"The Significance of Thermopylae: Why We Ought to..." Topic

… Thank the Spartans for the Constitution, Chick-fil-a, and Capitalism.

"The year is 480. Three hundred Spartans, joined by a small force of Greeks, defend the mountain pass of Thermopylae against the invading Persians. If the 300 Spartans had stayed home and if Persians had won the Greco-Persian Wars, the Western concept of freedom most likely would not exist. Authoritarian monarchy would have been the norm, and it would have taken a group of people much like the Spartans to champion again values like protection, free will, and freedom over imperialism, coercion, and authoritarianism. Of course, such a defense could have happened, but it might have been harder knowing that the Spartans and other Greeks defending freedom at the Battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Platea had not been able to do it.

Although the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. happened about one hundred years before the great philosopher and defender of freedom Aristotle was born, the Greeks still had a concept of defending the city-state, the polis. A plethora of poleis existed throughout Greece since about the eighth century B.C. Each city-state zealously guarded its autonomy, desiring the freedom to live according to its own dictates, not another city-state's, or more importantly, authoritarian regime's, opinions. While the governments of poleis sometimes differed (Athens had a democracy while Sparta had an oligarchy) and even fought against one another, almost all the Greek city-states did agree in at least one aspect: the Persians were authoritarian, had no concept of freedom, enslaved its people, and must be defeated. Thus, even though Aristotle had not yet described the Greek ideal of freedom, all the city-states defended their independence against enemies foreign and domestic, particularly in the case of the Battle of Thermopylae…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Bit of a whitewash … buys wholesale Herodotus's assertion that Persian soldiers had to be driven with whips and contrasts this with …

Sparta's system stood for freedom

… which is quite offensive, really, given that Sparta was a slave state and probably defended Greek independence so fiercely out of fear that the Persians would free the helots!

Phil

Glup!…

Amicalement
Armand

Sparta was closer to North Korea than a Western Democracy and was happy to take Persian gold to finance their wars against other Greek states.

The Persians were happy to let conquered people keep their own cultural and political institutions (up to a point) providing they paid their taxes and supplied troops when the king required.

The whole "Persian Wars is basically USA vs Tyranny" is extremely outdated and very orientalist. It's no coincidence certain, eh, white nationalist groups have taken up the Spartans as a banner.

In general, the Persians were no worse than any other states, and indeed gave a great deal of freedom to their subjects. The Spartans were a police state that terrorized a permanent serf class.

Also, we wear pants now! So at least the Persians won on that front.