Hero Worship (Part 3)

Ever since 300 came out, I’ve been preoccupied with the concept and implications of heroism. To be honest, it’s been a mixed sexual/philosophical fantasy…I’m a woman after all. So to satisfy my cravings, I saw the movie twice. Then I read two fictional novels about Sparta and planning to read Herodotus (a Greek who lived in the Spartans’ time and wrote about them in the most direct/historic sense, though much was greatly embelished) next.

My readings of the two books so far offered interesting, conflicting viewpoints on heroism. The first book I read, The Hot Gates, played up Spartans in the same dramatic light as the movie; in fact a lot of the dialogue seem to come from the book, but the book has much more substance, subtler themes, and deeper character development. The second book I read, Spartan, stayed more true to reality (though not necessarily history). I was most struck by the following Author’s note at the end of the book:

“In the final analysis, the distortions of Spartan society originate from taking a basic principle–aberrant from a modern point of view–to an extreme: that is, that the state is more important than any of its citizens, although its original interpretation may simply have been the sacrifice of the individual for the greater good of the survival of the community. Behavior that still today is termed ‘heroism’.”

The book also implies that Sparta’s rigid rules caused its own demise. Spartans practiced infanticide, abandoning all babies with birth defects; like the English monarchy, they struggled to sustain noble lines, which led to inbreeding, which led to more babies with defects; they were constantly at war, thus losing even more of their valued citizens, the warriors. Though they all sensed that many of their rules (including the laws obliging them to abandon and in essense, kill, babies with defects and to marry only within noble lines) weakened their own state, as the author of Spartan noted, they believed strongly in sacrifice of the individual for the community. They would not deter from the city’s rules. In fact, there is a very famous Spartan saying, supposedly written on the graves of Spartan soldiers who fell at Thermopylae, that read: “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.” They knew, in an excrutiating tragic sense, that their obedience to their city will cause their own demise, yet they chose to obey.

The question is, whether their deaths were senseless. It’s one thing to fight for sensible ideals, like preservation of a community, but why fight for rules that do not preserve themselves or future generations?

Supposedly in A.D. 198 (the Spartans were at their height in 5th century B.C., which was the time of the 300), a Roman emperor asked Spartans to join him in a fight, but when he saw them, they were all haggard-looking weaklings. Their noble lines had eventually diminished. After the Spartans lost in the Peloponnese war against the Athenians, Athens became the center of power and Sparta, once a metropolis as strong as Athens and her rival in different approaches to government, thoughts, and ideals (Athenians were known for their intellect, democracy, and the arts, while Spartans were known for their sparseness, rigid military culture, and producing heroes), eventually dwindled.

Many of the Athenians’ ideas have been adopted and become modern ideas, i.e. democracy. Though Sparta disappeared from history much sooner than Athens, much of the Spartans’ ideas are also preserved and now cast in an almost mythical light. But what is the cause of our fascination? Their lives were no doubt harsh; their laws were contradictory just like modern laws; their follies were as terrible as ours. But something about that epitaph touches my heart…”Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.” It’s so simple, so robbed of grandeur, so matter of fact. Yet, and may be I’m imagining things, or projecting my own feelings, I can sense the sorrow behind those sparse words.

Imagine the sorrow of that life, to be a woman who must abandon a lame son and if she is to be fortunate to have a healthy son, then she must face one day losing him and her husband to battle. Imagine being the warrior departing his family to face blood and gore year after year. This is not just a momentary “difficult time”; this is their way of life. I think what I admire most is their relentless courage to take that kind of life, full of the harshest of sufferings, both physical and emotional, head on: to take the difficulties of life to the extreme and not just endure it, but be the best at it.