Greece for its poetry and respect for the Arts (yes Sparta not Athens).
The people of southern Greece viewed Sparta as an honourable defender against Argos. But Sparta and Messia were foes.
Of course they could have simply exterminated the population when they defeated the city (not an unknown policy in the ancient world – kill the adult men and sell the women and children as slaves all over Greece, so they will be disunited and forget that there were ever one people), but they could not bring themselves to do this.
So the people of Messenia became the enternal enemy – whose crops were stolen (as a matter of policy) and so on, for centuries till Sparta was defeated by Thebes and the city of Messenia restored. Sparta could have accepted the people of Messenia as part of their own people (much as Alfred the Great is said to have accepted any Norse or Britons [Welsh or Corninsh] he wised to be part of the people of England), but such a leap is difficult.
Sparta continued to be seen as faithful friend by near by states it was in alliance with (an alliance that lasted for centuries). And the metics and “dwellers round about” the periokoi (the “neighbours”) were not slaves. Indeed the light troops (archers, slingers, javelin men and so on) in Spartan armies tended to be from these groups – not Helots. To turn to the Helots the Spartans would have to be desperate – and (of course) they would have to kill any Helots who had learned the art of war, as if they were freed they would still be enemies.
This is because the Helots were not really traditional “slaves” at all. They did not have individual masters – they really were enemies (born that way) made to work by the state (state slaves if you will) like a bunch of P.O.W.s of a war that started long before they were born, and P.O.W.’s with no Geneva Convention (one of the rites of passage for a child in the special education was to go and raid the Helots, and sometimes the boys died on such raids).
And (of course) citizen women had more rights in Sparta than in any other Greek city state – including unlimited rights to own land.
So it is all very complicated – and yes the Spartans were not nice. Indeed full Spartans who were male (apart from the Royal familes) had no other business but war – as the film correctly said, they had no crafts, or farming skills, or trading practices.
None of these things were banned in Sparta (it was not socialist) – but full Spartans who were male had nothing to do with them (at least not whilst they were of military age).
This made full Spartans rather different men from say the Athenians with their two years national service and then part time training. A bit like “Starship Troopers” with Helots – rather than just “Citizens” and free people who are not citizens (which Sparta also had – see above). The only people who could be in the Assembly and so on were those who had gone through the Spartan system – and it turned out soldiers and nothing else.
On the other hand the Persian Empire was rather simple.
Contrary to what various people have been saying on American television the Great King was master and the various populations were under his absolute power.
Private property existed – unless he said it did not (in your case) and so on. Eastern despotism.
I have not seen the movie, though I remember that the Spartans were a form of Evil Empire on a small scale. I also remember that they practiced a gay life-style, and couldn’t figure out why their population numbers were always going down.
What I want to know is- does the chief baddy (the king) have an English accent? Is this just another exercise in Brit-bashing? (I recently realised that a movie that many libertarians like, ‘Serenity’, perpetuates the archtype- the chief villain, even if he does repent, still has an English accent, and the hero has an American accent!)
I got up off my fat American arse to actually travel to a theater to watch 300, because, I wanted to hear Man Talk, see Man Armor, cheer vicariously with Man Cheers, and see a bunch of Man Slaughter. Pissing off Iran, with whom we have been at war for 30 years, was a bonus.
Darryl, hasn’t the US guv., through the CIA, been interfering in Iranian affairs for over 50 years? Who gave them the last Shah? It’s not as though anti-americanism had NO basis in history. I don’t think what the Iranians are now doing is right, but I know that it’s not without some cause- the whole nation didn’t just have a bad-hair day.
Actually nick g. it was the evil British (together with the nice Soviets) who got rid of Shah in 1941 and put his son on the throne – the C.I.A. did not exist at the time.
There was a C.I.A. operation in 1953 to remove a pro Soviet Prime Minister – but the Iranian Revolution was in 1979.
The Shah was rather useless. He nationalized lots of things (including oil), and strangled Iranian owed business enterprises with regulations. He also stole the large estates – either breaking them up into uneconomic peasant plots, or putting them under government control.
It was all part of his “White Revolution” which even the most fanatical death-to-America type would find it difficult to describe as “capitalist” or in the service of the United States.
I suppose the argument was that (however statist) the Shah was at least anti Soviet – this is an argument that was made about many socialist party governments in various parts of the world (indeed the C.I.A. spend a lot time, money and effort on supporting antiSoviet socialist parties – a fact that rather surprises people who think of the C.I.A. as “right wing”).
As for the Revolution of 1979 (and the terrorist war against the West in general and the United States in particular that the Iranian regime has undertaken since the Revolution) it is rather hard to see how this was provoked by President Carter – unless one means provoked by a display of total weakness and demands that the Shah “respect human rights”, rather than torture and kill his enemies (which has always been standard political practice in that part of the world).
Could the C.I.A. have saved the Shah from the Revolution (if not from the cancer that was already killing him)? I do not know – but I do know that President Carter ordered everyone (not just the C.I.A.) not to help the Shah.
President Carter was a true benefactor to the Islamic Republic. A regime that has always had far less respect for “human rights” than the Shah ever did. And a regime dedicated to inflicting as much harm on infidels as possible.
Paul, it was the 1953 events to which I referred. That Prime Minister had been very popular. The British AND the Americans have a bad reputation in Iran, because of history. One reason the last Shah was so active was because of a desire to prove that he wasn’t beholden to either Britain or America. Darryl seemed to be taking it out of context by suggesting that they’d decided to hate America 30 years ago- as though there was no other history between them. An Iranian would not stop at 30!