Posted on 12/12/2007 11:10:15 AM PST by blam
Spartans did not throw deformed babies away: researchers
Mon Dec 10, 1:22 PM ET
AFP/File Photo: The statue of King Leonidas of ancient Sparta stands over the battlefield of Thermopylae, some...
ATHENS (AFP) - The Greek myth that ancient Spartans threw their stunted and sickly newborns off a cliff was not corroborated by archaeological digs in the area, researchers said Monday.
After more than five years of analysis of human remains culled from the pit, also called an apothetes, researchers found only the remains of adolescents and adults between the ages of 18 and 35, Athens Faculty of Medicine Anthropologist Theodoros Pitsios said.
"There were still bones in the area, but none from newborns, according to the samples we took from the bottom of the pit" of the foothills of Mount Taygete near present-day Sparta.
"It is probably a myth, the ancient sources of this so-called practice were rare, late and imprecise," he added.
Meant to attest to the militaristic character of the ancient Spartan people, moralistic historian Plutarch in particular spread the legend during first century AD.
According to Pitsios, the bones studied to date came from the fifth and sixth centuries BC and come from 46 men, confirming the assertion from ancient sources that the Spartans threw prisoners, traitors or criminals into the pit.
The discoveries shine light on an episode during the second war between Sparta and Messene, a fortified city state independent of Sparta, when Spartans defeated the Messenian hero Aristomenes and his 50 warriors, who were all thrown into the pit, he added.
I knew the word had something to do with language of outsiders, but had been thinking it had to do with the lack of a writing system. Thanks for the info. Hopefully I'll remember it the next time a topic about it comes up.
All or most armies raped & pillaged, but not all gained a reputation about it. How do you think the word got the connotation that's been passed down to us, if all it meant was those who's language sounds like "nonsense"? Even nonsense is a weighted word, assumes a touch of superiority of those who didn't speak & understand the language that sounded like "bar-bar". Belittle your foes if you don't make them evil, as simple "savages" are easier to defeat than an army you allow to be perceived as your equal.
Beware Greeks bearing gifts = Greeks are not to be trusted or have no honor. It is not known whether or not the wooden horse was real. On the one hand you've got cool smart move, but on the other, to "outsiders" you need to "cheat" to win.
As for the Romans, I haven't studied their word for barbarian. I assume it would have to do with the political organization of the opponent. Those invading Germanic (even if Arian Christian) tribes were not a well-organized empire.
The Vandals didn't need a well-organized empire to sack Rome & gain a reputation that lives to this day in the word vandalism.
But the Roman legions did their share of raping and pillaging. Look what they did to Jerusalem in the late first century AD--they leveled it to the ground. There are many other examples of Rome doing this sort of thing. In this context I don't think barbarian refers to the destructive power of an army.
Those who wrote the history were "civilized" & those who were defeated by them were all "barbarians".
I heard talk by a historian who'd been asked to consult on a movie about Hannibal & at some point during the consultation, he was asked if there was any way to make Hannibal the victor in his battles against Rome.
Essentially, it allowed for a couple who wanted the child to take it and adopt it
One of the best known examples of this was Marcus Tullius Cicero's affection for his daughter, Tullia, known from his letters to her.
At least the infant skull is bone. The professor showed us one in a human skeletal biology class. So tiny. And it made me feel like crying, because some woman had lost that baby once.
I wish I could say I was surprised....
You're right, it did. The story of babies adopted by a she-wolf could have come about after seeing a wolf carry off a baby left to the "will of the gods".
I think the movie is coming out next year. I'll probably have to go see it, to see if they listened to the historian or if they made up some "history" to give it the ending the producer thought would be more interesting.
Cool, thanx!
I thought it had to do with who lived in cities. If you lived in fixed permanent cities you were civlilized. If you were a tribe of wandering nomads you were barbarians.
D’oh! Spellcheck: civlilized => civilized.
And I guess even a bad historical film is good, if only for the chance to have good arguments as to the flaws and inaccuracies...as long as it isn’t too distorted.
You are correct about the difficulty of discussing “Roman” institutions without further qualification. We are, after all, discussing a timespan of more than 1,000 years, almost 2,000 if you include the Byzantines, in a society which changed from a backwoods village to the unchallenged ruler of the world.
The original Greek word for barbarian did indeed refer to all non-Greek speakers. By the time of Alexander, if not earlier, it had altered to mean more or less “uncivilized,” which is roughly its present meaning. It was generally used to refer to the “outer peoples” away from the Mediterranean, not the city-dwelling peoples along its shores.
In later Greek and Roman writing, I don’t think the term was used for such peoples as Egyptians, Persians or Carthaginians except in hyperbole, as we still use it today. In late Hellenistic and Roman times, some of the original language-based meaning may have crept back in, as people who had no Greek were considered by definition uneducated and somewhat uncivilized.
While too many distortions can disrupt the flavor, I'm not horribly bothered by it. I have no expectation of accuracy. If the buzz about a film is history made from whole cloth, I'll wait to see it on TV instead of going to the theater & paying to be insulted.
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Thanks Blam. While I'm not really a fan of Plutarch, this cliff was known as "the place of rejection"; there's never been a second of doubt about it before; infant bones exposed to the elements would be long gone; fresh infant remains would have been hauled off whole or in pieces by scavengers, so there'd be nothing left anyway. My guess is this is some kind of attempt to defend a NAMBLA-type society from the ancient world, and is being done for current political reasons. |
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Really? They wouldn't even ship them to wherever "home" was? When was this -- WW II, before?
Most of what we think we know about Spartan culture and practices was written by their enemies, or at least by people unsympathetic to Sparta. They left very little written records themselves.
Thanks for the information about the word barbarian in the ancient world. I had assumed it changed meaning over time, but as you point out, perhaps something of the old meaning still clung to the word.
Yes, I think our usual meaning of the word today is "uncivilized" or "primitive". But there is another meaning of "cruel or brutal". Civilized nations, in the sense of a highly developed society and culture, can commit brutal acts, such as the Japanese in China and the Philippines during WWII. That would qualify as barbarian. I don't have a copy of the EOD at home, but I will look up the word to see how it might have changed meaning when the word entered English. And of course words usually have more than one meaning which only the context can make clear.
One of the difficulties in reading old literature, for example the middle English of Chaucer, is that we tend to bring our modern understanding of a particular word to the work. So it takes time to understand old literature, and then perhaps you can only do your best without being absolutely certain that you have got it right. I would think that applies to Latin and ancient Greek as well.
As for Greeks and Romans hurling insults at their enemies, they probably did. But I doubt that using rhetoric to rouse the masses to hatred of the enemy was the primary reason to go to war for those ancients. Honor was probably a greater incentive to war, as well as desire for territory and booty.
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