Replies

What aspect of Spartan culture, has found its way into modern Western Civilisation, exactly?

I’d have said that strong Roman rule, with its nature of imposing Roman culture in those areas it conquered; all over Europe, one time or the other; before and after the formation of the Church, was what shaped Western Culture, with the Romans themselves borrowing from the Greeks.

But the Greeks and Spartans were at odds, most of the time.

What aspect of Spartan culture, has found its way into modern Western Civilization, exactly?

The theory of the checks and balances of mixed government, for one.

The self discipline of martial valor for the sake of the survival of Western Civilization, for another.

See Post 20.

***************

I would also point out that Sparta's devotion to the core value of "defending it’s right to exist" should not be taken for granted ......

..... especially in 21st Century America.

***************

Throughout the history of Western Civilization, when a "Britain's Finest Hour" moment was needed, when the bastions of Western Civilization needed defending, Western Civilization has looked back upon the Battle of Thermopylae ...... and the Spartans whose sacrifice gave the West the time it needed to save itself.

What would have happened if the Spartan had never fought at Thermopylae?

What if the Persians had conquered Greece, erased its heritage of democratic rule (which included Sparta although we may not condone its democratic choices) and if the Persians had established a beachhead in Western Europe to go on and crush the infant Roman Republic and then the Celtic barbarians of Western Europe.

Whether we like it or not, Western Civilization survives not because of the law-giver or the poet or the philosopher or the merchant or the engineer but, rather, because of the rough-around-the edges "Tommy", or the G.I., or the sailor at Lepanto or the Roman Legionnaire or the Spartan hoplite gaining precious time at Thermopylae at the cost of their lives.

If we even have a Western Civilization at all today may very well depend on the sacrifice that those Spartans made at Thermopylae.

ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

"What aspect of Spartan culture, has found its way into modern Western Civilization, exactly?"

How about its very existence?

The Spartans were Greeks. I doubt if they contributed much culturally, but if they had not been the leaders in the Persian defeat at Plataea and other places, we may well have never had Western Democracy.