EPISODE 5 “SPARTA”

TROJAN WAR: THE PODCAST

Jeff Wright

History

4.8 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2016

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

THE STORY: (30 minutes) The transition from shepherd to Crown Prince of Troy isn’t easy, but with some help from Aphrodite (and from the royal harem), Paris manages to settle in to Troy quite nicely. A road trip to the the Greek kingdom of Sparta follows, during which Paris discovers that Aphrodite keeps all of her promises. THE COMMENTARY: DID SPARTA REALLY THROW BABIES OFF OF CLIFFS? (14 minutes; begins at 30:00) I spend the entire post-story commentary of this episode talking about Sparta. Most of us, when we hear the word “Sparta”, immediately conjure up the image of bad-ass Spartan warriors, and the recent Hollywood blockbuster “The 300”. I note that this particular Sparta – the Sparta of popular consciousness – existed circa 480 B.C.E.; whereas the Sparta of the Trojan War existed circa 1250 B.C.E. After a quick review of the social and military practices of the 480 B.C.E. Sparta – killing unfit babies; raising boys in military barracks; murderous initiation rites into manhood; selective breeding and eugenics programs – I explore the historical veracity of this picture of Sparta. I note that our most reliable and authoritative source was Plutarch, writing circa 100 A.C.E., a full 500 years after 480 B.C.E. I note that Plutarch relied for his account of Sparta almost exclusively on oral history, supplemented by the incomplete accounts of Herodotus and Thucydides. I remind listeners that “tales grow with the telling”, especially over 500 years. And I note that Plutarch, like all historians, had his own agenda for presenting the picture of Sparta that he did. I conclude by reviewing some recent archeological “finds” concerning all those babies thrown off of cliffs, and by noting some recent historical views on the million-strong Persian army that Sparta defeated at the Battle of Thermopylae. Have fun, Jeff RELATED IMAGES

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Trojan War, the podcast, history's most awesome epic.
0:34.9	This is episode number five in the series.
1:09.2	Today's episode is titled, Sparta. So welcome to episode number five. Now most of you listening in at this stage are veterans of Trojan War the podcast and you're familiar
1:11.4	with what we're doing. On the other hand, if you happen to have stumbled across this particular
1:16.7	episode, an episode titled Sparta, completely out of context of the podcast series, then what we're
1:24.4	doing here is I'm retelling the entire story of the Trojan War epic and serialized
1:30.1	form and you're welcome to stick around and learn all kinds of interesting and fascinating things
1:33.8	about Sparta. But I think you might have a little bit more fun if you actually head over to my
1:38.6	website, Trojan War Podcast.com and pick up the series with episode number one. It's a serialized telling and
1:46.2	you'll just have an awful lot more fun if you begin at the beginning. So, if you recall at the
1:52.1	end of the previous episode, the episode that I titled The Judgment of Paris, Paris had been
1:58.5	given the option of choosing which of three goddesses to award an apple, a golden
2:03.1	apple titled for the most beautiful. And after a lot of towing and froing, a bribery contest
2:08.6	between the goddesses had broken out, and the ultimate winner of that contest had been Aphrodite,
2:14.1	goddess of lust and sexual passion. Aphrodite had bribed Paris, the 18-year-old
2:19.8	shepherd, with a very, very interesting bribe that appealed to Paris's, well, unrelenting
2:25.6	and endless fascination with all things female. Aphrodite had promised Paris that she would give
2:31.4	him the undying lust of the smoking hottest woman in the entire planet,
2:36.7	and that that woman, Aphrodite assured Paris, would be insatiable, putty in Paris's hand
2:41.3	day and night as long as Paris walked the face of the earth. Well, Paris had immediately handed
2:47.0	Aphrodite the apple and the other goddesses had raged off to Mount Olympus in a huff plot
2:51.9	and misery for Paris. Following awarding the apple, Aphrodite had briefly explained to Paris that he
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