For Want of a Better Title

Sparta and Athens: A History Teacher’s mistakes

March 30, 2007 at 3:15 am | Posted in But Seriously | 3 Comments

An article on Sparta from my Brudders at the Void Deck.

The article is about Sparta and Athens, published in Today by a history teacher:

—

Are we Sparta or Athens?

Tuesday • March 27, 2007

Lim Cheng Tju

IF YOU haven’t watched 300, the movie adaptation of the Frank Miller comic book about the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, go watch it. And I’m not saying this simply because I’m a comic book fan.

300 tells the story of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans who defended Greek freedom and democracy against the tyranny of Xerxes and his massive Persian army. The Greek city-states were disunited and slow to put up a defence against the invading 200,000-strong Persian army, which had reached the shores of Greece.

It was against this wave of mass destruction that King Leonidas of Sparta decided to take a stand at Thermopylae, the Hot Gates.

Leonidas knew that his army of 300, no matter how disciplined and well trained, were no match for the sheer numbers of the Persian army.

But he was no fool. An excellent military strategist, he decided to fight a battle he knew he would lose, in a bid to win the war. If his objectives of inspiring and uniting the Greeks were achieved, then the sacrifice of the 300 men would be worth it.

That was why the Hot Gates was a strategic terrain for the Spartans to put up a defence against the Persians. It was a narrow passageway fenced in on both sides by mountain cliffs. By blocking the mountain pass of the Hot Gates, the small army could inflict maximum damage to the advancing Persians.

The end of this battle was never in doubt. The Spartans held the Hot Gates for three days, but were totally decimated to a man. But the high cost in human lives for the Persian army to achieve this victory over just 300 men put a damper on the larger army’s plans and troop morale was affected.

More than that, the sacrifice of the 300 spurred the rest of the Greek states into action, for they had been shown that the Persians could be pushed back.

The Athenians went on to score a naval victory against the Persians off Salamis and, in 479 BC, the Spartans had their revenge at Plataea.

I first read about the 300 Spartans when I took History as an A-level subject about 20 years ago. The tale was part of the syllabus of the now-defunct Paper 14 on Ancient History.

While the story of the 300 particularly made history come alive for my classmates and me back then (which teenage boy would not like a tale of bloodshed and heroic battles?), I remember those history texts painted the Spartans in a negative light.

Although they were portrayed as a disciplined and hardworking citizenry, Spartan leaders and people were deemed to be lacking in imagination, creativity and sentimentality.

On the other hand, Athens — seen as the centre of Greek arts, culture and civilisation — was held up as a shining example of Greek democracy. After all, what did the Spartans leave behind except, well, the word spartan?

Is that a fair summation of the Spartans? And does the description of their society also apply to Singapore? Even back then, I realised there were surface similarities between Singapore and Sparta. And in an interview a couple of years ago, retired top civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow said as much.

“Singapore is like Sparta, where the top students are taken away from their parents as children and educated. Then, cohort by cohort, they each select their own leadership, ultimately electing their own Philosopher King. When I first read Plato’s Republic, I was totally dazzled by the great logic of this organisational model where the best selects the best,” he said.

“But then, as I reached the end of the book, it dawned on me that although the starting point was meritocracy, the end result was dictatorship and elitism. In the end, that was how Sparta crumbled. Yet, Athens, a city of philosophers known for its different schools of thought, survived. Sparta is long forgotten. (Do we want to be like) Sparta, a martial, well-organised and efficient society, but in the end, very brittle; or an Athens, untidy, chaotic and argumentative, but which survived because of its diversity of thinking?”

Definitely food for thought. But in today’s context and geo-political climate of transnational terrorism and sovereignty disputes, such dichotomy is false.

My take is that Singapore can and needs to be both like Sparta and Athens — to be strong in spirit and body like the Spartans, and also to be creative and imaginative like the Athenians.

As we grow and get ready for the next stage of expansion as an aspiring First World nation that is projecting a population of 6.5 million in the near future, we need to develop new strategies of moving forward, thinking a few steps ahead of the competition and drawing inspiration and strength from all areas — including the lessons of the past and what history has to offer us.

There have been debates in the past about the survival chances of small nation states such as ours. But our size, to me, is not so much the issue.

It’s what we do next that defines us.

The writer is a 35-year-old history teacher.

—

What a load of hogwash if you ask me. Seriously. Although I don’t advocate using Wikipedia as a tool for serious research, I’m also not about to type out excerpts from a book on Greece. So heres the wiki for Spartan history. Please note that Athens fell before Spartan arms and was then made to suffer Spartan oligarchic style rule. Even Philip of Macedoni, the only man in the world who can ask Alexander the Great “Who’s your Daddy,” left Sparta well alone. (Daddy laid the foundation to Alexander’s greatness)

So I’ve decided to reply to Mr Lim’s article and correct this teacher of history, I hope they will publish it to enlighten us all:

Dear Sir/Mdm,

I disagree with Mr Lim’s assessment of history. As a student of Paper 14 as well I am shocked at his limited knowledge of ancient Greece.

Sparta survives Athens, and in fact defeats Athens during the Peloponnesian War. It goes on to impose a oligarchy on Athens. In fact Alexander the Great ruled all of the Greeks except Sparta. Sparta proves more resiliant than Athens.

Athens was a bully ruling the Delian League as if it were an Empire. Forcing weaker Greek states to join or perish. On the other hand the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta, was more an alliance of equals than an Empire.

Sparta was a democracy of sorts too. It has a dual Kingship to suppress absolutism, popularly elected Ephors (magistrates) and the gerousia (Senate). One cannot discount these as non-democratic elements.

I feel that Mr Lim’s rather flippant comment about what Sparta is remembered for is detrimental, especially for a teacher of history. A student of classic Greek history studies both Sparta and Athens. One cannot simply say that Sparta left nothing behind.

One of the reasons Athens comes out looking better is because Athenians loved to wrtie things down. Spartans preferred oral transmission of knowledge.

A lack of knowledge on Sparta does not make Sparta insignificant in the study of history and government. As for his assessment that we should be both Spartan and Athenian, I can only say look to Venice. I believe that we are more like Venice than Sparta or Athens combined.

—

For more info on Sparta read my old post on it.