- 14 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:08the most feared warriors of their time when you got a spartan warrior in your face your days are
00:15numbered elite soldiers trained from childhood they are brutalized like boy scouts from hell
00:26destined to be the most dominant fighters in ancient greece they have tenacity that other
00:33armies lack it is bloody and brutal and the spartans never surrender it's hell it's hell on earth
00:52warriors aren't born they're built
00:59understanding how reveals the true nature of their greatness
01:05from the cradle to the grave these are the steps to creating history's greatest warriors
01:27a lifelong journey of intense drilling and brutal discipline
01:33creates the most feared warrior of the ancient greek world
01:39master of the spear and shield the spartan is bound by law and honor to defend his homeland and bring
01:46glory to sparta on the classical greek battlefield the story of the spartans looms largest for many
01:56centuries no other army can match the spartans sparta introduces training from the age of seven
02:06to make them the ultimate soldiers in service to the state
02:14you take the individual boy and you scrape and grind and beat away his personality until he comes out on
02:21the other side a spartan warrior we're talking about professional soldiers the discipline the obedience
02:31the focus the focus all will be there in ways that can't expect from ordinary citizens turned soldiers
02:41their skill in combat enabled the spartans to multiply the power of their own city-state for over 150 years
02:53sparta's growth into a military superpower demands an elite warrior
02:59he must endure brutal training from childhood master the use of his bladed weapons and iconic shield
03:10and overwhelm all enemies with the most precise and lethal tactics of his day
03:17it is a path that begins in the ninth century
03:26the spartan city-state begins in early archaic period of greek history if you look at a map of
03:33greece you'll see to the southwest there's a very large peninsula it looks like a big tooth with three
03:39points pointing south towards the bottom of that is the city of sparta ancient greece is a world of
03:47seafarers but sparta is constrained by land during the archaic period sparta grows in power and the
03:58spartans are conquering and taking control of the southern peloponnese as its territory expands sparta
04:07covets the rich farmland of messenia its neighbor to the west messenia had a lot of flat plains flat
04:14plains means good farmland and the spartans decide to conquer messenia
04:23it's a very hard war it lasts 20 years and when they defeat the messenians most of the messenians are
04:31turned into national slaves called helots the helot slaves worked the land for their spartan masters
04:43but often revolt
04:48the helot slaves may outnumber the spartan citizens by a count of seven to one and if the slave population
04:55rebels the spartan state goes into crisis constant slave revolts threaten to destroy sparta but king
05:03lycurgus creates a new code of laws and remake sparta as a militarized state
05:13lycurgus he is the originator of what the spartans considered their constitution lycurgus went to the
05:22delphic oracle which is the most sacred religious center in the greek world
05:30and there is a priestess there who prophesies
05:35and he gets the approval of the oracle for his laws
05:42with that sort of endorsement it makes it much easier for lycurgus to get
05:47these vast reforms that completely remake spartan society accepted by the spartans
05:56according to the plan of lycurgus it is illegal for a spartan to practice any trade in sparta the only
06:05acceptable work for a male citizen is being a soldier the first duty of these new citizen warriors
06:13is to crush slave revolts when you have a much larger population enslaved your primary goal keep
06:23the slaves enslaved and that slave population the helots takes on all of the agricultural work
06:30all of the domestic work now the spartans they have this free time to do nothing but train for war
06:36at that point sparta becomes a very unusual greek state no other greek state had a standing army
06:44and many armies in history their primary job is to be a farmer or a carpenter and they are called
06:51to
06:52military service as and when needed when we look at the spartan his entire job is to be a professional
06:58soldier and his entire culture and the government is set up to support that institution and that gives
07:04spartans a tremendous military advantage at its core the new law has a singular purpose to create
07:12the greatest warriors in all of greece and the creation process begins before the warrior is even born
07:22the spartans feel that the best way to produce the strongest soldiers is for mothers to be well
07:30trained themselves girls are encouraged to engage in athletic contests this is almost unheard of
07:36in other greek city states the spartan government wanted there to be strong healthy women in order
07:43to produce robust babies but they must prove themselves worthy from the day they are born
07:50when a spartan boy was born government officials inspect the boy if it looks robust it's allowed to live
07:57and if not it's left at the bottom of mount taigetus spartans are apprehensive about blood guilt they
08:06don't smother unwanted babies they don't strangle them they leave it up to the gods it's as if the
08:12spartans are engaging in a kind of primitive eugenics program making sure that all children are perfect in
08:19form the spartan child who passes this first test is only just beginning standing between
08:27him and his destiny are years of blood sweat and pain training now begins
08:46the road to building a spartan warrior is long and brutal
08:53in all the stories of spartan battles we see but a level of discipline and organization that is indeed
08:59different from and better than other greeks well you don't get there in a vacuum to make great warriors
09:05you need a training program
09:12for a spartan the path to military glory begins in childhood according to plutarch's life of lycurgus
09:22he introduces reforms to spartan society and the reforms include the famed agoge which is the
09:31upbringing that begins training the spartans solely for war agoge comes from the greek word for
09:37competition and it gives us english agony and that's a good name for it the agony the boys in the
09:43agoge
09:44they are brutalized day in and day out children are taken from their parents at age seven and
09:53they're turned into i think the quote from aristotle is brave little beasts i sometimes think of the
10:00spartan agoge as boy scouts from hell and what's hellish about it is not just the toughness of the
10:07training that the boys have to undergo but the length of time that it lasts i think the spartans
10:14would have a hearty chuckle about modern day boot camps united states marine corps has a 13-week boot
10:19camp the spartans boot camp goes on for 13 years and then kind of persists for the rest of the
10:26adult
10:26male life spartan training begins with the strengthening of the body the spartan
10:33boys in the agoge they are woken up early and forced to train run for miles dance with armor on
10:40box fight wrestle each other boys are schooled in the form of wrestling known as pankration
10:49it's like greek mma ancient greek mma and pankration has two rules don't gouge the eyes
10:56and don't rip the gonads ripping off ears breaking fingers that's all fair game and they are taught to do
11:02that from a very young age the grueling regimen makes boys resilient in the face of humiliation
11:08and suffering you have to break the ego of boy down through years of degradation and beatings and
11:16starvation the conditions in the agoge are intentionally harsh boys are not given proper
11:24clothing they have to subsist on very limited amounts of food they are implicitly encouraged to
11:32steal food in order to actually survive life in the agoge combines the trauma of being separated from
11:39your family with the extraordinary miseries of deprivation they're given one tunic to wear no
11:49matter how cold it is they are not given shoes and they are forced to toughen the soles of their
11:55feet
11:56so you have to imagine these shivering boys schlepping through the mountains of sparta leaving bloody
12:03footprints behind them the aspects of training that involve harsh conditions and toughness are designed
12:10to enable spartan soldiers to fight in any conditions
12:17to further condition the boys to overcome pain they take part in a violent competitive ritual
12:25the feast of artemis orthia is a strange fascinating element of their training
12:33the story goes that there is a feast at this sanctuary and there are wheels of cheese left on the
12:42altar
12:43spartan youths are encouraged to steal as much cheese as they can from the altars but there are others with
12:49whips waiting for them it's a competition to see which boy is able to get away with the most cheese
13:01but that boy is surely going to bear the signs of the whippings that he took on the way
13:11this competition designed so that they throw themselves into the grinder of pain in order to
13:18achieve some goal the cheese is immaterial it's the willingness to endure pain and press on despite that
13:26the boys also study legendary battles that illustrate the willingness to sacrifice one's life for sparta
13:36the battle of the champions takes place in the middle of the 6th century bce parodotus tells us it's a
13:43conflict between argos and sparta the story goes that they agree to have a contest of champions 300 men
13:52from each side will meet both armies will go away and whoever survives the battle of champions wins this engagement
14:04300 spartans 300 argives they fight and they fight and it is absolutely bloody and brutal
14:18both sides are ground down to nothing and two argives survive and they leave the battle thinking
14:28fantastic we survived we won
14:33a single spartan however survived
14:38and what he does is he strips the argive dead with their arms and armor and builds what in greek
14:44we call a tropiona a trophy
14:49this is a traditional ancient greek way of claiming the battlefield for the victorious
14:54spartans when spartans come to collect their dead they find uh this dying spartan and this trophy
15:01this expression of spartan duty until death this shows spartan tenacity even left for dead
15:10this spartan somehow manages to recover and build a trophy the young spartan is taught to fight to the end
15:20even if horribly wounded sparta is not only a cult of war it is also a cult of death looking
15:31at these
15:31stories we get a glimpse of the basis of what sparta values what they think a warrior should be whether
15:39the legends are accurate or not is really immaterial this is what the spartans believe and this is what
15:45drove them to military excellence the final step of the agogae is teaching the warriors to fight
15:53together the spartans are best when fighting in a group no other army can match the spartans for unit
16:04cohesion they have incredible discipline and organization and greater tactical flexibility
16:10to achieve success on the battlefield the boys must learn to move in lockstep and the specific
16:17training is often a dance in dancing what the boy learns is to move in coordinated formation with a
16:26lot of other soldiers and many scholars believe that the purpose of war dance is to provide movements
16:32the bashing with a shield the thrusting with a spear it also means that a soldier can respond to musical
16:40cues without thinking to close up ranks to shift the lines to the beat of music
16:50as the boys near the end of their training a select few are conscripted into a special group
16:58those who have excelled are chosen for the secret service known as the cryptea
17:05it's a group of boys who go out in secret and murder enslaved people in the middle of the night
17:10the
17:11spartans fear slave rebellion so the goal is to make the slaves fear them more service in the cryptea
17:19gives boys the experience of a first kill which is an initiation into manhood
17:29after 13 years of training the young warrior has earned his place in the spartan army
17:37the spartan warrior must now be armed with the weapons he will need to wage war
17:4813 years of training transform a spartan boy into a fearsome warrior now he must learn to master the
17:58weapons of a hoplite the most heavily armed soldier of the ancient world
18:07a hoplite is the standard greek heavy infantry the best translation for hoplite is man at arms
18:14all hoplites are armed with a spear called a dory in greek
18:22these vary in length somewhat but they might be around eight or ten feet long they have a leaf shaped
18:27iron bladed point on the end that you're thrusting with but they have a bronze spike at the bottom
18:35the tip and the butt spike are unequally weighted such that the butt spike is heavier than the front
18:44it means that you have greater reach because you've got that counterbalance at the back end
18:50the spear may be wielded overhand or underhand well obviously those targets different parts of the
18:58body and overshot the throat undershot coming up the groin one of the absolute most important weapons of
19:08the spartan hoplite is the shield known as the aspis
19:14it is a convex or domed shield quite large about three feet in diameter it weighs about 22 to 26
19:22pounds
19:22comprised of overlapping glued pieces of wood and a very thin coating of bronze
19:31you've got an almost impenetrable shield normal arrows and spearheads are never going to go through
19:36this shield but coming at the cost of weight the most important thing about the shield is that half
19:42of it hangs beyond the body in a phalanx the left part of your shield covers the exposed right part
19:50of
19:51the man to your left so the shield is what connects literally the spartan army to each other a phalanx
19:59is a
19:59horizontal arrangement of greek heavy infantry about eight ranks deep and shield over shield over shield
20:08across the entire front line if the spartans can just get you into one engagement phalanx against
20:15phalanx that is where the spartans really shine the spartan phalanx is a devastating super weapon
20:23as seen in the peloponnesian war in the fifth century bc
20:30the scene is this we're in the middle of the peloponnesian war between primarily the athenians
20:36and the delian league on one side and the spartans and their allies on the other so on the plain
20:42below
20:42the polis of mantinea that's where the battle commences
20:48the spartans march forward in silence hearing only the sound of their flute giving them instructions
20:56on tempo as they move forward the moment of contact between two phalanxes is horrible
21:07it becomes a fearsome bloody scrum far more grisly and literally in your face
21:14then battles the day people are stabbing each other in the groin in the neck the smell of death
21:23all around you it's hell on earth both sides crushing the front ranks together as the spartan phalanx
21:33presses forward long spears become ineffective in up close engagement and so the frontline soldiers
21:40will use the sword that hoplites carried with them to stab their foes the spartans do have
21:46backup weapons and the two most common swords that you see in the spartan phalanx are the copious
21:51and the xiphos the xiphos is a straight leaf-bladed sword that's sharp on both sides much better suited
21:59for thrusting but also perfectly useful for cutting the coppice is a nastier weapon coppice is the greek
22:07word for cleaver the curved knife sharp on one side and obviously this is used for chopping
22:15so it's a butcher's weapon repurposed for the battlefield the claustrophobic sense of horror
22:22to see your friends trampled underfoot you see their blood spraying you might be wearing their blood
22:28because the spartans spend years of their lives training to endure pain they have tenacity that
22:37other armies lack
22:41despite the chaos of battle the spartan phalanx remains intact
22:47as warriors respond in lockstep to musical cues on the field at mantinea the spartan right and the
22:54mantinean right each overcome the left part of their opposing army and then the spartans do something
23:02typically spartan it shows great discipline they remain in formation and they wheel to the left
23:14and they come upon the disorganized mantineans who are ransacking their baggage train and they
23:20rout them and they break because they have greater unit cohesion the spartan army really shines in
23:29comparison to a lot of other classical armies
23:34and when we think about phalanx warfare in particular and the spartans marching together
23:40it's the reason why the shield is so synonymous with spartan culture the shield is for spartans
23:47what the katana is for the samurai spartan mothers on sending their sons into battle say to them
23:57come back with your shield or on it and of course on it means come back dead in other words
24:05be a hero
24:06and bring glory to sparta trained and armed the young spartan is one step closer to becoming a fully
24:14forged warrior but first he must face his enemy in combat
24:27the spartan warrior is built for combat
24:36what distinguishes the spartans in comparison to other greeks is they spend their whole lives preparing
24:43for this one of the most popular poets among the spartans is a man named tertius tertius's poems are very
24:53bloody describing people being stabbed and their blood pouring out all over the field he exports spartans
24:59to face their enemies never running never turning your back
25:05but the true test comes from one-on-one combat
25:16for his opponent the spartan warrior is an intimidating sight the spartan is kind of stony
25:24faced and silent which is probably to psych out the enemy when you got a spartan warrior in your face
25:31with a seven to nine foot spear your days are numbered
25:53both sides try to poke fraud stab at the weak points of each other try to get under the shield
25:59over
25:59the shield in between the eye slits of each man's helmet so if you can picture a wire almost t
26:06-shaped
26:06slot that's the part of your face that's exposed can you get a spear in there oh yes absolutely
26:24when a warrior loses his spear you draw your sword plutarch tells us a story that a spartan complains to
26:33his mother mom the sword you gave me it's so short and his mother leans forward and says then add
26:39a step
26:41in other words get closer to the enemy so you can use it
26:47the colpis it's almost like a giant cleaver
26:54think about big sweeping movements that can take limbs off at a chop or hopefully knock shields down
27:04the spartan warrior scans the enemy's posture and foot position
27:11waiting to identify any opening you have to keep your shield up and you can stab try to exploit a
27:18gap
27:18maybe in the neck what you want to do is the so-called harmodious blow
27:26from the left shoulder you have your sword and you bring it down in a chop or cleave
27:37that shield is rubbing your arm raw all of that bronze and leather that shield alone is 20 to 22
27:45pounds you hang 22 pounds off your shoulders that wears someone out
27:52the spartans show enormous stamina in battle some of it of course comes from the rigorous training
28:01but some comes also from the spartan ethic of fight to the death never surrender
28:10finally the spartan finds an opening and seizes the opportunity
28:15so the spartan hoplite shield can be used in close combat for striking
28:25and in the moment of stunning in the moment of dazed confusion you is able to capitalize on that
28:32what we see represented in art is the moment of the kill
28:39right before the victory is had right before the enemy is killed
28:55there has to be a moment where first blood is drawn and once that coppery smell hits the air
29:00if you're used to it you can hold on longer you can endure this horrible moment longer than others
29:09that's that's the spartan strength but the spartan warrior is built to fight as part of a group
29:19to the death
29:25the spartan warrior has trained from a young age to defend his land and people
29:39now he must confront the greatest threat greece has ever faced the persian empire
29:54the great king of persia xerxes has decided that the persians are going to add greece to the long
30:00list of conquests of the persian empire and xerxes comes to greece with an enormous army
30:13the spartan warrior is enlisted to join 300 of his fellow spartans to lead a coalition against the
30:21persian army the greeks have decided that the best place to stop them is at this narrow pass
30:27in central greece called thermopylae the spartan legend is formed at thermopylae because it's at thermopylae that
30:37the spartans demonstrate the greatest courage in charge of this is one of the two kings of sparta
30:44leonidas he is in charge of about 7 000 greek hoplites
30:52the persians arrive with a larger army than the greeks have ever seen hundreds of thousands
30:59xerxes goal is simple punch through and get his men moving as quickly as possible
31:04leonidas and the greeks goal is also simple hold the persians in place
31:12why that big of an army is extremely vulnerable because armies don't carry that much food with
31:19them leonidas's plan is to hold and starve them
31:26at thermopylae the mountains come down almost to the sea and so this is very narrow stretch
31:33where a small force can plug up the gap despite being outnumbered more than 20 to one the spartans
31:42prepare for battle
31:47the traditional persian way of softening up infantry is a rain of arrows
31:53one spartan warrior at thermopylae when being told that persians will shoot arrows in great numbers
32:00so many arrows that the sun will be blocked one spartan warrior supposedly laughs and says well
32:06then we'll fight in the shade
32:12persians are just carpeting the ground with arrowheads now if you're lightly armored that's a
32:19death sentence but the spartans aren't
32:23they have heavy wooden shields bronze helmets bronze body armor bronze greaves
32:28you turtle up under all that you sit there through hours all day
32:37the spartans fend off the enemy arrows and brace for the inevitable attack on foot
32:44historian herodotus describes the persians sending wave after wave of soldiers against the spartan troops
32:55persian infantry are traditionally lighter armor so when the lighter armored infantry crashes into a
33:04spartan phalanx it can't dislodge the spartans fighting in their hoplite phalanx are able to
33:10hold the line and execute maneuvers that trick the persians and magnify the slaughter
33:19and the natural human response to such fear is to evacuate the bowels
33:27the smell of it the the grit of blood and urine and feces and dust just mixing as each man
33:36advances
33:37toward each other and it only gets worse as the day goes on
33:42and the persians are looking out at the battlefield and seeing hordes of their dead comrades
33:49the highly trained spartans hold off the attack for days but the persian invaders are relentless the
33:57persians are able to discover that there is a pass through the mountains around back where the greek
34:03position is leonidas sends most of the army away so we have about maybe 300 spartans and about 700 other
34:14greeks
34:16so leonidas has decided that he and his men are going to remain in the pass and fight to the
34:21death
34:22against the persians the remaining forces are outnumbered by more than 100 to one
34:29this is what they have been training for all their lives this is the fulfillment of their destiny
34:36for the final phase of the battle leonidas and the spartans cause great slaughter among the persians
34:41they fight until their spears break
34:47shields are broken swords break and at the end the greeks are reduced to fighting with nothing but nail
34:55and tooth and kick leonidas does not give up he doesn't surrender
35:04he's cut down and the persians seeing that the greeks are outnumbered
35:10their leader dead they stand back and they shoot them down from a distance
35:18for the spartans the real truth of the matter is that thermopylae was a catastrophic loss
35:24and what sparta and what the other greeks have to do is turn a military defeat into a pr victory
35:37the heroic story of thermopylae becomes a rallying cry across greece and a new group
35:43of spartan warriors once again leads an alliance against the persian occupiers
35:49next year at the battle of plataea the persians still have a superior force and terrifically hard
35:57infantry battle ensues and once again the spartans proved to be the heroes at this battle not because
36:03of a heroic death like at thermopylae but because of their skill at arms and once they kill the persian
36:10commander the rest of the persian forces fall apart and the greeks were able to win the battle
36:15and that is the last time the persians came to greece after the persian wars the spartan warrior has
36:24earned his reputation as the greatest warrior in the ancient greek world but like all great warriors
36:31the spartans cannot endure forever
36:45for centuries spartan military training produces the most feared warrior in ancient greece
36:52but by the end of the 5th century bc generations of war against rival city-states deplete the ranks of
37:01elite spartan warriors
37:11after 27 years of the peloponnesian war in years of the corinthian war sparta is now down on
37:19its most important commodity its warriors
37:26in the early 4th century it gets to the point where they have something like 1500 full spartan
37:32citizen soldiers whereas they had something like 8 000 available for battles in the previous century
37:40the lure of mercenary pay is too great for many warriors
37:45further weakening the spartan military the training of young spartans is excellent
37:53in terms of teaching them to endure hardship
37:59it does nothing to teach them to resist temptation and when the spartans are offered
38:04bribes when on campaign they very frequently take them sparta's conservatism also undermines success on
38:13the battlefield sparta is dominant on land for centuries um couple things bring them to the end of their dominance
38:23the primary thing is a fault in spartan military culture and that's a unwillingness to adapt
38:31an unwillingness to innovate sparta really relies on that heavy infantry class but ancient warfare isn't
38:38just about heavy infantry ancient warfare is about something that we call in the modern military
38:43combined arms that means light troops that means cavalry that means navy and that means flexibility and
38:50the ability to adapt other states have come up with new military strategies and the spartans are doing
38:58the same thing and it doesn't work anymore
39:05ultimately the spartans fight a battle at luctra in 371 bc where thebans adopt some particular tactics
39:13designed to defeat the spartans in battle
39:19so a traditional phalanx battle has the strongest part of the phalanx on the right of each army
39:26but a commander named epaminondas of the thebans decided to flip that
39:31this heavy reinforced left is able to push and press harder against the spartan
39:37right where the traditional elite of the spartian society is and they're able to press it back and
39:43break it this is crushing for the spartans not just because of the men they lost at luctra but because
39:49of the loss of their reputation the thebans are able to march south and free the enslaved mycenian
39:58population they are finally freed from spartan enslavement
40:04from this point forward sparta is no longer the great power in greece that it had been
40:13sparta's fall from the world stage is swift
40:16but its reputation for producing great warriors lives on sparta has a greater hold on the modern
40:25imagination than a lot of their peers there's video games made about the spartans there's movies made
40:32about the spartans so when we see sports teams throughout the world named the spartans it speaks
40:38to the enduring legacy of sparta as the gold standard for warriors people think of the spartans as some
40:44of the greatest warriors who ever fought this is not an undeserved reputation not all the stories that
40:51are told about the spartans are true but they were the best hoplite soldiers fighting um on the
40:56battlefields of greece on the classical greek battlefield where two armies are pressing and
41:05pushing against each other at the limit of desperation beyond fear beyond pain that is where the spartans
41:11really shine 2500 years on the spartan legacy is known around the world a fierce dedication to the
41:21ultimate warrior mindset legendary victories and great courage in the face of certain defeat clinch the
41:31spartans rightful place among history's greatest warriors
Comments