I’ve recently finished Charles Stross’s Glasshouse, which is in many ways an admirable novel and possesses all of its author’s trademark manic invention and humour. I enjoyed it.

Except…

Glasshouse, like a lot other sf books I’ve read recently (including Adam Robert’s Gradasil and Roger Levy’s Icarus to take just two examples) features one of those revolutions that science fiction authors are so fond of – clean, neat, rational and over in a flash. From Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings to Heinlein’s Revolt in 2010 to Herbert’s Dune, the sf revolution has a long tradition and shows no sign of fading away.

Here then is a crude spotter’s guide to the typical elements of an sf revolution:

The charismatic leader: One man, possessed of the truth or at least an inkling of it, will lead the revolution and will inspire others to follow them. An interesting point about Glasshouse is that the “leader” is not the protagonist of the story and doesn’t reveal themselves until quite late in the book, but nonetheless she inspires a following with zealot’s fervour. Dune is the most obvious, but even sf’s traditional stock hero – the omni-competent engineer who ends up leading the revolution just because he can no longer stomach the damned incompetence of all those corrupt politicians and their lackies – tends to possess characteristics that make him irresistible to his comrades.

The miniscule cadre: The Bolshevik model of the elite cadre of full-time activists plotting the overthrow of the state has nothing on the typical sf revolution. Sometimes, as in Glasshouse, the revolution will be conducted by just a handful of people. In Icarus and Gradasil, though we get a sense that there are forces at work outside the narrative, but really the revolution is enacted through the organisation, planning and genius of just one person.

The revealed truth: Of course every revolutionary (Christ, Marx, Pol Pot…) believes that they are bringing “the truth” to the masses – but sf revolutions frequently back their “truth” up with appeals to rationality and the scientific method. Whether it’s that what we think of as reality is a fraud and we all exist in a giant simulation or that our leaders are alien robots harvesting our brains for catfood, sf revolutionaries almost always have access to irrefutable proof of the rightness of their cause. Which is useful, as it neatly justifies any action in pursuit of their revolution and removes any messy questions about ends and means.

The rational turn: One outcome of sf revolution’s claim to ownership of the “truth” is the ability of the revolutionaries argument to be wholly convincing to all those who hear it – excluding, of course, the out-and-out bad guys. This is otherwise known as the “why didn’t I think of that” moment and is remarkably rare in the real world of politics.

The absence of debate: One result of the rational turn is the absence of debate in an sf revolution. If a national government tries to do something faintly radical, say they decide to abolish the use of poisonous dye in children’s toys, the policy wouldn’t just happen. There’d be a long and probably bitter argument. There’d be Daily Mail columnists decrying the extension of the nanny state (“if I want my baby to suck on poison then it’s jolly well my choice…”), there’d be industry lobbyists funding Astroturf grassroots campaigns (“our families have worked in’t poison dye mines for generations, what will happen t’brass bands now?”) and there’d be representatives from Think About The Children! on Radio 4 demanding not just that these poisonous dyes be removed but that, as a precautionary measure, the government should ban every hue in the spectrum and turn the world entirely monochrome because we just don’t know what damage colours do in the long term. Are they really safe? Are they? Really?

Of course, in an sf revolution, none of that happens.

The announced revolution: Given the combination of the sf revolutionary possessing the revealed truth and therefore creating a rational turn in a society marked by the absence of debate sf revolutionaries are often in the unique position of not actually having to conduct a revolution – with it’s messy street to street fighting and propensity to turn into vicious civil war – they simply have to announce it and the deed is done – usually off-screen with, very occasionally, a nod to “mopping-up” the recalcitrant.

The instantaneous change:Even in sf that obeys the laws of physics and outlaws FTL there’s always one thing that travels faster than light, revolution. Nevermind the vast amounts of time and money it takes in the real world to make things even incrementally better – in sf the mere action of announcing the revolution is often enough to have the peasants dressing better, eating better and quoting Shakespeare.

Now of course this is a crude simplification – most sf revolutions don’t have all of these features and a few have none at all. And in a way it’s understandable – most sf isn’t interested in the process of revolution or even the reality of it – the revolution is intended to be symbolic.

Nor are sf writers alone in their revolutionary fantasies.

The sf revolution in the modern era (there being few unreconstructed Marxist-Leninists left in sf or anywhere else) is mostly a product of libertarianism either in its right wing form (mostly American, often harking back to their own “revolution” and spending a lot of time talking about the calibre of specific weapons) or the (most oxymoronically named political movement in history) “anarcho-capitalists” (left-libertarianism). Both sides have neat lines in transformative, relatively painless revolutions that will sweep away corrupt old orders and neither worry too much about the fact that real revolutions are vicious, bloody and drawn out affairs.

But hey, it’s only science fiction…

Posted April 29, 2007 Comments(5)

I’ve just finished reading Ascent, the newish novel by Jed Mercurio. It’s the story of Yefgenii Yeremin an orphan of Stalingrad and “the great patriotic war against fascism”. Yefgenii is blessed with a talent for mathematics and engineering and supremely acute eyesight. This combination of skills take him into the VVF, the Soviet air force that is fighting a secret war against the Americans in Korea, and thence to legendary status amongst his peers as “Ivan the Terrible”, ace of aces. In the background as Yefgenii rises are his opponents – American pilots like Grissom, Armstrong and Schirra – who would go on to form the backbone of the Mercury and Apollo programmes.

The Americans live in the sunlight of publicity and hero-worship while Yefgenii – partly through his own pride and partly through the machinations of the Soviet system – finds that the end of the war thrusts him deeper into obscurity. He find himself,  literally, out in the cold in the far north flying patrols against an enemy who will never come, not least because the age of the bomber has passed and the age of the missile has arrived. But, even here, Yefgenii’s skills can’t be denied and ultimately he wins back his status. 

From there the only way is up. Yefgenii is enlisted into the cosmonaut corps and, as the Americans open up a lead in the race to the moon, he is strapped aboard an untested craft for a long-shot at glory.

Ascent is a tragedy. Yefgenii’s fate is set from the start – his separation from the world is unbridgeable, the emotional detachment and calculation that make him a great pilot forever distance him from the rest of humanity. Forced to choose between the comforts of family and domesticity and the faintest chance of glory, Yefgenii barely pauses before taking the more dangerous path and his regrets, though real, are vague. 

This was the hardest part of Mecurio’s characterisation for me to accept. Perhaps because I am what one of my friends calls a “soft dad” – one who certainly can’t imagine deliberately making the choice to forever separate myself from my family – I found Yefgenii’s final decision harder to believe. That said there’s no doubt that Mecurio’s writing earns his character the right to make the hard choice. Like all true tragedy, this is the story of a man whose greatest qualities are also those which will eventually bring him down. Even as we will Yefgenii to take the safe path home, we know that his fate does not lie down that road. 

As well as being a solid examination of character, Ascent is an enjoyable read. Were it not for the fundamental bleakness of it all it would be tempting to compare this to the boys’ own action of The Right Stuff or Apollo 13. Its relative brevity and fast pace meant I raced through it, but it is also packed with convincing technical detail.

Mecurio is a qualified pilot and the depth of his research is obvious throughout, but the prose deftly avoids crude info-dumping and the mass of information becomes immersive rather than distracting. If I were critical I would say that the character of Yefgenii’s wife is poorly treated, but then this is consistent with the isolation and drive of the central character. There are a few too many, too similar, dogfights in the Korean section of the story and Mercurio’s technical precision – the unbending focus on which pilot and machine can turn more tightly than the other – while absolutely accurate is perhaps overdone. There are moments of improbability too (Yefgenii’s just a bit too good a pilot. Thirty-three kills is an awful lot. And is it really possible for one MiG to nudge another without fuel to keep it flying?) but Mecurio succeeds in carrying us deftly across these potential pratfalls and in the end there are many more thrills than spills.

More a “hidden history” really, than an “alternate” one, this a “mainstream” novel that deserves to find an audience amongst sf fans. No doubt Mercurio, his publishers or someone else will eventually offend fandom by proclaiming that this isn’t that horrid “sci-fi” stuff and earn a prize place amongst the ranks of “as others see us” – so read the novel now, before something like that sours your pleasure. 

Ascent is a shoo-in for the 2007 Clarke shortlist, surely?

Posted April 19, 2007 Comments(0)

So I finally got round to watching the second half of season three of Battlestar Galactica over the past few days. I approached it with some trepidation as a lot of commentators have accused the show of dipping severely in quality and even, whisper it, of jumping the shark.

And there’s no denying that compared to the electric shock of the opening arc of the third season the second half isn’t in the same class. But then, from the “good guys” using suicide bombers in 3.01 (“Occupation”) to the brutality of the treatment of collaborators in 3.05 (err… “Collaborators”) the new BSG ran a set of episodes that were as powerful as any sf I’ve ever come across. Perhaps it was a bit much to hope that they could sustain that level throughout.

Two consecutive episodes – 3.14 (“The Woman King”) and 3.15 (“A Day in the Life”) were probably the weakest and most inconsequential episodes yet aired in the new BSG – revealing that the show really can sink to the level of some of the other scifi on TV. But these episodes were bracketed by shows that demonstrate why BSG remains compulsive viewing.

3.13 (“Taking a break from all your worries”) features Baltar (Callis) being interrogated by Admiral Adama (Olmos) – it’s a fairly straightforward episode, most of BSG’s usual moral ambiguity is swept under the carpet but it is made memorable by Callis’s fantastic performance and by the resonant, terrifying voice of Olmos in the interrogation sessions.

Episode 3.16 (“Dirty Hands”), meanwhile, is memorable because it is one of those episodes that tackles an issue that only BSG would tackle in terms of an sf drama and a topic that almost no ongoing dramas would ever address – industrial unrest. It takes us aboard one of the fleet’s “invisible ships” the “tylium refinery” Hetei Kan – where workers are toiling day and night in horrible conditions to deliver the fuel the fleet needs to survive. When the workers begin to organise for a better deal and fairer treatment the first reactions of Adama and Roslin are dictatorial and repressive. Actions which give Baltar’s subversive agenda of splitting the “proletariat” from the “elite” sudden force. Tyrol’s (Douglas) role as honest broker and trustworthy blue-collar guy is excellently handled.

The resolution of this unrest is too quick and too neat - though there are a couple of stirring moments along the way - but “Dirty Hands” is astonishing because of the way it brings unfiltered class politics right into focus in an ongoing sf drama. It reflects again the way BSG is able to deal explicitly with things that, in the past, sf dramas danced around using allegory and metaphor and why I still love this show, despite its faults.

I can’t discuss the season finale without giving away spoilers, which would be unfair on the majority who may not have seen it – but I will say that I loved the wily, roguish lawyer Romo Lampkin. SF really doesn’t have enough charming, sarcastic, brilliant Irishmen in it – but if anyone needs another, I do weddings, bar mitzvahs and children’s parties.

So, in some ways the second half of season three hasn’t lived up to the promise of the season opening - but in no way has BSG jumped the shark. Heroes is giving the show serious competition as the best sf on television, but there still isn’t a series on tv - whether genre or not - that can match BSG when it is on form and there is no better or more nuanced political drama on television.

Posted April 19, 2007 Comments(2)

Another thing that everyone thinks they know about Sparta is that its soldiers were particularly courageous and the nation was particularly warlike. Neither assumption is necessarily true.

One of the few things that 300 gets absolutely right is the little speech Leonidas gives to his son early in the film:

“In the end a Spartan’s true strength is the warrior next to him, give respect and honour to him and it will be returned to you… ”

There is, for a soldier fighting in a phalanx, no alternative. The shield you carry in a phalanx does not protect your body, but that of the man on your left. You, in turn, are dependent on the steadiness of the man on your right. If the line breaks the huge shield your carrying becomes a hopeless encumbrance and the eight or nine foot pole that was your spear is next to useless in close quarters, hand-to-hand combat and it certainly wouldn’t be much use as a javelin – despite what 300 shows.

So – for a Spartan soldier – acts of personal bravery were not encouraged. The Spartan mother is famous for encouraging her son to come back with his shield (victorious) or on it (dead). But why place value in the shield rather than the breastplate or helmet. Plutarch has Demaratus (Leonidas’s predecessor) explain that other armour “serves for their private safety only, but the shield is for the common defence and strength of the whole army.”

There is a story (I can’t find the source, I thought it was in Plutarch or Herodotus but I can’t find it in either at the minute – if anyone out there knows where it is, please let me know) of how a Spartan accused of cowardice by his companions sought in the next battle to prove how brave he was by breaking ranks and seeking to engage the enemy in single combat. The Spartan magistrates had ignored the charge of cowardice but punished the soldier severely for the show of courage. Breaking the line put the whole army at risk, not just the individual.

So, unlike the soldiers in 300, Spartans would not have rushed about chopping at random enemies and been praised for it. The effectiveness of a Spartan army depended on the cohesion of the phalanx and the tactical advantages that the Spartans enjoyed on the battlefield came from a lifetime of rigorous drilling that allowed them to perform feats of manoeuvre in combat that their “amateur” adversaries could not manage – the ability to hinge the battle line without breaking the line, to recover quickly when gaps did appear and to reorganise “organically” thanks to a deep command system that prepared soldiers throughout the ranks to step up into positions of authority during times of crisis.

A single Spartan soldier was no more or less brave or fierce than his opponent, his superiority came from his training.

Nor do Spartans appear particularly warlike. As 300 shows (but wrongly treats as an aberration due to corruption) they were quite willing to stay at home and miss battles rather than break their religious festivals. They’d already missed the Athenian victory at the battle of Marathon in the first Persian invasion – 490BC. But more than that, Spartan foreign policy generally seemed to favour defensive security rather than aggressive expansion.

It’s worth quickly comparing the history of Sparta’s 300-odd year hegemony in the Peloponnese (southern Greece) with the way Athenians developed their maritime empire. Apart from securing control of neighbouring Messenia, Sparta never sought the conquest and control of neighbouring states under a single banner. Rather it fought to develop a defensive alliance with individual states – those states pledged not to attack Sparta and to fight alongside her if she was attacked but otherwise they were free to do as they liked – and Sparta was tolerant of individual state’s different methods of government and made no claims for payment of tribute. At the start of the great war between Sparta and Athens Thucydides talks of the great democracies of the Peloponnese (including Elis) as existing comfortably within Sparta’s sphere of political domination.

By contrast, as Athens developed itself as a maritime power and began to exercise control over other states the polities which fell under Athenian influence were bound into an alliance and eventually an empire that demanded they follow Athens’ lead, that imposed Athenian forms of democracy and forced these states to pay money into Athenian coffers.

Sparta had 300 years of virtually unquestioned dominance, yet the Spartan system of buffers and free states persisted until their unique social system was eroded and corrupted by the depredations of the Peloponnesian War and the influx of Persian money. Sparta was traditionally slow to act – even in support of her closest allies – and careful not to risk her soldiers unduly. Far from encouraging an aggressive stance, Sparta’s social system (in which the number of full citizens was always small, the risk of revolt at home always high and the opportunities for individuals to make themselves personally wealthy almost non-existent) made Spartans far more cautious than their brasher, greedier Athenian rivals.

This is probably the last of these posts on Sparta for a while, I’ve spent far too long worrying about 300 – a film really not worth the effort – but no doubt I’ll return to the topic of Sparta eventually - I can’t help myself.

Posted April 17, 2007 Comments(0)

Another magazine I picked up today was the first issue of SciFiNow - a new SFX style science fiction magazine published by Imagine. It’s huge - a large format, 140-odd pages, glossy, nicely designed (if a bit too busy for me - it’s one of those magazines that seems to encourage attention deficit disorder) and with lots and lots of tv/film/comic related stuff.

The literary side of things does get a look in, there are a few book reviews and there’s the first part of a feature on the history of science fiction as a literary form (oddly tucked away in the fanboy section).

The features are a bit shallow, and the way the magazine has been broken up into segments feels a bit random to me, but it does look like it could, given time, develop into a serious rival for SFX.

Posted April 17, 2007 Comments(3)

So my copy of British Journal of Politics and International Relations drops through my door this morning and I shove it in my bag on the way out the door and forget about it until I get home. Off comes the plastic wrapper, and there in the back cover is a review by Christina Rowley from Briston University of, of all things, Firefly and Serenity. The article is entitled “Firefly/Serenity: Gendered Space and Gendered Bodies” and it isn’t particularly good (being a quick run through the female characters of Firefly explaining how they’re challenging gender stereotypes backed up with a very brief look at the use of violence in the show. The conclusion being that while Firefly’s gendering of its characters is atypical of media stereotyping there remain problems (Inara’s still a prostitute, no matter how high falutin’,  Kaylee’s still mooning over a doctor, even is she is a competent engineer with a sexuality of her own, etc.) - which is hardly startling.

Still, despite my reservations about the article itself, it was a pleasant surprise to see sf discussed seriously in a political journal without a single “as others see us” moment.

Posted April 17, 2007 Comments(0)

This is for Shaun and Paul:

“So,” said internationally famous author and quite religious bloke CS Lewis, draining the last drop from his pint pot. “One more from the road?”

The Inklings stirred, The Eagle and Child was warm and the fug of pipe smoke wrapped them in comforting blankets of contentment.

“Whose round is it?” Lord Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College grumped, slamming his tankard on the oak table. “I bally well got the last one!”

“I’ll get it,” JRR said, sallying forth from the comfort of his seat by the fire and setting out on his quest. Then he paused. For long moments he stood in the centre of the pub like some giant, ancient statue being admired, over and over and over again, from many angles. Then he shook himself. “But first, I need a piss.”

Posted April 12, 2007 Comments(2)

Is it slightly pathetic that even at my advanced age I still get a twinge of a thrill when I see my name on something like the Locus website (click here and look under “Focus”)? Honestly, I’m such sad, sad man.

Posted April 11, 2007 Comments(0)

One of the very strangest things about the representation of Sparta in 300 is the treatment of the Ephors. If you’ve seen the film then you’ll know that they are portrayed as twisted and mis-shapen mystics, a kind of ancient race living high on a mountaintop above the Spartan city who spend their time molesting drugged-up, lithe, young women and betraying the Spartans to the Persians.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this (not the lithe young girls, cheeky!) and the more I think about it, the more it concerns me.

One of the things that people think they know about Sparta, but which is wrong, is that Sparta was a wicked military dictatorship ruled by kings. It’s an image that contrasts nicely with the “noble” Athenians who live in their proto-democracy, writing plays and founding Western civilization.

But it’s cobblers.

It’s true Sparta was unusual amongst the Greek states in that it did have kings but they did not conform to the image that word creates in the modern mind. They were not imbued with the divine rights claimed by the rulers of Europe between the dark ages and the democratic period.

Sparta had two kings who ruled simultaneously from two distinct royal lineages. Now this on its own might be an interesting experiment in the separation of powers, but the bits of what we know about the Spartan constitution also suggest a more significant division between the power of the kings (who, at least in theory, only ruled directly when the nation was at war and they lead the army in the field) and the Spartan people.

The fragment we have of the Spartan constitution is called the “great rhetra” and it sets out two distinct branches of government. On one side is what we might today think of as the executive, with the kings and a council of elders. On the other side are the institutions of “democracy” (I’m using that word very cautiously) with the Ephors - five magistrates elected each year (no man could stand twice) from a regularly meeting assembly, a body of all Spartan citizens. There are many, many theories about exactly how power balanced out in this system, but we do know that in the era of 300 the assembly and the Ephors were no mere sops - they had the power to punish kings and they weren’t afraid to use it.

In 491BC Demaratus was deposed and driven from Sparta and when Leonidas was doing his thing at the “hot gates” (480) Demaratus was standing beside the Persian king Xerxes. Demaratus’s co-king - Cleomenees I - fared even less well. When his role in tricking the Spartans into the wrongful exile of Demaratus was discovered he was chained in stocks, humiliated and probably murdered (490) - to be succeeded by the famed Leonidas, his half brother. Leotcyhidas, the king who Cleomenes placed on the throne in place of his rival Demaratus, was eventually also exiled (for corruption) and his house burned to the ground.

Things settle down after that for one line of Spartan royalty - Archidamus, Agis II and Agesilaus II in the Eurypontid side all see out their reigns to their respective deaths (though not without considerable controversy in Agesilaus’s case). On the Agaiad line, however, things remained choppy. Pausanias, regent for the boy king Pleistarchus, was imprisoned by the Ephors and then, on trying to escape, was walled up inside a temple and starved to death. Pleistarchus’ successor Pleistonax was exiled for twenty years for corruption and his successor, a different Pausanias, was stoned to death in 395BC by the Spartans for failiure to follow an order to join forces with charismatic Spartan general Lysander.

In 130 years (between the first Persian invasion in 499BC to the collapse of Spartan dominance after the battle of Leuctra in 371) of the thirteen kings who reigned in Sparta, five (and one regent) were exiled or executed by the Ephors..

The common image of the Spartan citizen as an obedient soldiers trained from birth to obey orders, keep their mouth shut and respect their betters is not born out by the evidence of how they treated their kings.

So what is 300’s agenda. Is it just coincidence that the simplification of Sparta’s complex constitution and politics leaves us with a powerful, charismatic leader leading a white army of brave, beautiful, supermen into battle against a craven foreign foe?

If I were prone to promulgating conspiracy theories, I’d wonder whether the absence in 300 of the second king, the turning of the chief democratic officers of the state into monsters and the presentation of the only politician given any screen time as a treacherous bastard - represented some sort of attempt to gloss over or misrepreent the “democratic” element of Spartan society. Certainly Sparta has been wrongly used as a symbol of “strong leadership over a pure and strong people” by everyone from the founders of England’s great public schools to the Nazis.

Both 300 and the forces of conservatism (in the widest sense) entirely misconstrue the importance of Thermopylae and the lessons to be learned from the Greek city states of the fifth century.

If the Spartans are only soldiers, bred and educated only for war and admirable only for their superiority of arms - for possessing the ability to do improbable kung fu with an eight foot spear - then we might as well bow down to one mighty king (as, indeed, the Spartans in 300 do) - and thank our stars that we’re lucky that at least our king is modest, brave, handsome and white.

But the thing that set Sparta and the other Greek states apart from the Persians in the fifth century BC is not that the Greeks had better, braver kings or tougher soldiers. The reason for the continued importance of the many Greek cities experiments with politics is that they are the first documented attempt we have to organise societies under the rule of law. Laws from which no one is exempt - not a king, a rich man or a commoner.

That principle - the rule of law - is what allows individual liberty to coexist with collective endeavour in democratic states across the globe. It is, it seems to me, the non-negotiable pre-requisite for a decent society. It is also, I think, something that the individual Spartan citizen soldiers fighting “in the shade” (individuals locked, shoulder to shoulder, in a phalanx - perhaps the most fundamentally cooperative battle formation in history) would have understood as the thing that set them apart from the slaves and subjects opposite.

It is not as easy to make glamorous in an action sequence, but 300 would have been a better film if it had been able to sensibly articulate the real issues at stake in this great clash of civilisations. As it is, 300 at best perpetuates a misconception and, at worst twists history for a rather sinister puropose.

Posted April 11, 2007 Comments(6)

Watching 300 last week it struck me how, like most things, pretty much everything everyone thinks they know about Sparta is wrong.

Like, for example, everyone knows the Spartans were uniquely cruel in exposing children to the elements if they were considered weak.

In the opening sequence of 300 the Spartan priests hold up a baby, judging whether it was healthy enough to be allowed to survive and the implication of the voice over are that the decision whether to expose the child and allow it to die was based entirely on his fitness for battle.

Except the Spartan tradition of exposure wasn’t unique in ancient Greece, indeed exposure seems to have been a shared phenomenon across the Greek city states of the classical era - although how commonly it was practised in any state is subject to question. It’s worth noting that less than a century after the time covered in the 300 Sparta would be led by Agesilaos, a small, physically unimpressive man who was lame from birth. Perhaps the Spartans weren’t quite as ruthless in their pursuit of physical purity as the legent would have it.

The Athenians also certainly exposed unwanted children. The difference was that, in the Athenian tradition, families chose to expose their children for personal reasons rather than the decision being taken for the good of the community as a whole. The result was that, in Athens it was almost always daughters, whatever their state of health, who were exposed (put in clay pots and left by the road in the Athenian way) because the cost of a dowry and marriage rituals could involve in the splitting up of family estates.

Now neither of these methods are ones that I’d want to advocate as a way of treating babies - but it does cast an interesting light on the Spartan tradition. If, living in a land with limited resources - as ancient Greece certainly was - a people have to make the choice about which of their children should live, how should they choose? Should the choice be made based on the needs of individual families - driven by a desire to preserve their private wealth and maintain their status? Or should a society set some rule by which it makes that decision for the good of the community as a whole?

Both options are horrible, neither are a perfect or desirable solution, but at least in this light the Spartan choice is understandable not as the inhuman thinning of a population on the basis of some pseudo-eugenics, pre-genetics breeding programme but the common response of a society to a common threat. Here, at least amongst the Spartiate class, is a fundamental equality of opportunity (the right live beyond birth) that is not based on the wealth of your individual family or their immediate economic need but on the needs of the society as a whole.

Coming next, 300 and the Ephors - the misrepresentation of Spartan democracy.

Posted April 3, 2007 Comments(0)