The Spartan warrior as a symbol for ferocity, courage, and strength is a common symbol throughout the United States. In fact, just the other day I drove by a sign for a dojo called Spartan Martial Arts. On a larger scale there are the Spartan Races where you run around a bunch of tough obstacles at varying distances. The list goes on. Don’t get me wrong. I fell into this trap when I was young also. It is ubiquitous in the overall culture of the United States.
But the hard right loves, loves, loves to use the metaphor of the Spartan anytime they want to invoke the idea of toughness, manliness, and the idea of being the apex of society. It’s a part of their obsession with projecting strength and hyper-masculinity. Recently, SecDef Pete Hegseth stated that our soldiers need to adopt a spartan mindset while talking about male testosterone levels in the military.
But I actually think the obsession the hard right has with the spartan aesthetic is hilariously ironic. Sparta was a slave holding, child abusing, pedophilic military state that didn’t last due to their extreme ideology being unable to adapt to the rest of the world. Unfortunately for the right-wing obsessors, MAGAs, and SecDef Hegseth with their “Molon Labe” bumper stickers and shirts, the Epstein Files are where the parallels stop.The romantic image of Spartan life bears little resemblance to the highly militarized slave society described by ancient sources. But popular media and cultural constructions would have you believe the opposite. So let’s deconstruct this a little bit.
For starters, a young male born in Sparta was taken away from his family at the age of 7 to train. This training wasn’t just rigorous, it was deadly. They were purposely underfed, forced to steal food, beaten when caught, beaten when not caught, beaten anyway, and forced to fight for everything. Oh, there was also an annual beating. At the age of 12 they were paired with an older warrior for . . . “mentorship.” The ancient world is full of information on what really happened behind closed doors (Herodotus; Plutarch). All of this was meant to weed out the weak by literally killing them.
Economically, Sparta was entirely reliant on slave labor for everything except their main soldiers (I say main soldiers because they did use their servants and slaves as force multipliers in the same way we use reserves today). As we know from history, slaves tend to not want to be enslaved and revolt from time to time. That doesn’t make for a very good economic system where all your food, clothing, metallurgy, etc., comes from the people you oppress who also happen to outnumber you.
It’s a laughable position to say you’re a Spartan or even compare yourself to one as if you were taken away from your family at age 7, beaten, tortured, underfed, brutally trained, left to the elements, and at the age of 12 paired with an older man for some good old fashioned pedophilic time.
So, no Mr. Hegseth, you are not a Spartan warrior and we don’t need anymore of your mythological fantasies driving us further into authoritarianism.
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