Categories: Opinion and Editorial

The True Story Behind 300 and Sparta’s “Super Soldiers”

In Frank Miller’s “300”, Spartans are represented as heroic fighters of mythical renown, bringing shame to an invading enemy with overwhelming numerical superiority. In the end, they are portrayed as inspiring the defense of all of Greece.

Here’s the rest of the real story of Sparta – the less than noble aspects of their culture.

Sparta was nothing more than a military state. It solely existed for one purpose – to produce the best warriors in the world.

To achieve this end, they engaged in a system called “Eunomia”, or “the good order”, which included a state-directed natural selection that chiefly penalized boys. Unlike girls, newborn Spartan baby boys who were judged to be ‘weak’ were abandoned to die on the slopes of Mount Taygetus. Young boys who survived this, were encouraged by the age of seven to fight among themselves, under the Spartan “Agoge” warrior ethos. Boys at this age were intentionally malnourished to encourage them to steal food; although, if they were caught, they would be severely punished – punished for the weakness of getting caught.

This was to encourage the development of their stealth skills. Furthermore, the serf caste in Sparta, or the Helots, were the subject of ritual hunts, carried out by teenage boys upon serfs caught out at night during the autumn season. In this capacity, these young men were operating as members of Sparta’s “Krypteia”, their version of the secret police. (Cryptea means “hidden, secret things” in ancient Greek.) Young men who were actually caught killing helots, were again severely punished.

To go along with Sparta’s eugenics and natural selection program, young boys were also indoctrinated into pederasty – sexual relations with their mentors.

Young men who failed the Agoge program, were denied citizenship.

If they passed the Agoge program, the young men were then drafted into military service, sometimes until as old as the age of sixty, but at least until thirty.

While women generally weren’t the subject of state-enforced female infanticide in Sparta, women were shaped to be the most beautiful women in Greece, and to breed strong male children. Their education also included sexual relationships between girls and women mentors. Spartan women were also encouraged to have children by men other than their husbands, again for the purposes of breeding Spartan warriors; but also, Spartan men could have multiple wives.

This, ultimately, encompassed Sparta’s super soldier program, which predated Nazi Germany’s Lebensborn equivalent by over two thousand years.

Few comparisons with the human rights nightmare of Nazi-controlled Germany could be more accurate than the horror of Sparta and its quest for a race of super soldiers. Indeed, Hitler transformed Germany from a war-torn nation into a brutal regime of which genocide was a part; but in Sparta, ritual mass slaughter of human beings – particularly babies and serfs – and the turning of boys against one another for sport – was the very cornerstone of their culture. Human beings were raised from birth to death on the altar of Sparta’s cult of the super soldier.

Nazi Germany and its transgressions against humanity should never be trivialized, but by any standards, under Sparta’s shadow, it is utterly eclipsed. Germany had a “Final Solution” for all those who were not loyal Germans, including Jews and gay people. Sparta’s “Final Solution” was more of a “Pre-Emptive Solution”, in that they carried out eugenic slaughters upon children, to pre-empt even the post-natal survival of those deemed inferior.

Indeed, Sparta’s population, as a result of its “Eunomia” culture, eventually dwindled to less than a thousand adult male citizens during the years of Christ.