Redstate

By Skanderbeg Posted in Archived — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

First off – no, I haven’t seen “300” and have no plans to do so. I’m not a “movie person,” and any sort of Itchy-and-Scratchy gore-fest just isn’t my cup of tea (or shot-glass of raki).

On the upside, the surprising opening success of the film at the box office has already had some important positive consequences. David Kahane notes at National Review Online that Hollywood can’t ignore this, and is all abuzz about it – and he’s even optimistic that it might actually be a turning point as Hollywood discovers that there is indeed a market for (and an image-upside to) making films that laud, well… “truth, justice, and the American way” (in modern or archaic forms… and if that format worked for Giuseppe Verdi, it will work for us too).

Even better, it sure has made Iran mad (hat tip: Tim Blair – and it’s worth following that link just to read the blurb that they’ve added to the bottom of the movie’s promotional poster). Maybe next, someone could make a splashy movie about how Cyrus the Great released the Jews from the Babylonian captivity – it would be worth it just to watch all those mullah-heads exploding like firecrackers.

On the downside… When I first saw the adverts for the film appear a few weeks ago, I have to say that they appalled me. Thermopylae is an engrossing story, but the adverts looked like they were for one of those flying-dragon medieval-themed fantasy stories rather than for a real historical event involving real human beings. My thought was that we’d get another “entertainment for the video game generation” story, where they would find it all to be “wicked cool” while never grasping that this was real history – and part of a knife-edge series of events that involved the near-extinction of Western civilization. (Perhaps the sequel, “Salamis,” will do a better job on this count.)

Finally, it is simply not possible to understand Thermopylae without some understanding of Sparta itself. Sparta was one of the strangest and most quirky societies in history; that history – both social and political – is what really made the conduct of “the 300” possible.

Here’s a small opening excerpt from something that your humble correspondent wrote up last year…

Sparta is one of the great enigmas of history – a society both praised and reviled, usually as either fashion or political expediency has seen fit. Sparta apparently arose when several Dorian villages along the Eurotas River in the southern Peloponnese agreed to amalgamate themselves into a single political entity. Exactly how this happened is not known, but whatever the origins, this gave Sparta an unusual political arrangement. Sparta was nominally a monarchy, but it was a strange one. There were two separate royal households, each of which provided a hereditary king – at any given time, Sparta had two kings. While these kings had considerable power – particularly as leaders of the army in the field – real power (particularly at Sparta itself) was exercised by five ephors. These ephors were elected by and from the Spartiate (professional warrior) class, but were still subject to the laws of the city. In some sense, this provides insight into the nature of “oligarchic” governance in classical Greece; truly despotic governance was rare, and notions of the rule of law existed and survived in oligarchic city-states.

The social organization of Sparta was also bizarre; it reflected both the city’s vulnerable location in the Eurotas Valley – and a problem introduced by Spartan territorial expansion. Some time in the late 8th century B.C., the Spartans moved over the mountains to the west of the city and attempted to conquer the region of the southwestern Peloponnese known as Messenia. The Spartans doubtless coveted Messenia because it was one of the best regions (in what was overall a small supply of such land) for cultivation. According to semi-legend, the Spartans persisted for twenty years before they managed to subdue Messenia; many of the Messenians fled into exile in Aetolia.

In order to exploit this fertile land, the Spartans set up a feudal system of large estates, with the Messenians reduced to the status of serfs known as helots. A major difficulty with this system was that the helots vastly outnumbered the Spartans. Sometime in the middle of the 7th century B.C., there was a major helot uprising; Sparta had to use every last ounce of its strength to put down this rebellion – even receiving aid from Athens.

Interested in the continuation? Say so in the comments…