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0 pointsnamaria1y ago0 comments

You can split linguistic hairs all you want.

Not "entirely alien, had some ties" is not it. They were part of the same cultural cluster, participated in the same games, traveled to the same sanctuaries, had mutual proxenies. The very fact that we know the opinions of several Athenians about Spartans is telling. We don't know what they thought of inhabitants of Celtic population centers, or Assyrian cities, or Egyptian ones. But we know what they thought of individual Spartans that they mention by name, biographical detail and genealogy.

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inglor_cz1y ago

I stand by my comparison to the Slavic nations of today.

Yeah, we have a lot of opinions of one another, yes we understand basic vocabulary of our cousins, though details in fine speech are another matter, yes, we are technically Christian, but still the political and societal difference between, say, Czechs and Russians is quite big.

As was the difference between the Spartans and the Athenians. Constitutionally, the poleis were all over the map, from outright tyrannies, through oligarchies and theocracies, to somewhat democratic states.

namariaOP1y ago

So your argument is: Athens and Sparta had things in common but were different. Like Czechia and Russia. Czechia and Russia are quite different. So were Athens and Sparta?

That's called circular reasoning.

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