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Analyze how Sparta influenced modern military values.
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Sparta's influence on modern military values is evident in their emphasis on discipline, endurance, and camaraderie. The Spartan agogè system trained boys in physical and martial skills from age seven, similar to modern military training. Practices like the krypteia and syssition emphasized survival skills, teamwork, and loyalty, paralleling today's military ethos. Spartan values such as courage, self-sacrifice, and laconic communication continue to shape military training and culture worldwide.
The Spartan system of training young boys to become citizens, known as the process of agogè, was at the same time a process of physical training that exhibited characteristics that were in some ways similar to those of our own modern-day military. Daily exercise and war games, hunting, training in the use of arms, and a one-year engagement called the krypteia made up the everyday life of the boys, starting from age 7.
The krypteia was a brutal practice whereby the most talented military boys would be sent out into the countryside for one year with only minimal supplies to keep themselves alive. They would hunt and steal to feed themselves. These boys were also required to seek out and kill members of the Helots (Spartan slaves from Messenia) indiscriminately. The krypteia inculcated certain martial virtues in Spartan boys that are important parts of the modern-day military mentality,...
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such as strength, the ability to work effectively with one’s comrades, insensitivity to material privation, and dehumanization of those considered to be enemies.
Another aspect of the training of boys was the syssition, or the military meal, where Spartan boys would eat together. The process of dining together, isolated from other classes of people in Spartan community, was meant to cement bonds of brotherly loyalty between boys of the same age, who would presumably mature together through the trials of the agogè and fight for one another in times of battle. The syssition had properties similar to the modern-day mess hall used by US Marines.
The agogè’s function was to educate boys in the values of endurance, courage, sobriety, and unselfishness—all of which Spartan society believed were the necessary qualifications of productive citizens capable of defending the city. These virtues are, unsurprisingly, the hallmarks of military ethos today, demonstrating the importance of the Spartan cultural influence on our own way of thinking.
Hello! Below I analyze how Sparta laid the foundation for modern military values:
1) The Spartan development of military discipline became the basis for the cohesiveness and solidarity of the modern armed forces.
2) Today we share the principle of self-sacrifice as the basis for military resolve, courage, honor and duty (consider, for example, the 300 Spartans who made a desperate last stand against the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae).
3) They implemented battle-focused physical training and developed special forces for the purposes of fighting a much larger enemy. (Example: All Spartan boys were trained in military combat from the age of seven. After thirteen years of extreme physical training, the boys took their places in the Spartan Army as adult warriors. The Spartans had their own special force, the Krypteia, which consisted of eighteen-year-old males who exhibited exceptional military and physical skills. The Krypteia mirrors our own special forces today.)
4) They focused on sports and martial training with an emphasis on mobility, stamina and speed as the basis for military supremacy. Many of our modern military academies place great emphasis on prowess in sports.
5) The Spartans emphasized andragathia (manly virtue): unwavering obedience, frugality, self-control, and independence. These traits are still taught in modern military academies for the purposes of forging a strong force capable of meeting any enemy which threatens the safety of a nation.
6) The Spartans encouraged a strong sense of camaraderie and loyalty among their warriors, important attributes still practiced in our modern military.
7) The Spartan requirement to be terse or laconic is the forerunner of our modern military speech: sparse to the point of rudeness. Spartans believed that unnecessary speech needed to be curtailed and that emotions should be brought under control. For the purpose of conditioning for suffering in battle, the Spartans held a brutal, annual whipping ritual designed to toughen up their young warriors. Today, the terse military language used by our military is designed to imbue courage and discipline in the face of extreme danger.
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