Spartan influence
Sparta had a dual influence on Greek thought: realistic and mythological. The reality is that Sparta defeated Athens in the war, and the myths about Sparta influenced many thinkers and writers, including Plato.
Sparta is also known as Lassi monte. The Spartans were a race of rulers who enslaved the local indigenous People, the Hilo people. The Hilo people hated their enslaved status so much that they rebelled whenever possible. The Spartans' method of dealing with the Hilo was brutal, declaring war on them once a year. In this way, the spartan youth could kill the Shilohs at will, which they saw as untamed, and would not be guilty of crimes because of it.
The only profession of Spartan citizens was war, and they were trained in war from birth. Weak babies at birth are simply discarded, and only robust babies can be raised by the state.
It was a Spartan state policy not to make every Spartan citizen poor nor to make every Spartan citizen rich. Sparta is notorious for its simplicity.
(With regard to the impact of Sparta, I would like to introduce it from two very different perspectives.) One is through the accounts of the Greek writer Plutarch in the Greco-Roman Celebrities of the Roman Empire; the other is through the descriptions of Herodotus, who lived at the height of Sparta, and Aristotle, who lived after Sparta's decline. ）
Greece's influence on the world was mostly achieved through the combined effects of people's imaginations, ideals, and hopes, unlike the Roman Empire, which directly influenced the conquered through political power (military power). The medium for the political spread of Greek civilization was never the Greek world, but it was the genius of the Greeks who inspired the peoples on the outside and allowed them to spread the culture of the conquered.
Plutarch described Sparta this way: he traveled around Cugu to study and study different systems and formulated Spartan laws. He separated the soldiers from the others and gave the men in all professions a peace of mind; he divided the land equally among the citizens of Sparta and avoided international trade, thus "driving out the city all bankruptcy, jealousy, greed and enjoyment, and all affluence and poverty."
Laiku's attitude towards women and marriage is more for the purpose of promoting fertility, which is also close to the principle adopted by farmers to raise livestock. Babies are treated entirely as property of the State, so that only healthy babies are left behind to be raised by their fathers; if they are unhealthy, they are thrown directly into deep puddles. Children receive rigorous training from an early age, they only learn what is useful to them, and the rest of the time is spent learning how to obey, how to endure pain, how to work hard, how to maintain restraint and calmness in war. Homosexuality was a recognized custom in Sparta and was included as part of the education of adolescent boys, but mainly for mutual supervision and promotion of progress.
It can be said that spartans were free at any stage of their lives.
Sparta's influence on Plato is obvious, and his book "The Republic" basically depicts the ideal situation of Sparta in his mind, which is a kind of utopian ideal state.
However, how did Herodotus and Aristotle evaluate Sparta? Their assessment of the Spartan polity was entirely negative.
Herodotus commented that no Spartan could refuse to take bribes, although contempt for wealth and love of a simple life had always been advocated by Spartan education; spartan women were not necessarily loyal, because several heirs to the throne were deposed because they were not the king's flesh and blood; as the victor in the Battle of Platia, the Spartan king Pasanias was eventually bribed by the Persians and became a traitor; Spartan policy was essentially narrow and localist. This can also be seen in the fact that they preferred to engage in internal conquests with Athens over the liberation from the Persians of the other inhabitants of Asia Minor, who were also Greeks. It can be said that any attempt to establish a Greek world alliance was frustrated by the narrow notions of the Spartans.
Aristotle's assessment was even worse, arguing that Spartan women lived in indulgences and extravagance, and that wealth was overtaken when citizens fell into the domination of their wives—apparently different from what their education had advocated; he accused spartans of insatiable greed and attributed this to inequality in the distribution of property (supposedly seemingly absolute fairness would lead to absolute corruption); the most corrupt aspect was the system of ombudsmen in Sparta, because the ombudsmen were usually poor, It is therefore easy to take bribes, they also have too many unsupervised privileges, and excessive strictness on ordinary citizens will provoke ordinary citizens to seek liberation by indulging in secret and illegal carnal pleasures.
The conclusion is that idealism and greed for power combine to lead people astray time and time again.
Putting everything in Sparta in perspective is a question that we modern people need to think about seriously.