Introducing the Ancient Greeks by Edith Hall

Author:Edith Hall [Edith Hall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2015-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Nineteenth-century engraving of the Spartan infantry in combat with the Persian army at the battle of Plataea. (Author’s personal collection)

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Spartan Inscrutability

THE SELF-SACRIFICIAL DEATH of King Leonidas and his three hundred warriors at the battle of Thermopylae, the “Hot Gates,” is the enduring image of Sparta that has come down to us. In late summer 480 BC Xerxes, king of Persia, marched with his enormous army southward through the country, having hitherto met little opposition. According to Herodotus, who was writing within living memory, Leonidas had decided to meet Xerxes at Thermopylae because he was stung by allegations that the Spartans were secretly siding with the Persians and because he wanted to test the resolution of the other Greek states. He may also have expected reinforcements from Sparta to arrive before he joined battle. Although his three hundred Spartans were actually supported by nearly seven thousand other Greeks, they were still vastly outnumbered. Leonidas had nerves of steel and played a waiting game for days, hoping to unnerve the invaders. His bravest hoplite, Dieneces, used biting Spartan humor to keep up Greek morale: A rumor spread that the Persians had so many archers that their arrows would block out the sun, so Dieneces responded, simply, “Then we shall fight our battle in the shade!” It took thirty-six hours of violent combat for the Persians to wipe out Leonidas and Dieneces, along with almost their entire rear guard, the hard core of Spartan hoplites.

The image of warriors of Sparta cracking acerbic jokes in the face of death encapsulates the paradox this strange city-state presents. The most military and brutal of ancient Greeks, the Spartans were also the most famously witty. Indeed, Sparta was one of only two ancient Greek city-states known to have built a special temple for the god of laughter, Gelos, in which to worship him. One of the names for their home territory in the Peloponnese was Laconia, or Lacedaemon—which is why their shields bore the letter L (lambda) rather than the letter S. This is the root of our resonant word “Laconic,” first adopted into the English language in the late sixteenth century. Plutarch (AD 46–120) assembled Laconic Sayings and Sayings of Laconian Women, which circulated in modern-language translations. They are still studied by speechwriters and stand-up comics as the foundational examples of the one-line putdown that silences wordier interlocutors: “With it or on it!,” as the Spartan mother commanded, pointing at her son’s shield as he left for war; “Come and get them!” replied Leonidas, when the Persians demanded that his Spartans hand over their arms. In the Iliad, Menelaus’s way of talking is described by a Trojan who has met him: “he did not say much, for he was a man of few words, but he spoke very clearly and to the point.” Spartan kings were already regarded as economical with words when the Iliad was composed in the eighth century.

Yet no amount of grim gallows humor can explain why Leonidas led the Spartans to near-certain

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