Where Myke Cole Proves His Point and Pisses Off RWNJ's

The Bronze Lie: Shattering the Myth of Spartan Warrior Supremacy by Myke Cole
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an informative, entertaining, persuasive reckoning of the real character of Sparta and Spartan history. Myke Cole writes well, of course, but what's most impressive about this book is his careful scholarship. A great deal of study went into this book.

The author is reacting to the right-wing fetishizing of Spartan training and Spartan domination in war--supposed, one must add. Because of modern mythologizing, Sparta has come to hold a strange position of honor among gun lovers and others on the far right, and Myke Cole does an amazing job of setting the record straight here. He does it methodically, chronicling the victories and defeats, the bribes offered and bribes taken, the errors and oversights and bungled campaigns over centuries, giving credit where credit is due but also brutally casting in sharp relief all of the deviations from the myth of Spartan invincibility and Spartan honor.

The argument is devastating and undeniable.

What I like is how Cole brings the reader along the whole time. Every example of Spartan fallibility is brought back to the main argument, showing how it doesn't match the myth. Everything is made explicit, and the thousandth (possible exaggeration) time he tells us how they should have scouted ahead and walked into an ambush or refused to innovate and got overrun or relied too much on hoplites and got beaten by archers, the reader knows that he has proven his point. Sure, the Spartans were good fighters, better trained than the typical fighters of the time, but as a culture they had huge blind spots that an innate conservatism made almost impossible to correct.

What I found most interesting to learn was how the Peers--the heart of Spartan society and army--dwindled in numbers over time because of a rigid economic system that squeezed families out if their wealth dropped below a certain point. Instead of broadening the base, instead of reforming the system, they allowed their greatest asset to dwindle. They would rather have fewer Peers every year than allow undeserving citizens to qualify.

They believed their own PR, and they choked on it. It was a slow moving tragedy.

The strength of this book--a minute recitation of historical events in context--becomes tedious, I'll admit. I enjoyed reading about their history to a point, but the last third got hard to read. I stopped caring about the parade of names and places that I had never heard of before. (That's on me, btw.) But it serves its purpose by being comprehensive, which it absolutely must be to make his point. Cole doesn't overlook any part of their history, laying it all out for the reader, and this completeness seals the deal.

This is an excellent education in Spartan history in particular and Greek history in general and should be read with interest by anyone curious about the topic. Excellent scholarship (with sources constantly declared), clear prose, and an unrelenting focus on the argument he is making ensures that this book achieves its purposes, not least of which is to provide the reader with an engaging and entertaining education.

Highly recommended.

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