The Spartans

BBC Sounds, music, radio,

Podcasts.

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, brand new history podcast for people who don't like history. Or rather, why you hated it at school. It was boring, irrelevant, you were 16 for Pete's sake, and who gives a crap about the Weimar Republic, whatever that is. But things change. You're older.

Hello.

Michael, teşekkür ederim.

Some pleasure.

Uh you are a professor of classics, that's a really serious job title. What does that mean?

That means I get to spend my my day to day immersed up to my eyebrows in the weird and wacky world of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Oh we love that. Yeah, we'll have some on that please. Thanks very much. Joel, your day job a bit different.

Thank you.

I'm uh I just I and also when you did that intro I realised I watched Invisible City. And I was like, that's where I know you from.

And I watched Diamond Celebrity.

Oh my god, we're both secret fans of each other. This is so exciting.

Do you love history, Joel? Are you filled with dread the idea of being locked in a room with two historians? No.

I'm actually really excited about it'cause I really I really love I love history and I love learning. But my brain is full and so I can't retain anything. So I really enjoy conversations, but I because I'm like, Oh, I'm learning so much, but I immediately forget. And so I just

Once a week if you just keep re listening and go, Oh yeah, the Spartans. All right. Well I mean the Spartans are Famous. And the reason we're doing this episode is because people listening at home, you've probably heard of the Spartans, via pop culture. Most likely the movie Three Hundred. And we'll be talking about that film a bit. I know Joel you're a fan.

Master fan of that film.

Good, excellent.

Get us out of the way before we go on any further. One, two, three SPARTE!

Oh, so good. Lovely feeling.

Showing the lungs like that.

I feel like we need to slightly lower like our voices when we do it. It's there's nothing worse than sort of three n nerdy dudes.

Channel inner Gerard Butler right now. It's fucked.

That's really lovely. Very very nice baritone. So what do you know?

People at home, if they're thinking Spartans, they're probably thinking uh let me just run through some of the stereotypes. They're probably thinking the ancient Greeks who made the other ancient Greeks poe themselves in terror. They hardcore heroes slash fascist, depending on who you ask, uh with amazing abs. They're oiled up, they had long hair, they were ripped to the point of being sort of cheese graters. They were elite warriors, they were

This is most definitely Sparta. The studio right here. This is Sparta. You heard it here on the

Okay, but uh if I can Gerard butler my way into a second question, where is Sparta? And how long ago is Sparta?

Okay, so how long ago is the easy one, right? In the same we're talking two and a half thousand years ago. It's the kind of heyday of the three hundred movie moment. Uh, we're talking about the same time that the Athenians were building the Parthenon and they were inventing democracy and it's all that kind of moment. So it's a really c in the big story of human history, this is a key point, right?

Is that where we get the word laconic from? Exactly. So people who are laconic are I mean they they're really chill and cool and they say things short and pithy and punchy. Yeah. Not like I've done there. They I've

Wonderfully summing me up there, Greg.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

But where these names come from, bro, there's a great it it's the first kind of mythical king and queen of Sparta. One was called like a diamond and the other was called and she was called Sparty and they sort of gave their names to the town and the t territory. They were like, We're just gonna name it after ourselves.

The branjolina of the

Exactly. Like kind of and you know, one was a son of Zeus and the other was like son of a river uh daughter of a river god, you know, and you're kind of like, All right, all right and they claim to be descended from Heracles, you know, Hercules, Huncules, kind of that guy. Uh so i they had a pretty good rep before they even got going.

In the ancient world, I mean you've already mentioned the Athenians, when we talk about the ancient Greeks, there's loads of different ancient Greeks and it's a bit like that sort of variety breakfast cereal pack you got as a kid, you got seven different types of breakfast. Who are the cocoa pops of the ancient Greek world? And the Spartans are they all bran? What's the

That would totally depend who you're gonna ask, right? No, Spartan's gonna say I'm an all brand. Uh but they probably would look at the Athenians and go, You show off cocoa pop, turn your milk, chocolatey kinda over there, like all mouth, no trousers.

Okay.

problems with the Athenians. Yeah. Ancient Greek is that it's i it isn't no one would ever define themselves as a Greek in ancient Greece. They would go, I am Spartan, I am Athenian, I'm from Argos, I'm from Corinth, wherever It was a tapestry of lots and lots and we're talking thousands of little individual sort of city states who all did things in their own way. And they sort of came together occasionally, but most of the time they were like, you know what? We're good.

Okay, so it's literally after the walls of the town have ended. dead to me. I mean the other thing of course, you've mentioned the Athenians and we tend to think of them as sort of sophisticated cultured. They've got philosophy and poetry and nice buildings. Do the Spartans go in for that stuff? Are they cultured and sophisticated or are they a bit more like just down the line, violence and hats?

Well, so the story goes, your average Spartan would not spend much of their time listening to poetry. Although they did have poetry. But all of it's war related. So if you want to you imagine all these Spartans standing around, there was a Spartan poet, we have some surviving, a guy called Terteus, and you listen to his stuff, and oh my god, it's like, and the glory of battle as we face it.

Okay. So they're basically uh one note guys. They've they've got just this thing on their mind, it's war. Is that fair? I mean that's how they're portrayed in Hollywood.

Yeah, it is fair, right? In Sparta, for a male Spartan citizen, they were banned by law from having any other profession than being a soldier. Well.

Wow. And so w w how did th how did anyone like get anything done? Like how d uh how did it not all fall apart? Like was it just so was it just all women working in shop? Then or was like was there what did the other guys do? How did they get any of their taxes done? Exactly.

Right. Kind of if they're spending all their time playing around as soldier boys, yeah. Kind of where do they get their food from? Where do they get kind of where does their money from? Who builds that Now partly the women are doing it and actually w I think we're gonna talk about women'cause actually they had really really important role to play in Spartan society and had a much better time of it than some of the other women of the ancient world.

Wow. And what was that place?

Oh it was a place called Messenia and the people were called the Hellots.

Okay.

Uh so the Helots are the engine room of Spartan society. They enable the Spartans to spend all their time training as soldiers and going off and fighting and doing everything else. And that was totally unusual in the ancient Greek world. Sparta were the only people who had decided to basically conquer their next door neighbours. and force them to serve them forevermore.

I tell you what, the way I'm looking at you right now I pretty sure is the reason why you you became a professor in the first place. I'm just looking at you like this is the most amazing thing that's ever happened.

It's all behind Gerald Butler.

It's all

And and there's the first point about three hundred, right, as a movie. Whether we love it and I love it. I love it. But where are the hell up? Right. Where are all the guys that went to Thermopylae with Leonidas and his three hundred? Yeah. And we know they stayed there, some of them, to the bitter end and died with him. Where are they?

All right. Well we'll come to that later on in the episode. Uh which uh I'm glad that you're passionate.

Great stuff. I'm really enjoying this podcast so far.

Oh well thanks for coming, John.

Mostly as a listener. But I'm glad to be honest.

I'd like you to do some talking now. Oh. I'm going to ask you a human question. Yeah. I mean you, Joel, are in tremendous shape. I am tremendously jealous of your arms.

Stop it, Greg. Stop flirting with me.

It's not flirting, it's pure jealousy.

Beside me with his shirt off now, by the way.

It's really hot in here.

It's really good.

And you've done martial arts in the past.

Yeah.

You've done recently I know you've just filmed the second series of Joel and Nish versus the World. Yes. Where you travel the world sort of competing in extreme sort of tribal sports.

Yeah, so the idea is that we go around the world and visit the the world's fittest tribes, essentially. And uh the places we've been and we've been to Mongolia and Kenya and uh where we went to the Maasai, and we went like to this season season we went to the the gauchos of Argentina, Peru with the Porters, and we went to Japan with Sumo.

It's a lovely show. It's a genuinely lovely show. Beautifully filmed, really funny. But I suppose a question I was gonna ask is have you ever fought with sword, shield, javelin? Have you ever sort of got up with actual weapons and had to go face to face? Yeah.

Yeah. Basically, at some point during most of the the episodes, I have to fight someone and dance with someone. That generally is pretty much every population that is has some sort of traditional um aspect of uh then I I pretty much always have to to dance, drink alcohol at some point and then uh then fight them. And obviously I can't fight the adults'cause they're really good at it, so they just get me to fight the kids.

You can watch that on YouTube. I watched it this morning and you really do get your ass handed to you by a thirteen year old child.

Horrible. One of the worst days of my life.

And I mean the Mongolian children fighting in their pants, uh you in your very tiny pants. Spartans. When we see them in the movie, they're in their pants. Yes. That doesn't sound very sensible. Is that a Hollywood thing?

Yeah. Bye.

Yeah. Oh really?

Yeah, Gerald Butler and those little leather nappy things that he has on. That's totally, totally Hollywood made up.

So what did they wear?

They they wore the same kind of armor as pretty much every other Greek fighting force. So they'd have like they'd have a breastplate and they'd have a helmet and they'd have greaves on their knees and they would have something more than a a little leather nappy uh kind of uh uncovering them. So and they'd have that that long red cape that you mentioned earlier, Greg, like kind of that was supposedly red so that if they were bleeding, no one would see their blood because they'd just

If I went to battle I'd have a brown cape so nobody able to see if I shout myself. Genius. It's um I always think look at a three hundred they obviously look very, very muscle and stuff. But I was wondering that. I watched it last night. I've seen it many times before, but

Yeah. But yeah, the thing that gives me heart every time I see that film is that I heard that not only did they work out in the gym for months before how to give themselves that six pack, but they then had the makeup team like redefined. And then in digital post production the six pack was defined. I mean, that's what I tell every person I'm like kinda

Um from a gym point of view, from my point of view, you can see people and actually what's very interesting about the movie, d when did the movie come out?

Uh it's about ten years ago, isn't it?

And in terms of body shape, it's amazing to watch it and realize how much our idea of body shape has changed in the last ten yeah, ten years.'Cause I remember when that movie came out, everyone was like, What? Everyone is so huge in that movie. They're massive and they still are obviously big.

And people say the ancient world has got nothing to do with the modern world. Here it is, right? Like kind of you heard it from Joel from his lips, like kind of you know, the ancients have defined our gym and sp workout routine.

Well I mean let's just check and see if Joel uh let's see if you can qualify as a bond'cause they've they've got some relatively interesting rules. So I mean you go to the gym, we've we've absolutely that's good, okay, yes. Do you take a long hot shower afterwards?

I give yes. Sometimes too too too hot and too long.

That's probably a fail.

oh damn it

fail. Spartans they're all about the cold minimal anything anything more than essential water and you're basically just preening.

back to the gym stuff, I mean you you when you go you gym your sessions, you do them naked, right? As well.

Oh yeah, absolute absolutely. That's I've been banned from so many gyms.

Yeah.

For all naked exercises.

I mean if you ever tried to claim but I'm doing it the Spartan way, like kind of in the gym, I mean, do they look at you? Try it next time, like kind of it might it might work.

Mate, I reckon we should go into business and I've an a gym called Sparta and we all you have to work out naked.

All right, so we've established you go to the gym, that's good. You take showers, that's bad. So you're you're one for one but and and and one fail two. Do you have tattoos? You do I mean I'm looking at your lovely tattoos. I mean the Spartan helots would be branded, presumably. But the citizens, I'm guessing, no tattoos.

No, probably not.

When when were tattoos a thing? Were they were they a thing then?

They were but the again that idea that you brand.

Okay.

You brand your slaves. We know that one of the ways to send secret messages if you were spying in the ancient world, it was a pretty slow way, was to shave your slave's head, tattoo a message on his head, wait for his hair to grow back, and then send. Send him behind enemy lines, where he's head shaped. It wasn't a high speed method of communication.

Pretty good though.

You know, it's I mean I've I've definitely said things via the Royal Mail that I've got there and

I was gonna say if you don't do recorded delivery.

Exactly.

Uh Joel do you I'm just gonna do a couple more questions here, do you moisturise? I mean you've got a lovely

Absolutely do you get cleanse toe and moisturize every day?

Yeah.

Absolutely. After gym sesh, oil yourself down, absolute prerequisite.

All right, all right.

I think

Splash round with the olive all.

On balance I think you'd be allowed in. The tattoos maybe they they'd look at you and go, Who's Gregory Peck then?'Cause there's a lovely tattoo on your arm.

Well by the j judging by the movie it seems like there's only one. Is that is that untrue?

Yeah, Sparta weirdly had two kings. Ah. Always had two kings. It's another part of the movie that it's sort of in the movie, in the you know, there's all that kind of cunning behind the scenes politics going on back in Sparta where Lyonus is not being supported And there's like kind of that nasty kind of scheming guy who sort of sits there, whose name I can never remember.

Dominic.

Dominic West, yeah, like kind of doing his thing, like kind of where he sort of goes, I'm not gonna allow and I'm gonna And then there's those councils that Leonidas's wife tries to appear before of and persuade. A and that is all kind of get uh you know, a realistic portrayal of the fact that Sparta had a really quite complicated system. There were two kings. And they were like hereditary kingships, supposedly all, you know, descended from again from Hercules, Heracles.

All right.

Yeah. It's a bunch of old guys. Let's call it a bunch of old guys.

Very much the Ron Seal of the Night. They they really do sort of go, All right, old dudes, we'll call them the old dudes.

Sketch group. Like kind of the uh so they were the ones who made all the major decisions, but they in turn then had to pass like options. You can have option A or B. onto the assembly of all Spartan male warriors. So there was this kind of three stage process, if you like.

The economy in Sparta, presumably if the helots are doing all the work, it's farming, is it trade? Do they are they famous for manufacturing anything particularly?

Yeah, I mean Spartans are banned from being involved in trade, matter of fact, anything, apart from being warriors. But obviously there was stuff going on because you've got these Spartan warriors at the top of the pyramid of society and then you've got

Well, yeah.

Uh, which were people who lived in Spartan territory, but they weren't kind of elite Spartan warriors and they weren't hellots either. They were sort of just everyone in between. Uh and they could get on and do whatever they wanted to do and, you know, they contributed to the society as well. So Yeah, there was all this stuff going on, but it wasn't being done by the elite Spartan Warriors that you see in the three hundreds.

Okay. So I mean they they are a a trading nation but they are essentially the the citizens are geared towards war and and war opening, okay.

If I just jump in at this was a quick point, I think it's a good juncture to ask. How do you know this? Like what was is it mostly was it a l a lot of stuff written down at that time that we now know? That it's come past your eyes.

Yeah, I'm very excited about that.

It's a damn fine question. Uh and and it is one of the most interesting things about the Spartans. Uh which again, they don't really kind of tinker well, they tinker round the edges with it in three hundred, but they never kind of tell you it outright, which is we know almost nothing about the Spartans. written by the Spartans. Right. They are apart from that that military poetry where they bang on the stanzas and stanzas about kind of war. Right. Actually from the Spartans Fair Hand, nothing.

Wow.

So everything we know about the Spartans is people outside of Sparta talking about the Spartans. Yeah. So it kind of for a long time everyone just bought this kind of story about them being kind of these warriors and then suddenly, finally

a car.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh which is this kind of the image that the Spartans wanted. others to be talking about and wanted to portray versus perhaps what the reality was like on the inside.

And I suppose they kind of touch on that in the movie, and that's the idea of like we fought in this battle, you go and tell the world what happened.

And that is a true quote. Yeah. If you go to Thermopylae today, that is a quote. It's it's there on a plaque in the ground and it's a modern plaque, but it is a a copy of an ancient plaque Of that exact quotation written by a fourth century poet called Simonides that was set up at Thermopylae, so that, as you put it, everyone would say, Go tell that the Spartans did this.

Wow.

That's pretty cool. So really the Spartan image is them on Instagram and then the reality of Spartan was basically them at home in their pants eating porridge.

Yeah.

But you know, w when we talk about Spartans we talk we tend to think about the blokes, big, muscular, violent. Uh the women also big muscular violent. I mean what society you know I mean we get the idea from uh from ancient history, the Athenian women were sort of locked up at home and they weren't really allowed to leave the house. But Spartan women were kind of running the home and they were

Yeah, I mean uh so Spartan women a kind of against the average of what women could expect in the ancient world, which wasn't great to begin with, actually had a pretty good deal. They were fed as much as the Spartan men, which, you know, was actually quite unusual.

I mean you've mentioned there also the fact that th the kind of women would m obviously marry the idea here of is having children. Is it fair to say the Spartan system is sort of a bit of a breeding programme in terms of they want loads of good, strong strapping young men and th the role of the women in society was to sort of promote male martial success. So women's roles weren't just simply, you know, cooking and cleaning, but also raising young men. Is that fair?

Yeah, I I mean absolutely. Uh what the the the the the fact that kinda goes to the heart of that is that Yeah, when you died in Sparta, you only got your name on your gravestone if you were a man if you died in battle. Or if you're a woman, if you died in childbirth.

Right.

Otherwise it was a kind of unmarked grave.

Wow.

Oh, so those are the two things that really that hold value. It's glorious death in battle or you're trying to keep the Spartans going.

Yeah, bring forward the next generation. And then the you know, my favorite kind of text from the ancient world is is a collection of sayings called The Sayings of Spartan Women, collected by a guy called Plutarch. And it's it's a hilarious catalogue of of these kind of female catchphrases from Aiden Sparta, where it is things like A mother saying to her son as he's about to go after war and he's got a shield in his hand, You come back with this or on it, are you dead?

Yeah.

But I don't want anything else. Right. And then there's a ton of other sayings where the guy has come back and he's dropped his shield or he's run away or he's surrendered. And the mother Kills him. Wow. Like kind of you know, I will not have this. I want nothing but hero heroism. I mean that kind of I've I've just I lost it.

I misplaced it. I've lost I've one moment I had it, and then the next moment I turned around and it was gone. I'm sorry. And then your mum kills you for it.

There are no scatty Spartans presumably, and no one sort of just goes, Oh, left in the van.

Exactly. I mean I've I've definitely had the same sort of tone from my mother when I've misplaced my school tie.

Did she pick up a large roof tile, hurl it at you and kill you dead spot? No.

Pretty much. I mean pretty much. Luckily I'm quicker than that.

I mean so you mentioned school actually. Uh what's education l like for the Spartans?'Cause I mean, you know, in Britain our education system is pretty nice. At no point do we get stabbed or run over or beaten up. But Spartan kids are I mean, the stuff they go through is pretty hardcore.

Yeah, I mean it's in the movie, right? I mean I and I thought that they got that really right, you know, age seven, boys were put into a continual military training academy that they didn't emerge from till they were thirty. I mean that's what that was their life. Uh they were like training against each other, beating one another up. They had to learn how to steal, as long as they didn't get caught.

How did it end? So the the so the movie ends with the th the three hundred Spartans being killed and then then the story rousing an entire army of the whole of Greece that defeats the Persian army. How much of that is true? Is that did the Greeks defeat the Persians in real life?

They did. They dare did.

Joel, would you mind doing like a slightly more detailed run through of the movie? For those who haven't seen it, just a quick thirty-five second, you know, recap of the basics.

Very exact amount of time.

I want thirty five seconds only.

Most of us would round down to thirty or up to a minute, but it's okay, Greg, I understand. Damn it, I've already spent five of those seconds talking about the thirty five second rule. Uh basically it's uh about three hundred. three hundred Spartan warriors that uh that go to war against the the million f millions of Persians.

Beautifully summarized. Thirty seven seconds. No, that's fine. We'll let it down, it'll be great. That's a really lovely summary. Michael, the complexity of the story is obviously more nuanced than that. But the d a sort of general overview of that's fair. It's not three hundred Spartans though, is it really? I mean how many are fighting for Sparta?

Well I mean I think Joe absolutely puts his finger on it. Like the key thing is that the battle of Thermopylae and the sacrifice of the Spartans is what rouses the Greeks, not just in that subsequent battle against the Persians, but actually for centuries and millennia after.

Oh really?

Right. But you know, the rest of the world, right? We still talk about the Spartans because of that, this moment of sacrifice at Thermopla. And I was amazed by a book I saw the other day, uh is a history of the US Marines and it's called American Spartans.

Well,

Wow. When they go in and they kind of deal with uh pro when drug problems break out and the favelas and stuff like that, they get labelled spawns. In Brazil, right? Kind of like kind of what So uh it still has a cash, it still has a meaning and it's all due to that moment from the Battle of Thermopylae.

It's kind of like whenever you go into any any meeting with any T V people now, they are they're all still inspired by the big breakfast. They're all they're all everyone's still trying to make TGI Fridays and uh T Five Fridays, sorry, and uh and the big breakfast. They're like I kinda wanna be at like TFI Fridays. Like I feel like TFI Fridays is the Sparta of the T V world, you know. They're all extremely

It's a moment, it's an image, it's an idea.

It's a mirror.

examining it, it does fall apart a little bit. And the film 300, you know, on the one hand it gets that kind of idea of of how it's a rousing story, but it does that by making it exclusively about those 300s. Yeah. And actually there weren't 300, there was 300 and what? Because it was three hundred Spartans and the king. Okay. But three hundred and one. Sounds good, doesn't it? It looks like three hundred spots.

And they also had I mean they had a support army as well.

There were seven thousand Greeks at Thermopyla. Right. So so seven thousand Greeks turn up. Two days of fighting. Spartans are awesome. They're holding the line along with their other Greeks, and then when they are betrayed by a guy whose name was Ephialtes, but he wasn't a Spartan uh a disabled Spartan warrior who'd been shunned by the Spartans. He was actually a local kind of shepherd boy who basically just wanted the cat.

Really or maybe they were just acting. Yeah, just playing death.

And some Thebans hang around for a little bit. So so it kind of is amazing how much the story has been airbrushed to make it a Spartan story.

And their bodies.

And yeah, and they're embodied. And all these other poor Greeks who also made that same sacrifice have sort of been kind of left out of the picture. That's fac

Fascinating. I want to talk about one other thing before we uh sort of uh give you the the nuance window, which is our big idea. But um the thing we're gonna c talk on just slightly before if we could is is Spartan sexuality. Because when we talk about the ancient Greeks, we kind of imagine in our heads sort of, you know, good looking, muscular chaps and so on. But uh this is a society where sex is more complicated than we might imagine. And we live in enlightened times, so

Yeah, I think the crucial thing with you have to chuck all our modern rules out the window. Okay. Right. All our kind of typologies of sexuality don't really work in the ancient Greek world. Uh, because they didn't believe in there being kind of you defining yourself as one kind of being attracted to one person for your entire life. For them, they thought about it much more in terms of there were different kinds of relationships that were appropriate at different ages and stages in your life.

Right.

Uh but when the Spartan kind of grew up a little bit, that relationship ended or he might become the older person to the next younger boy, but then he would get married, right? Kind of and and his job would then be to help produce kids because Spartan Society needed kids.

And was there and were there sexual relations between the soldiers, between the men in combat? Were th you know, would they after a long day's stabbing Persians, would they go home and have a cuddle and a kiss and

Only if it was defined within this older kind of older man, younger man relationship. Right. And and that's probably pretty unlikely to have happened within the three hundred bodyguards that that went off with Leonidas, you know. There were uh other groups of warriors in the ancient Greek world.

Thebans.

The Thebans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Another band of three hundred. There's something about the number three hundred, right? They all get together throughout And this th three hundred Theban band were supposedly composed of a hundred and fifty what we would now call homosexual couples, the kind of who actually ended up all fighting to the death on the battlefield against the father of Alexander the Great.

Oh my god.

I mean what kind of weapons are we talking about in terms of ancient Gre uh is it javelin, spear, sword?

Yeah, exactly. And Spartans supposedly always had a shorter sword than the

There are no jokes there, aren't there?

Are we talking about decks? Okay.

No, no, th they had a shorter sword, uh uh supposedly because that allowed them to get in closer and more personal with the enemy and sort of stab, particularly in the groin or the throat area as their kind of uh favourite sort of technique. And and again it was Spartan Mum in the sayings of Spartan women, uh uh one her son moans, My sword's a bit short and her response is, Well step a bit closer to the enemy then you stupid idiot.

Fawn mums are terrified.

I don't know, they're pretty tough though. Kind of the the nanny, the kind of miracle nanny that kind of has the naughty step, etc. They got nothing. It's got nothing on Spartan.

Joe, you're getting married quite soon. Yes. Are you gonna do a Spartan wedding? And do you wanna hear what a Spartan wedding is?

I would love to hear what a spot and wedding is because I I need some ideas.

Don't know if you're gonna want these ideas, and I certainly don't think your girlfriend's gonna want these ideas. Uh so the night before the wedding, she would need to get her head

Well uh to be honest, I was into Britney Spears circle.

Yeah, it's a good look.

Kind of all right. So far it's looking pretty sweet.

Dress up in men's clothing.

Cool. That's a I I I like you know, I could deal with that. I could deal with that.

And uh then be left in a dark room before you make your way in to richly kidnap her.

That's getting creepy now. If I'm honest it's a step too far, that's a bit.

And then your married life would consist of you you're in your camp with your mates, kind of you know, your military boot camp is where you live. So actually if you want any spend spend any time with her, you have to sneak out at night without anyone seeing you and sort of scuttle over in the darkness and sort of see her and then scuttle back again before dawn.

Oh that does sound quite exciting to be fair. That does that sounds quite quite a sexy living. Um

I mean this is Love Island mate too, right? Like uh Spartan boot cam kind of Spartan Love Island or

Let's let's pitch a Dwayne to be two.

I mean I'm sure it'll get through the net.

Who wants window?

Alright, we've only got time really for one more thing, which is a little thing we're gonna try here, and it's called the Nuance Window. The nuance window is for Michael. Basically, you get three minutes. And you can you can go to town on whatever you want to say, as academic and highbrow as you like, because people have made it through this far in the episode and they want to hear more. So give us your

I mean I think we've touched on some of the really important aspects that make the Spartans such a fascinating kind of object of study in history. We fundamentally don't know anything about them from their own perspective. Everything we know about the Spartans comes from outside. People looking at them and telling us kind of this is what the Spartans were like. They were butched. They were military. They were kind of the best fighters that uh ever lived.

Thank you so much for that. That was genuinely fascinating.

Fascinating.

And I just sat there going,

This is and so I'm sorry to keep I mean literally I could sit in this room and talk to you for like hours and hours and hours. But um how were they conquered? Like how was it generally Greece got together and then the Romans took over from the Greeks? Is that how it I'm so bad at history, I think that's uh

You pretty much nailed it. Like a I mean, it's a big question how the Spartans are conquered. They had their heyday at Thermopylae and for the better part of that same century, the fifth century BC. But when you get into the fourth century B C actually they'd they'd won. They'd beaten Athens. They were the top dogs in Greece. And you can imagine the Spartans were looking at one another going,

Donald Trump, to be fair.

It all sort of falls apart for them pretty quickly and they sort of sort of dwindle back down uh uh until they really are surviving on this, on kind of on their reputation alone. As it were, and on and um fulfilling that reputation for visitors who want to come. And then when the Romans turn up a couple of centuries later, they kind of play up to that reputation and that's how they get kind of fixed into our collective memory to this day.

Joel, do you feel like you've learned some stuff about the Spartans?

I've done so much stuff and I cannot wait to immediately forget it as soon as I leave this room. Um but within this room I've enjoyed it so much.

Thanks so much. Uh Michael, are there any books uh that you would recommend that uh listeners might want to check out if they want to know a bit more? Is there anything any particular sort of entry level or or mid level book that you really recommend?

Uh yeah, there's two by a great scholar called Paul Cartley. So there's The Spartans an Epic History, uh and then and then well he's got several other books on the Spartans as well. But I would also recommend if I can plug one ancient text Just Google. It's out it's online. Kind of Google sayings of Spartan women and and it won't look dodgy in any search.

Brilliant, thank you so much. Well, for now I'm gonna say thanks so much to both of my guests, Professor Michael Scott from the University of Warwick. And Professor Joel Dometh in University of Funny. Um thank you both. It'd been an absolute pleasure. And thank you at home for listening. I I hope you've enjoyed it. We'll be back next time with different guests and a different topic. Please make sure to like and subscribe. Uh the more people are listening

Tonight we're done in hell, yeah. What a lie. I think they o I think I undersold it.

The Gerald Butler devoys thing.

Give us the bomb.

But tonight we dining.

Perfect. I love how you did it with a slight question mark as well there.

I can never get my dates.

Oh never mind. Anyway, thanks so much.

You're Dead to Me was a muddy knees media production for BBC Radio 4. The researcher was Emma Nagoose and the producer was Dan Morel.

Hello, it's Sophie Duca.

Ned Sedwick here.

We've been given thirty seconds to tell you why Grown Up Land is the podcast that will change your life for the better.

Why you'll be healthier, happier, more culturally enriched and totally confident about everything in every way.

But there is a small snag, as none of that is true at all. What you will become is confident that everyone else is just as confused, frustrated, and anxious as you are. Every week we're joined by a brilliant guest to talk about things like sex. Fear, rejection, jealousy, sex, and we often end up sharing way too much about our personal

Yeah, I sh I should really rein that in.

That's Grown Up Lamb, the podcast about the exhausting pursuit of adults.

Make sure you subscribe on BBC Sounds.