THIS IS SPARTA!!!

300 right?  It's that movie that is sort of like Sin City, only not black & white, where you get to see super buff men wearing next to nothing fight other super buff men wearing next to nothing to defend the freedom of Europe from the tyranny of the Middle East.

It was the #1 movie for straight men in 2006.

Who wouldn't love that?

Now it's time to ruin it for you & tell you what life was really like.

I'll just throw out the facts & let you make the inevitable conclusions.  That's seriously what I'm going to do, because I've been in a situation with Ben, at work, where I've had to defend the Greeks & I've been in situations in the comic book store, shortly after the movie was released, where I've had to defend Freddie Mercury...who was British by way of Tanzania, & not at all Persian, but eventually this will make total sense...it might make sense...I'll leave you to decide.

Time to play the old man card.

If you are my age when you were a little kid there was something called the Soviet Union, which we called the "Evil Empire" only to have Rage Against the Machine turn around & call us the "Evil Empire" & I'll leave you to conclude who was right & who was wrong.  Inevitably I'll get around to that one too.

But the Soviet Union fell & if you are my age it fell when you were a little kid, still in elementary school, but that doesn't matter because, the history teachers you had were all from the Cold War & never really listened to Rage...unless you went to Cary-Grove & you had Mr. Hoffman...who didn't listen to Rage but still wasn't a Cold Warrior.

It's amazing the difference one teacher can make.

At any rate, back in the day, Sparta was taught as an allegory for the Soviet Union & Athens was the Allegory for the United States.

The Soviet Union looked like this:

Yeah, you saw that right, there's only one country that separates Finland from North Korea.

The Soviet Union was certainly an Empire.  Sparta was not.  Sparta was a City State.  It looked like this:

It's not all the purple.  Look closely.  You see that little red dot that says "Sparta?"  That is actually Sparta.  The rest of the purple are just the City States that sided with Sparta.

With the Soviet Union, all that purple would be under the direct control of Sparta...if Sparta were the Soviet Union, but it wasn't, it was Greek, it was actually all Greek, & that means that all that purple had complete autonomy.    They answered to themselves, not Sparta.

So there is a pretty big difference right there.

You see that other dot?  The one that reads "Thebes?"  Why isn't it in Egypt?  That's probably going to be a post in the future.

Anywho...The allegory fit because the Spartans used to kill babies that were deformed, & they owned a lot of slaves, & they had a communal society, despite the slaves, & focused on war & not philosophy.

The Russians killed babies?  No, they just starved Ukrainians...who were the original Russians, but it makes for good propaganda.

Athens was the the allegory for the United States because they owned fewer slaves, focused on philosophy & not war, & had a class based quasi-capitalist society that included slaves & wasn't nearly as communal....there was also less baby killing.

The Athenians were clearly the more Democratic Greek people.

Well, that might be suspect.

In Sparta the women could vote, they couldn't vote in Athens.

In Sparta every Spartan citizen could vote, in Athens only the wealthy Athenian citizens could vote.  The land owning class.

In Sparta every citizen was required to serve in the military, just like the Soviet Union...& South Korea...& Israel...& Switzerland...& a number of our other close allies.

In Athens the military was volunteer only...just like the United States...after the War in Vietnam.

If you read The New Republic they are burning Obama's recently issued draft cards.  If you read a high school history book you'd realize that is a Vietnam Era draft card & if you've actually read The American Pageant in high school...back in the 1990s...you've already seen that picture.

Anyway, in Athens, yes, they focused on philosophy & they did NOT in Sparta....

...But in Sparta literacy was a requirement & so was education where in Athens, no, only the upper-class could attend school...& only if they were men, where in Sparta women were also required to get an education.

And in Sparta women could own property & testify in court where in Athens they could not.

But Sparta did have a lot more slaves & Athens didn't but in Sparta the child of a slave was a citizen of Sparta & in Athens only the male child of a slave was a citizen of Athens & only if they were originally from Greece & ended up wealthy...otherwise they were just "free," but didn't have the same legal rights as the citizens.

So there you go, that's the difference between Sparta & Athens.

Now to war!

It all started because of a little place called Ionia.

That's Ionia, it is clearly in Greece, or it would be, you know, if Greece was in an entirely different continent.  You know, if Greece was in Asia & not Europe.

So...you know..not in Greece at all.

So what?

The Persians, under Cyrus the Great, conquered it, after Greece colonized it, well, after the Athenians colonized it.

It was under Persian control, but the Athenians funded a series of Ionian revolts.

So you know that scene where the dude was kicked down the bottomless pit & Leonidas screamed "THIS IS SPARTA!!!!!"

He really wasn't demanding tribute, he was sort of there to say:  "Chill! Stop starting wars."

And Leonidas really said:  "THIS IS SPARTA!!!!!  Athens is over there.  If you scroll up a little you can see it on the map, it's the little red dot labeled 'Athens.'  Go talk to them, it's there problem."

But the thing is, the Persians were an Empire & it was all Greek to them.  The Greeks had united a few time in the past, &, if you are from the Middle East where you dealt with enormous empires & not little autonomous city-states, well, it was all Greek to you.

So instead of giving him directions, Leonidas kicked him down a bottomless pit that didn't really exist but looked awesome in the movie.  Instead he kicked him into Sparta's water supply & poisoned the entire city.

But the Persians didn't know Greek politics so instead of asking for directions he quoted Freddie Mercury & said "just surrender & it won't hurt at all."

Because Freddie Mercury was bad ass...even before he was born.

And he had enormous teeth:

 Freddie Mercury was also a Zoroastrian, & so were the Persians....so now it's time to look at the Persians.

If you read the other posts you will know that in Zoroastrianism, slavery was illegal, & we now know that both Athens & Sparta held slaves, & had different rules for the slaves becoming citizens.

So you know, the Persians come steaming into your country & like Sherman, they force you to free all the slaves.

That shit ain't good for your economy.

You know that story from the Bible when the Hebrews were freed from bondage in Babylon & allowed to return to their homeland?  That's because the new empire that took control of Babylon was Zoroastrian & they couldn't legally hold slaves...so they let the Israelites go, who could own slaves, but not so long as they were still part of the Persian Empire.

This is also why the Hebrews didn't own slaves again until they broke free from Persia.  Just as a side note, the Zoroastrians are also a monotheistic religion, they only have one God & it's about this time that the Hebrew God got a "divorce" & the Jews became an honestly monotheistic religion.

You know, the 1st commandment:  "You will put no other god before me."  It really implies that there were other Gods & in this case, he was talking about his wife.

Now hold on.  The movie said that Xerxes was a God-king....

Yeah, there's a story behind that too.  The Persian Empire was an EMPIRE, it had a shit-ton of people from all over the known world, & in the army, a lot of them weren't exactly Zoroastrian & were worshiping him as a God.

When you are monotheistic that is a no-no.  So, on the way to Greece, he encountered a storm that created enormous waves & got in the way of his trip to war.  So he ordered his non-Zoroastrian soldiers to whip the water while he ordered back the waves.

He meant it as a demonstration that, no, he wasn't a god...but the Greeks heard about it & they were polytheistic, they worshiped lots of gods & a monotheistic religion like Zoroastrian was, well, Greek to them, so when Herodotus wrote it all up, he used the whole thing to make fun of Xerxes ego & not praise his humility.

Early propaganda.

The Persians also couldn't lie...I know what you are thinking, but back then, a lie was called a druj & it was a mortal sin & back then you took your God a lot more seriously than you take him today.  So, to make sure you didn't piss off God, they would kill you for telling a lie...even a white one.

It made marriage difficult.

"Does this dress make me look fat?"

More importantly, the Persians are also the culture that invented the desert.  They are the reason why we enjoy sweets after dinner.  This practice of eating a desert was totally objected to by the Greeks & often caused a few dining faux pas...when they weren't trying to kill one another.

It wasn't until the Ottoman Empire that picked the tradition up from the Persians, that the Greeks started eating sweets after dinner & now we can enjoy a nice baklava.    

And then there is the whole beer thing.  Even Socrates had to praise that.

"People that get drunk on wine end up passed out in their own vomit.  People that get drunk on beer end up on their backs laughing."

Beer was the nectar of the gods in the Middle East & it was the nectar of the god in Persia.  You were not allowed to own slaves, but back before the Persians, the Sumerians & the Babylonians thought you were an asshole if you didn't give your slaves beer.  You had to give them one gallon a day otherwise they would take your slaves away because you were mistreating them.

In all honesty it was because the water sucked & they didn't want your slaves to die...but the Persians took it to a whole new level & had stocks of beer for the people too poor to afford their own.

So, you know, you were still subject to an totalitarian emperor, but you weren't a slave & he made sure you were hammered.

Back to the war....

The Greeks had a habit of burning cities to the ground & Xerxes burned Athens to the ground.

But the Persians did not have a habit of burning cities to the ground.  In fact, it was a very bad thing to do if you were a Persian & at war & had a monotheistic God that valued human life a lot more than the ancient Greek gods.

So Xerxes, in a fit of rage, burned Athens to the ground & we all saw that in the movie 300.

What we didn't see was the immediate aftermath, where he felt absolutely horrible about it, asked forgiveness from his god, & stopped his army dead in its tracks to rebuild Athens to all its former glory.

So he burned it to the ground & then rebuilt it, giving the 300 Spartans & all the angry Athenians more than enough time to meet up at the Hot Gates & die...which gave the Greeks more than enough time to unify for the first time in their lives & kick some Persian ass....after a long & brutal war.

But the Greeks never forgave Persia for burning Athens to the ground...& then rebuilding it & telling them all how sorry they were for burning it in the first place.

So a few centuries later we have an angry Greek, who was really not Greek but Macedonian, that went steaming into Persia to take out Darius for revenge for Xerxes' burning & rebuilding of Athens & we all had to sit through one of Oliver Stone's worst movies because of it.

So, who was the good guy, who was the bad guy?  It's up to you to decide?  Are you pro slavery or anti-slavery?  Are you pro-democracy or anti-democracy?  Are you pro desert or anti-desert?  Are you a bigger fan of Zach Snyder or Oliver Stone?

I'll leave it to you to decide, because, you know, Zoroastrianism gave us Queen & the Greek Gods gave us bad movies & even worse Walt Disney cartoons & History Channel Documentaries.

I'll leave you with this: