You're Dead to Me - The Spartans

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

Greg Jenner is joined by comedian and king of the I’m a Celebrity jungle, Joel Dommett, and Warwick University classics professor Michael Scott as the trio charge headlong into the legend of the Spartans. As they debunk the myths in the movie 300, find out why even burly Spartans wouldn’t fight in just a leather nappy. Why did Spartan women have it so much better than other women in Ancient Greece? And what colour cape would Joel demand to wear if sent into battle?Script and Research: Greg Jenner Producer: Dan MorelleA Muddy Knees production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a brand new history podcast for people who don't like history. Or rather, where you hated it at school. It was boring, irrelevant, you were 16 for Pete's sake, and who gives a crap about the Weimar Republic, whatever that is. But things change. You're older, you've grown up, you've noticed there's things you'd like to know, actually, or rather you've looked out the window and noticed the world is on fire and the news is terrible and nothing

makes sense. And you're thinking, I wish I knew some history. But there's so much history. Where do I start? Well, start here. We have a podcast for you that's cheerful and fun and will tell you all the things you need to know. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm your host. I'm a public historian. I've spent the past decade making history funny, factual and accessible for kids on the BBC show Horrible Histories. Now I'd like to do it for you. Every episode will take a major event, topic or biography and we'll break it down into bite-sized morsels. And I'll be joined by expert guests who know their onions and expert comedians who can do jokes about onions or probably jokes about penises. We'll see how it goes. In this episode, we are throwing ourselves into battle against the great warriors of the ancient world. And of course,

the warriors of Hollywood, that is the Spartans. And joining me to sort fact from fiction are two hunky beefcakes who put my own feeble biceps to shame. In History Corner, we have a brilliant classicist from the University of Warwick. He's a familiar face on the BBC where he presents loads of documentaries, including Invisible Cities, where he scans cities with lasers, like some sort of Bond villain. It is the wonderful Professor Michael Scott. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for coming all the way down. Obviously, you love a bit of history, so I'm not gonna have to convince you that this show will be interesting, but thank you. But in Comedy Corner, we have a man who maybe doesn't love history, I don't know.

We're going to find out. It is a brilliant comedian. His name is, well, I'll tell you in a second, actually. Let me introduce him another way. He's one of the funniest, loveliest men I know. He's one of the best stand-ups in the country. He's the crown prince of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. He's a living Adonis when he takes his shirt off.

Thank God he hasn't taken it off yet, because I would not be able to concentrate. It's the wonderful Joel Domet. Hello, Joel. Hello. Michael. Hey, how you doing? Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

You are a professor of classics. That's a really serious job title. What does that mean? That means I get to spend my day-to-day immersed up to my eyebrows in the weird and wacky world of the ancient Greeks and Romans. We love that.

We'll have some of that, please. Thanks very much. Joel, your day job, a bit different. Yeah. I'm just... And also, when you did that intro, I realised I watched Invisible City. And I was like, that's what I know you from.

And I watched I'm a Celebrity. Oh, my God. We're both secret fans of each other. This is so exciting exciting do you love history joel are you filled with dread the idea of being locked in a room with two historians no i'm actually really excited about it because i really i really love i love history and i love learning but my brain is full and so i can't retain anything so i really enjoy conversations but because i'm like oh i'm learning so much but I immediately forget

and so I just I like I just I love reading I like I love reading a book because in that moment I'm enjoying reading the book but afterwards I will not be able to tell you what happened in that book so I'm going to really enjoy this conversation and then I'll re-listen to this podcast and enjoy

it again. Once a week you can just keep re-listening and go, oh yeah, the Spartans. All right. Well, I mean, the Spartans are famous and the reason we're doing

this episode is because people listening at home, you've probably heard of the Spartans via pop culture, most likely the movie 300 and we'll be talking

about that film a bit. I know, Joel, you're a fan. I'm a massive fan of that film. Good, excellent. Well, hopefully we'll have some... Shall we get this out of the way before we go on any further? One, two, three. This is Spartans film. Good. Excellent. Well hopefully we'll have some. Get us out of the way before we go on any further.

One two three. This is Sparta. Oh so good. Lovely. Feels so good. Chewing the lungs. I feel like we need to slightly lower our

voices when we do it. There's nothing worse than sort of three nerdy dudes. This is Sparta. I've got channel inner Gerard Butler right now.

This is Sparta. That's really lovely. Very nice baritone. So, what do you know? People at home, if they're thinking Spartans, they're probably thinking, let me just run through some of the stereotypes. They're probably thinking the ancient Greeks

who made the other ancient Greeks poo themselves in terror. The hardcore heroes slash fascists, depending on who you ask, with amazing abs. They're oiled up. They had long hair. They were ripped to the point of being sort of cheese graters. They were elite warriors. They were famous for their red flowing capes, their big round shields. They were warriors. They cared only about war. They were stoic. They killed weak babies. They gave short speeches. They were macho and very gay. And 300 of them died at the Battle of Thermopylae, standing against 300,000 Persians. That's what I guess most people think of as Spartans. Is that

true? We're going to find out. So here we go with a little bit of history, shall we? Professor Michael Scott, can we start with the basics? We've established that this is Sparta. This is most definitely Sparta. The studio right here. Right here. This is Sparta. You heard it here on this podcast. Okay, but if I can, Gerard, buttler my way into a second question.

Where is Sparta? And how long ago is Sparta? Okay, so how long ago is the easy one, right? We're talking two and a half thousand years ago. It's the kind of heyday of the 300 movie moment. We're talking about the same time that the Athenians were building the Parthenon and they were inventing democracy and it's all that kind of moment. So it's a really, in the big story of human history, this is a key point. Who were the Spartans? Well, they were nowhere near the Athenians geographically. They were

buried away deep in the Peloponnese, which is that sort of southern part of Greece the sort of almost separate island they were sort of near Olympia the home of the Olympic Games and why are they called Sparta well the the main town the main kind of center of their their state if you like the town was called Sparta but actually the land was called lacedaemon and they were lacedaemonians those are the kind of these that's why they've got the the lambda the l on their shields in the movie you wonder why they've got an l if they're called spartans it's actually because they're called lacedaemonians is that where we get the word laconic from exactly so people who are laconic, I mean, they're really chilled and cool

and they say things short and pithy and punchy. Yeah. Not like I've done there. Wonderfully summing me up there, Greg. Thank you so much. I was looking at you at the time. But where these names come from, right, there's a great, it's the first kind of mythical king and queen of Sparta.

One was called, like a diamond, and the other was called, and she was called Sparty. And they sort of gave their names to the town and the territory they were like we're just going to name it after ourselves are they sort of the brangelina of the exactly like kind of and you know one was a son of zeus and the other was like son of a river a daughter of a river god you know and you're kind of like all right all right and they claim to be descended from heracles you know hercules hunkily he's kind of that guy uh so they had a pretty good rep before they even got going.

So in the ancient world, I mean, you've already mentioned the Athenians. When we talk about the ancient Greeks, there's loads of different ancient Greeks. And it's a bit like that sort of variety breakfast cereal pack you got as a kid. You got seven different types of breakfast. Who are the Coco Pops of the ancient Greek world? And the Spartans, are they all bran? What's the... Oh, I think that would totally depend who you're going to ask.

I know Spartans are going to say, I'm they all bran what's the oh i think that would totally depend who you're gonna ask no spartan's gonna say i'm an all bran uh but they probably would look at the athenians and go you show off cocoa pop turn your milk chocolatey kind of right over there like all mouth no trousers okay problems with the athenians yeah ancient greek is like this it isn't no one would ever define themselves as a greek in ancient greece they would go i am spartan i am athenian i'm from argos i'm from corinth wherever it was a tapestry of lots and lots and we're talking thousands of little individual sort of city-states who all did things in their own way and they sort of came together occasionally but most of the time they were like you know what we're good spartans for instance talked about anyone even if they were from the next village, as foreigners.

Right. Okay. So it's literally after the walls of the town have ended, you're dead to us. You're dead to me. I mean, the other thing, of course, you've mentioned the Athenians, and we tend to think of them as sort of sophisticated culture. They've got philosophy and poetry and nice buildings. Do the Spartans go in for that stuff? Are they cultured and sophisticated, or are they a bit more like just down the line violence and hats well so the story goes your average Spartan would not

spend much of their time listening to poetry although they did have poetry but all of its war related so if you want you just imagine all these Spartans standing around there was a Spartan we have some surviving guy called Tertius and you listen to his stuff and oh my god it's like and the glory of battle as we face together the mighty foe and die together blah blah blah blah blah uh yeah even if they do poetry it's about war okay so they're basically one note guys they've got just this thing on their mind it's war is that fair i mean that's how they're portrayed in hollywood yeah it is fair right in sparta for a male spartan citizen they were banned by law from having any other profession than being a soldier wow and so how did that how did anyone like get anything done like how how did them all fall apart like was it just so was it just all women working in

shops then or was like was there what did the other guys do how did they get any of their taxes done exactly right kind of if they're spending all their time playing around a soldier boy yeah kind of where do they get their food from where do they get kind of where's their money from who builds that now partly the women are doing it and actually i think we're going to talk about women because actually they had really really important role to play in spartan society and had a much better time of it than some of the other women at the end but what the spartans did which was totally out of the ballpark compared to any other kind of city state in greece was at a very early point in time they invaded and conquered the next door area and they subjugated the entire

population and they went you forevermore you are going to be our slaves and you're going to do everything so we can spend all day kind of mucking around with our swords and our shields and you are going to do everything else wow and what was that place well it was basically mersinia and the people were called the helots okay so the helots are the engine room of spartan society they enable the spartans to spend all their time training as soldiers and going off and fighting and doing everything else and that was totally unusual in the ancient greek world sparta were the only people who had decided to basically conquer their next door neighbors and force them to serve them forevermore i tell you what the way i'm looking at you right now i pretty sure is the reason why you became a professor in the first

place i'm just looking at you like this is the most amazing thing that's ever happened and it's all behind gerald butler it's all behind and there's the first point about 300 right as a movie whether we love it and i love it i love it yeah but where are the first point about 300 right as a movie whether we love it and I love it I love it but where are the helots yeah

right where are all the guys that went to Thermopylae with Leonidas and his 300 and we know

they stayed there some of them to the bitter end and died with him where are they alright well we'll come to that later on in the episode

just putting that out there I'm glad you're passionate great stuff I'm really that you're passionate great stuff I'm really enjoying this podcast so far oh well thanks for coming

I'm really mostly as a listener but I'm glad to be on it too I'd like to do some talking now oh no I'm going to ask you a human question yeah

I mean you are in tremendous shape I am tremendously jealous of your arms stop it Greg stop flirting with me it's not flirting it's pure jealousy

he's sat beside me with his shirt off now, by the way. It's really hot in here. It's really creepy, Greg. You've done martial arts in the past. You've done recently, I know you've just filmed the second series of Joel and Nish versus the world. Yes. Where you travel the world sort of competing in extreme sort of tribal sports.

Yeah. So the idea is that we go around the world and visit the the world's fittest tribes essentially and uh the places we've been and we've been to mongolia and kenya and uh where we went to the maasai and we went like to this season we went to the the gauchos of argentina peru with the porters and we went to japan with Sumo and Kodo drummers and it's historically it's fascinating to see where these these people come from and where their culture comes from it's just it's fascinating. It's a lovely show it's a genuinely lovely show beautifully filmed really funny but I suppose a question I was going to ask is have you ever fought with sword, shield, javelin have you ever sort of got up with actual weapons and had to go face to face yeah I basically at some point during most of the

the episodes I have to fight someone and dance with someone that generally is pretty much every population that is has some sort of traditional um aspect of, then I pretty much always have to dance, drink alcohol at some point, and then fight them. And obviously I can't fight the adults because they're really good at it. So they just get me to fight the kids. So basically I've fought children all across the world.

There was like, in Mongolia, it was wrestling. They're amazing at wrestling in Mongolia. And so I just fought like, honestly, like a 12 year old kid just like threw me above his head on in Mongolia. And so I just thought, honestly, a 12-year-old kid just threw me above his head onto the floor, and it was minus 16. I was in tiny pants.

It wasn't very graceful. You can watch that on YouTube. I watched it this morning, and you really do get your ass handed to you by a 13-year-old child. Horrible. One of the worst days of my life. And the Mongolian children fighting in their pants,

you in your very tiny pants. Spartans, when we see them in the movie, they're in their pants. That doesn't sound tiny pants. Spartans, when we see them in the movie, they're in their pants. That doesn't sound very sensible. Is that a Hollywood thing? Yeah. Okay. Oh, really?

Yeah, Gerald Butler in those little leather nappy things that he has on, that's totally, totally Hollywood made up. So what did they wear? They wore the same kind of armour as pretty much every other Greek kind of fighting force. So they'd have a breastplate and they'd have a helmet and they'd have greaves on their knees. And they would have something more than a little leather nappy kind of on the cover. And they'd have that long red cape that you mentioned earlier, Greg, that was supposedly red so that if they were bleeding, no one would see their blood because they'd just think it was the red cape.

And they'd also have long hair. I mean, that was another thing in 300. Like kind of Gerald Butler, where was his long hair? Yeah, that's great. Kind of his little short little crop, neat little crop thing that he had. All Spartans famously had long hair that they spent a lot of time combing

before they went into battle. If I went to battle, I'd have a brown cape so nobody would be able to see if I shat myself. Genius. I always think, look at the 300, they obviously look very muscly and stuff,

but I was wondering that. I watched it last night. I've seen it many times before, but it's very weird when you suddenly go like, oh yeah, they're all just fighting in pants and that's a terrible idea.

It feels like they've all just forgotten their kit. Do you know what I mean? They've forgotten their kit of PE and they've just had to go into the kit box yeah but the thing that gives me heart every time i see that film is that i heard that not only did they work out in the gym for months beforehand to give themselves that six pack but they then had the makeup team yes like redefine and then in digital post-production the six-pack was defined i mean that's what i tell every person okay yeah like kind of and from a gym point of view from my point of view you can

see people and actually what's very interesting about the movie when did the movie come out uh it's about 10 years ago isn't it and in terms of body shape it's amazing to watch it and realize how much our idea of body shape has changed in the last 10 years because i remember when that movie came out everyone was like what everyone is so huge in that movie they're massive and they still are obviously big but now you go to ibiza and everyone's that big like it's like 10 years ago it was unheard of to be that size and now everyone in the geordie shore is that size or bigger you know it's like it's become much more than normal. And I genuinely think that movie was something to do with that. I think it really changed a lot of people's idea of body image and men wise.

And I think it's, it made everyone go like, oh, I want to get like that. And I mean, people say the ancient world has got nothing to do with the modern world. Here it is, right? You heard it from Joel, from his lips. The ancients have defined our gym and workout routines. Let's just check and see if Joel, let's see if you can qualify as a Spartan because they've got some relatively interesting rules. I mean, you go to the gym.

That's good. Okay, yes. Do you take a long hot shower afterwards? Yes. Sometimes too hot and too long. That's probably a fail. Oh, damn it. Spartans, they're all about the cold, minimal.

Anything more than essential water and you're basically just preening. Just going back to the gym stuff, when you go to your gym sessions, you do them naked, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I've been banned from so many gyms. Is that how they do it? They do would be they may have gone to war kind of with a bit of kit on but but exercising would have been kind of naked full naked exercise i just don't know how

that would go down i mean if you ever tried to claim but i'm doing it the spartan way like kind of in the gym i mean do they look at you try it next time i mean kind of it might work hey i reckon we should go into business and i've a gym called spa and we all you have to work out naked all right so we've established you go to the gym that's good you take showers that's bad so you're one for one and one fail two do you have tattoos you do i mean i'm looking at your lovely tattoos that's probably a fail i think i mean the spartan helots would be branded presumably but the citizens i'm guessing no tattoos no no probably not okay when when were tattoos a thing were they were they a thing then they were but they're again they kind of that idea

that you brand okay you brand your slaves we know that the kind of one of the ways to send secret messages if you were spying in the ancient world it was a pretty slow way was to shave your slave's head tattoo a message on his head wait for his hair to grow back and then send it behind enemy lines where his head shaved again it wasn't a high speed method of communication pretty good though but you know you know it's i mean i've i've definitely said things via the royal mail that i've got there. I was going to say, if you don't do recorded delivery. Yeah, exactly. Joel, do you, I'm just going to do a couple more questions here.

Do you moisturise? I mean, you've got a lovely. Absolutely do. I cleanse, tone, moisturise every day. Spartans oil themselves, don't they? Absolutely. After gym sesh, oil yourself down. Absolute prerequisite.

All right. I think. Splash around with the olive oil. On balance, I think you'd be allowed in. The tattoos, maybe they'd look at you and go, who's Gregory Peck then? Because there's a lovely tattoo on your arm. I've got a tattoo of Gregory Peck on my arm. They'd probably find that a little bit weird.

But I think you'd just about make it in. So well done. Michael, back to the bigger history. When we talk about the Spartans, we're probably imagining well, we've seen the movie perhaps. King Leonidas is king. Actually, I'm going to switch to you here, Joel. How many kings do you think there are in spartan society at any one time well by the judging by the movie it seems

like there's only one is that that's untrue uh sparta weirdly had two kings ah always had two kings it's another part of the movie it's sort of in the movie in the you know there's all that kind of cunning behind the scenes politics going back in in Sparta where Leonidas is not being supported. And there's like kind of that nasty kind of scheming guy who sort of sits there, whose name I can never remember. Theron or something. Theron, there we go. He's kind of like a muahaha.

Is it Dominic West? Dominic West, yeah. Like kind of doing his thing, like kind of where he sort of goes, I'm not going to allow and I'm going to. And then there's those councils that Leonidas' wife tries to appear before of and persuade. And that is all kind of a realistic portrayal of the fact that Sparta had a really quite complicated system.

There were two kings and they were like hereditary kingships, supposedly all descended from, again, from Hercules, Heracles. But basically they were like permanent generals. They were the guys who were always the general of the army on campaign. And they were the sort of religious leads, but they didn't really have the power to make kind of political decisions. That was handed to a group of old men. And the name for this kind of committee was the Old Men Committee. It sort of goes to the heart of the Spuns, not being particularly kind of effective.

Let's call a spade a spade. It's a bunch of old guys. Let's call it a bunch of old guys. They're very much the Ron Seal of the NCHU. They really do sort of go, all right, old dudes, we'll call them the old dudes. The old dudes. Sounds like a sketch group.

So they were the ones who made all the major decisions. But they in turn then had to pass like options you can have option a or b onto the assembly of all spartan male warriors so there was this kind of three-stage process if you like the economy in sparta presumably if the helots are doing all the work it's farming is it trade do they are they famous for manufacturing anything particular yeah i mean spartans are banned from being involved in trade manufacture anything apart from being warriors. But obviously there was stuff going on because you've got these Spartan warriors

at the top of the pyramid of society, and then you've got the helots at the bottom, those slaves that are doing all the manual labour. And then in the middle, you've got this group that are called, well, in Greek, they're called the perioikoi, which basically, again, rather geniusly translates as those who live about the place, which were people who lived in Spartan territory. But they weren't kind of elite Spartan warriors and they weren't helots either.

They were sort of just everyone in between. And they could get on and do whatever they wanted to do. And, you know, they contributed to the society as well. So there was all this stuff going on, but it wasn't being done by the elite Spartan warriors that you see in the 300. Okay. So, I mean, they are a trading nation, but they are essentially

that the citizens are geared towards war and war owning. Okay. Can I just jump in? And this was a quick point. I think it's a good juncture to ask. How do you know this? Like what was, is it mostly,

was it a lot of stuff written down at that time that we now know that it's come past your eyes you have asked the 65 million dollar question yeah i'm very excited about this yeah it's a damn fine question uh and and it is one of the most interesting things about the spartans which again they don't really kind of tinker well they tinker around the edges with it in 300 but they never kind of tellinker. Well, they tinker around the edges with it in 300, but they never kind of tell you it outright, which is we know almost nothing about the Spartans written by the Spartans.

They are, apart from that military poetry where they bang on for stanzas and stanzas about kind of war, actually from the Spartans' fair hand, nothing. So everything we know about the Spartans is people outside of Sparta talking about the Spartartans yeah so it kind of for a long time everyone just bought this kind of story about them being kind of these worries and then it was suddenly finally kind of archaeology started digging stuff up in sparta and we started getting little bits and pieces of the

puzzle that just make it all a bit more kind of complicated and now people tend to talk about the spartan mirage as it's known in scholarly circles the uh sounds like a car i know which is this kind of the image that the spartans wanted others to be talking about yeah to portray versus perhaps what the reality was like on the inside and i suppose they kind of touch on that in the movie and that's the the idea of like, we fought in this battle, you go and tell the world what happened. And that is a true quote. If you go to Thermopylae today, that is a quote. It's there on a plaque in the ground, and it's a modern plaque,

but it is a copy of an ancient plaque of that exact quotation written by a 4th century poet called Simonides that was set up at Thermopylae so that, as you put it, everyone would say, go tell that the Spartans did this. Wow, that's pretty cool. So really, the Spartan image is them on Instagram. And then the reality of Spartan was basically them at home in their pants eating porridge. But, you know, when we talk about Spartans, we tend to think about the blokes, big, muscular, violent. But the women, also big, muscular, violent.

I mean, what society, you know. I mean, we get the idea from ancient history that the Athenian women were sort of locked up at home and they weren't really allowed to leave the house. But Spartan women were kind of running the home and they were trained when they were young with a bit of self-defense. They could probably hunt. They sort of worked out, I guess. What's life like for a woman in Spartan society who's not a helot?

Yeah, I mean, so Spartan women are kind of against the average of what women could expect in the ancient world, which wasn't great to begin with, actually had a pretty good deal. They were fed as much as the spartan men which you know was actually quite unusual uh they didn't get forced into marrying and starting producing babies the moment that they could so from age 14 kind of onwards actually most spartan women were getting married until about the same age as spart men, 18, 19, 20. They were being educated, like kind of often to similar standards to the men. They were really active and physical as well. So one of the kind of the insults that gets thrown at Spartan women by like Athenian women is that,

well, they show their thighs off all the time. I mean, you know, honestly, because they're sort of running around possibly even naked women naked honestly it's the worst honestly uh kind of doing all their sports and even wrestling you know kind of you're saying they might have been doing their wrestling as well and you're right like kind of with with the spartan men off at war or or continually training for war actually the women had a huge amount of power and influence and you see that in the 300 don't you see leonidas's wife kind of actually being a bit of a mover and shaker about about the town of sparta and kind of on equal uh play and equal footing with a lot of the men i mean you've mentioned there also the

fact that the women would obviously marry the idea here is having children is it fair to say the spartan system is sort of a bit of a breeding program in terms of they want loads of good, strong, strapping young men. And the role of the women in society was to promote male martial success. So women's roles weren't just simply, you know, cooking and cleaning, but also raising young men. Is that fair? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. The fact that kind of goes to the heart of that is that when you died in sparta you only got your name on your gravestone if you were a man if you died in battle or if you're a woman if you died in childbirth right wow otherwise it was a kind of unmarked grave wow so those are the two things that really hold value yes glorious death in battle or you're trying to keep the spartans going yeah bring

forward the next generation and then you know my favorite kind of text from the ancient world is is a collection of sayings called the sayings of spartan women collected by a guy called plutarch and it's it's a hilarious catalog of of these kind of female catchphrases from aiden sparta where it is things like a mother saying to her son as he's about to go off to war and he's got a shield in his hand, you come back with this or on it,

are you dead? Yeah. But I don't want anything else. Right. And then there's a ton of other sayings where the guy has come back and he's dropped his shield or he's run away

or he's surrendered and the mother kills him. Wow. Like kind of, you know, I will not have this. I want nothing but heroism. I mean, I kind of just remember coming back. I just I lost it. I misplaced it.

One moment I had it. And then the next moment I turned around and it was gone. I'm sorry. And then your mom kills you for it. There are no scatty Spartans, presumably. No one sort of just got, ah, left in the van. Exactly. I mean, I've definitely had the same sort of tone from my mother

when I misplaced my school tie. But did she pick up a large roof tile, hurl it at you and kill you dead spot? Pretty much. I mean, pretty much. Luckily, I'm quicker than her. I mean, so you mentioned school, actually. What's education like for the Spartans? Because, I mean, you know, in Britain, our education system is pretty pretty nice at no point do we get stabbed or run over or beaten up but spartan

kids are i mean the stuff they go through is pretty hardcore yeah i mean it's in the movie right i mean and i thought that they got that really right you know age seven boys were put into a continual military training academy that they didn't emerge from until they were 30 i mean that's what that was their life uh they were like training against each other beating one another up they had to learn how to steal as long as they didn't get caught they had to put themselves through all those hardships you know kind of they were fine-tuning themselves as as crucially not people who would just um follow orders without question they didn't want kind of automatons or robots they wanted self-disciplined elite warriors who privileged the community above themselves or

any other individual how did it end so the so the movie ends with the the 300 spartans being killed and then then their story rousing an entire army of the whole of Greece that defeats the Persian army. How much of that is true? Did the Greeks defeat the Persians in real life? They did. They did. Joel, would you mind doing a slightly more detailed run through of the movie?

For those who haven't seen it, just a quick 35 second recap of the basics. Very exact amount of time. I want 35 seconds only seconds most of us would round down to 30 or up to a minute but it's okay greg i understand damn it oh no i've already spent five of those seconds talking about the 35 second rule i basically it's uh about 300 spartan warriors that uh that go to war against the millions of Persians. And they essentially are winning until they're given away by a sort of hunchback who leads the Persians through the forest and defeats them.

But the idea is that the story of these 300 Spartans rouses a much bigger army. And because of their valour and bravery, it makes the whole of Greece want to go to war. That was beautifully summarised in 37 seconds. Oh, I'm too excited. No, no, it's fine. We'll edit it down. It'll be great. That's a really lovely summary. Michael, the complexity of the story is obviously more nuanced than that but the sort of general overview of that's fair it's not 300 spartan

though is it really i mean how many are fighting for sparta well i mean i think joe absolutely puts his finger on it like the key thing is that the battle of thermopylae and the sacrifice of the spartans is what rouses the greeks not just in that subsequent battle against the persians but actually for centuries and millennia after oh really right and and not just the that subsequent battle against the Persians, but actually for centuries and millennia afterwards. Oh, really? Right. And not just the Greeks, but, you know, the rest of the world, right? We still talk about the Spartans because of that,

this moment of sacrifice at Thermopylae. I was amazed by a book I saw the other day. It's a history of the US Marines, and it's called American Spartans. Wow. You know, kind of, oh, I was teaching in Brazil, and like the police down there, when they go in and they deal with when drug problems break out

in the favelas and stuff like that, they get labelled Spartans. In Brazil, right? So it still has a cachet, it still has a meaning and it's all due to that moment from the Battle of Thermopylae. It's kind of like whenever you go into any meeting with any TV people now, they're all still inspired by The Big Breakfast.

Everyone's still trying to make TGI Fridays, TFI Fridays, sorry, and The Big Breakfast. They're like, I kind of want to be at TFI Fridays. I feel like TFI Fridays is the Sparta of the TV world. They're all expired by it. It's a moment, it's an image, it's an idea. It's a mirage. Yeah.

And when you start examining it, it does fall apart a little bit. And the film 300, you know, on the one hand, it gets that kind of idea of how it's a rousing story, but it does that by making it exclusively about those 300s.

Yeah. And actually there weren't 300, there was 301. Because it was 300 Spartans and the 300 there was 301 because it was 300 spartans and the king okay but 301 it just doesn't sound good does it it looks like 300 spartans they also had them and they had a support army as well well there were 7 000 greeks okay so so 7 000 greeks turn up two days of fighting spartans are awesome they're holding the line along with their other greeks and then when they are betrayed by a guy whose name was Ephialtes,

but he wasn't a Spartan, a disabled Spartan warrior who'd been shunned by the Spartans. He was actually a local kind of shepherd boy who basically just wanted the cash. Showed the Persians the way round on the goat track around the back of the mountain. When Leonidas realised that had happened, he calls a council of war and he goes, anyone who wants to go, go. And quite a few of the Greeks at leonidas realized that had happened he calls a council of war and he goes anyone who wants to go go and quite a few of the greeks at that point leave but his 300 stay and the thespians stay and the helots the thespians stay darling really darling and they fight to the death along with the spark really or maybe they were just acting. Like, oh, who knew? Who knew it was playing dead? And even some Thebans hang around for a little bit.

So it is amazing how much the story has been airbrushed to make it a Spartan story. And their bodies. Yeah, and their airbrushed bodies. And all these other poor Greeks who also made that same sacrifice have sort of been kind of left out of the picture. That's fascinating. I want to talk about one other thing before we sort of give you the nuance window,

which is our big idea. But the thing we're going to talk on just slightly before, if we could, is Spartan sexuality. Because when we talk about the ancient Greeks, we kind of imagine in our heads good-looking muscular chaps and so on. But this is a society where sex is more complicated than we might imagine. And we live in enlightened times. So how does sexuality work in Spartan society? Because you've got women who are having babies, that's fine, but they can marry more than one man,

can't they? There's a sort of polyamorous arrangement. And then men, are they having sex with other men? Are they having sex with younger boys, which is obviously a bit creepy by our standards? What are the rules of sex? I think the crucial thing with it is you have to chuck all our modern rules out the window. All our typologies of sexuality don't really work in the ancient Greek world because they didn't believe in you defining yourself as being attracted to one person for your entire life. For them, they thought about it much more in terms of there were different kinds of relationships that were appropriate at different ages and stages in your life so for a man when they were the kind of young

teenager kind of going through the spartan military training academy pretty normal for them to have an older male lover who was responsible for part of their training right and one of the things we know happened is if the young boy cried out in pain during a training exercise actually it was the older man who got punished because he wasn't training the younger boy properly right uh but when the spartan kind of grew up a little bit that relationship ended or he might become the older person to the next younger boy but then he would get married all right kind of and his job would then be to help produce kids because Spartan society needs kids. And so and from the female perspective, you know, the women are growing up, they're getting married.

But, yeah, there was this conception that what you wanted to do was maximize the potential for lots of Spartan warriors. What you wanted to do was maximize the potential for lots of Spartan warriors. And you could do that by if a wife had a husband who, you know, was too old, then, yeah, sure, that husband might go. Yeah, I want, you know, that's a nice strapping young man over there. You go have sex with him and hopefully we can produce the babies. Supposedly, Leonidas and his wife, as he sets off for Thermopylae, kind of she goes to him, you know, come back with your shield or on it, and then says, and what's your advice for me?

And he supposedly went, go and find a man, have some children. Now, that doesn't go down too well in a modern 21st century movie as the parting advice from husband to wife as he sets off to glory and die on the battlefield so it gets kind of edited out but that's apparently the kind of the the sentiment he left with and was there and were there sexual relations between the soldiers between the

men in combat or that you know would they after a long days stabbing persians would they go home and have a cuddle and a kiss and only if it was defined within this older kind of older man younger man relationship right and and that's probably pretty unlikely to have happened within the 300 bodyguards that went off with Leonidas. There were other groups of warriors in the ancient Greek world. The Thebans. The Thebans. Another band of 300. There's something about the number 300.

They all get together. And this 300 Theban band were supposedly composed of 150, what we would now call homosexual couples, who actually ended up all fighting to the death on the battlefield against the father of Alexander the Great. I mean, what a war. They've actually dug up their skeletons that have been found recently. And you get to see some of the ferocity of the fighting with which they died on the battlefield,

because there are skulls that are just like cleaved in two. Oh my god it's pretty i mean what kind of weapons are we talking about in terms of ancient is it javelin spear sword yeah exactly and spartans supposedly always had a shorter sword than anyone else and jokes they're on they're talking about decks right we're talking about this okay they had a shorter sword uh, supposedly because that allowed them to get in closer and more personal with the enemy and sort of stab, particularly in the groin or the throat area. That was their kind of favourite sort of technique. And again, it was Spartan mum in the sayings of Spartan women. Her son moans, my sword's a bit short. And her response is, well, step a bit closer to the enemy then you stupid idiot

ha ha Spartan mums are terrifying aren't they they're pretty tough absolutely I mean that kind of the nanny the kind of miracle nanny

that kind of has the naughty step etc they've got nothing wow she's got nothing on Spartan mums Joe you're getting

married quite soon yes are you going to do a Spartan wedding and do you want to hear what a Spartan wedding is I would love to hear what a Spartan wedding is

Michael because I need some ideas okay I don't know if you're going to want these ideas I certainly don't think your girlfriend's going to do a Spartan wedding? And do you want to hear what a Spartan wedding is? I would love to hear what a Spartan wedding is because I need some ideas. I don't know if you're going to want these ideas. I certainly don't think your girlfriend's going to want these ideas. So the night before the wedding, she would need to get her head shaved. Well, to be honest, I was into Britney Spears. Okay, all right. You know, it's been 10 years ago.

Yeah, it's a good look. It's kind of all right. So far, it's looking pretty sweet dress up in men's clothing cool that's i i like you know i could deal with that i could deal with that and uh then be left in a dark room before you make your way into ritually kidnapper that's getting creepy now if i'm honest it's a stem too far that's a bit weird and then your married life would consist of you you're in your camp with your mates kind of you know your military boot camp is where you live so actually if you want to only spend spend any time with her you have to sneak

out at night without anyone seeing you and sort of scuttle over in the darkness and sort of see her and then scuttle back again before dawn that does sound quite exciting to be fair. That sounds quite a sexy living. Wow. I mean, this is Love Island mate too. Yeah. Like a Spartan bootcamp, kind of Spartan Love Island. Definitely. Let's pitch it to ITV2. I mean, I'm sure it'll get through the net. The nuance window. All right, we've only got time really for one more thing, which is a little thing we're going to try here, and it's called the nuance window.

The nuance window is, for Michael, basically you get three minutes, and you can go to town on whatever you want to say, as academic and highbrow as you like, because people have made it through this far in the episode, and they want to hear more. So give us your, why do you care about ancient history? Why are the Spartans fascinating? And don't hold back, three minutes starting now.

I mean, I think we've touched on some of the really important aspects that make the Spartans such a fascinating kind of object of study in history. And that is that we fundamentally don't know anything about them from their own perspective. Everything we know about the Spartans comes from outside. People at them and telling us kind of this is what the Spartans were like they were butch they were military they were kind of the best fighters that ever lived and they wanted this reputation it was their best defense right you're not going to go and attack a bunch of people you have an amazing reputation for being amazing warriors so they had everything invested in having this reputation promulgated and pushed further and further afield

to the extent that kind of over the centuries kind of they ended up inventing stuff to live up to this reputation they created for themselves and so by the time the Romans came along, kind of centuries after the Battle of Thermopylae, the Romans absolutely loved this idea of the Spartans as the ultimate macho military warriors. And Sparta became pretty much like Disneyland for Roman tourists. They do a little kind of gap year tour to Greece and they do their philosophy and oratory in Athens but then they go to Sparta where they wanted to soak up what being a real man was all about and they'd go to a sanctuary called the sanctuary of Artemis or Thea and here they would be greeted by real Spartans and be told that since time immemorial Spartan men have been drilled in kind of the hardest forms of combat

and self-effacement and self-discipline and self-mastery. And you now, lucky tourists, have the opportunity to witness one of these age-old Spartan rituals, the whipping of Spartan boys. And onto the stage in this literally theater that had been built for these roman tourists to sort of sit down and take a look would be be paraded this group of spartan boys who then had to bend over this altar and be whipped there is not a single piece of evidence that tells us about this whipping scene from any point before roman tourists started coming to sparta so we have an idea here of a sparta that centuries after its heyday when it was at thermopylae and leonidas and the 300 were

sacrificing itself again how do we make money off this gig right how do we make money off this reputation how do we keep it alive kind of and they started inventing rituals to put on for the tourists so that they could sort of be allowed to kind of make that reputation, you know, go home and go. We saw real Sparta. And that is how Spartan reputations continued to this day. Thank you so much for that. That was genuinely fascinating. Genuinely fascinating. Which hold on, I just sat there going. This is, and so I'm sorry to keep, I mean, literally I could sit in this room and talk to you for like hours and hours and hours.

But how were they conquered? Like how, was it generally Greece got together and then the Romans took over from the Greeks? Is that how, I'm so bad at history. I think that's it. You pretty much nailed it. Like, I mean, it's a big question how the Spartans were conquered.

They had their heyday at Thermopylae and for the better part of that same century, the 5th century BC. But when you get into the 4th century BC, actually they'd won. They'd beaten Athens. They were the top dogs in Greece. And you can imagine the Spartans were looking at one another going, crap, what do we do now? We've never been in this position before. And frankly, all we know how to do what to do is to sit in our military training academy. We don't want to run a country or anything. And so very quickly, it all sort of...

Sounds like Donald Trump, to be fair. It all sort of falls apart for them pretty quickly. And they sort of dwindle back down until they really are surviving on this, on their reputation alone. And fulfilling that reputation for visitors who want to come and then when the romans turn up a couple of centuries later they kind of play up to that reputation and that's how they get kind of fixed into our collective memory to this day joel do you feel like you've learned some stuff about the spartans i've learned so much stuff and i cannot wait to immediately forget it as soon as i leave this room but within this room

i've enjoyed it so much thanks so much uh michael are there any books uh that you'd recommend that uh listeners might want to check out if they want a little bit more is there anything any particular sort of entry level or mid-level book that you really recommend uh yeah there's two by a great scholar called paul cartlidge so there's the spartans and epic history uh and then and then well he's got several other books on the spartans as well but i would also, if I can plug one ancient text, just Google. It's online. Kind of Google sayings of Spartan women.

And it won't look dodgy in any search engine. And there you have kind of all the classic sayings of all those kind of cool Spartan women that you can follow and take to your heart and use as your motifs and mottos and forevermore. Brilliant. Thank you so much. Well, for now, I'm going to say thanks so much to both of my guests, Professor Michael Scott from the University of Warwick and Professor Joel Dommett from the University of Funney.

Thank you both. It's been an absolute pleasure. And thank you at home for listening. I hope you've enjoyed it. We'll be back next time with different guests and a different topic. Please make sure to like and subscribe. The more people listening, the more of these episodes we can do. But for now, I bid you a fond farewell.

And in the words of the Spartans, what is it? Tonight we dine. Tonight we dine in hell. Yes. What a line. What a line. I think I undersold it. The Gerard Butler deep voice thing.

Go on and give us the button. Go on. Go on. But tonight we Butler deep voice thing. Go on, give us the Butler. Go on, here we go. Go on, go on. But tonight we're dying in hell. Perfect. I love how you did it with a slight question mark as well at the end. Tonight we're dying in hell, I think. I'll tell.

Or is it tomorrow? I can never get my dates right. Oh, never mind. Anyway, thanks so much. Goodbye and take care. You're Dead to Me was a Muddy Knees media production for BBC Radio 4. The researcher was Emma Neguse and the producer was Dan Morrell. Hello, it's Sophie Duker.

Heidi Regan. Ned Sedgwick here. We've been given 30 seconds to tell you why grown-up land is the podcast that will change your life for the better why you'll be healthier happier more culturally enriched and totally confident about everything in every way but there is a small snag as none of that is true at all what you will become is confident that everyone else is just as confused frustrated and anxious as you are every week we're joined by a brilliant guest to talk about things like sex, fear, rejection, jealousy, sex. And we often end up sharing way too much about our personal lives.

Yeah, I should really rein that in. That's Grown-Up Land, the podcast about the exhausting pursuit of adulthood. Make sure you subscribe on BBC Sounds. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks.