spartans

[Turtules]

make them as Frank miller's heroic spartans in the comic 300

[Pelopidas]

I agree with sparabara. I'm a fun of sparta as well, but people tend to have a distorted image of who they were, and what they acheived, undermining the importance of other city-states who were also strong and capable in military matters.

In 375 BC, near Tegyra, the Thebans defeated the Spartan army, though their troops were half in number. Being informed that the Spartan garrison in Orchomenos were visiting Lokris, they marched with the Sacred Band in order to give battle. They met at Tegyra and thanks to their general's encouragement in a narrow pass they defeated them, killing both of the Lacedaemonian commanders. The rest of the Spartan army dispersed and fled. This was a heroic achievement by Thebans, taking in consideration the smaller number of their troops and the Spartan valor. It was this battle that gave confidence to Thebans to meet Spartans four years later in Leuctra.
This is one exemple of the myth of the unbreakable spartans, that stood their ground to the last in every battle, never flee e.t.c.
It isnt bad to like them and have an idealised idea of what they were.
But its also good to aknowledge that reality and history has its turns and downs and things are a bit different as you could expected.
And the history of the ancient greek cities, were all about continued confilicts, and a constant change in power dynamics, as each of them, were striking to achieve hegemonia over the greek affairs, but their rise were soon to follow an inevitable fall as another suitor grew capable to challenge them.
As Svenets said its all about balance.

[El Muerte]

@ Sparabara
You got lot to learn.....
http://elysiumgates.com/~helena/index.html
Here you find everything you need to know about Spartan society....
But sayng that Spartan society is similar to Nazi's regime is arrogant and also ignorant gesture.

Now some other issue...as for the battle of ''champions''...story goes like this:

One Spartan and 2 seriously wounded Argives DID survived the battle, but Spartan champion felt shameful for surviving battle while his friends,cousins, and brothers lies dead, so he decided to take his own life, rather then to come home alive.
So technically Argos won that battle, but only becouse Spartan soldier decided to kill himself....

[strikerjd]

4.I agree absolutely with you about El Cid and George Patton.Very good examples indeed. I could also add here the names of Duke of Marlborough,Robert E. Lee,Friedrich the Great,Ervin Romel,Georgi Zoukov and others.

And maybe Napoleon, no ?
It's funny to see that anglo-saxon culture consider french military history like few thing, only because the defeat in 1940. Thanks to English channel or ocean !
If you play France in M2TW, you will see that you have 4 fronts with the most powerfull nations (spain, italian states, german empire, english). If this state exist now, It's really because France had powerfull army... and now too (of course, less than USA or Russia !

Sparabara, about Spartans, maybe they fight "only" against light persians in Platea (and Athenians against heavy thebans) but Persians and eastern were a little more numerous than thebans, no ?
Don't forget the way of life and thinking of Spartans: you undertand better marathon and after platea. "Obey to the law, nothing more".

[mercja]

Spartans lived in a totaltarian society, which in turn made them work more in cohesion with one another. Everyone as far as the Spartan soldiers go understood what the purpose was in battle and never broke to route due to shame by society and family.

If they were to break in battle and survive then their family would disown them and they wore their military tunic with a patch sewn into it which denotes their dishonor. So therefor they would rather die in combat than be disgraced by their society and family.