SPARTAN NATIONAL CHARACTER: AN APOLOGY
by Drakus Domitius

The History of the Peloponnesian War written by Thucydides stands as possibly the most famous work in the western historical tradition. Thucydides himself stated that he wrote his history to be "a possession for all time." Thucydides' work has stood through the centuries since its conception as a monument of the man who penned it. Thucydides has received great fame and adulation as the first critical historian. Recent years have seen an increase in criticism of the author and his account of the Peloponnesian War.

Modern authors have tried to determine exactly what Thucydides was attempting to say and whether his biases are evident in his text. One such attempt, written by Robert D. Luginbill in his book "Thucydides On War and National Character" is an attempt to determine the impact of national character on the war as described and illustrated by Thucydides.

This essay will focus on his interpretation of Spartan national character, though Luginbill also discusses Athenian and Syracusan. In essence, though Luginbill uses far more diverse words to describe them, the Spartans are cautious, slow and fearful. Luginbill uses a great deal of evidence from Thucydides in order to typify them in this manner. The Spartans are cautious (atolmoi) and slow (bradeis). Thucydides uses other words to portray these characteristics including weakness (malakia), inactivity (apragmosune), fear (phobos) and hesitancy (okneo). For Luginbillk, these traits of the Spartans as described by Thucydides should be considered Spartan national characteristics. Of great importance are two passages in particular. The first is the speech of the Corinthians to the Spartans. Typical Spatan attribute is to "always do less than you could have done, to mistrust your own judgment, however sound it may be, and to assume that dangers will last for ever." This speech was an attempt by the Corinthians to motivate the Spartans to war. The second passage is in book 8.96 in which Thucydides stated that the Spartans were the most convenient of enemies for the Athenians because of "the wide difference between the two characters, the slowness and want of energy of the Spartans as contrasted with the dash and enterprise of their opponents." Based on these two passages Luginbill argues that the Spartans were motivated by fear alone and because of this acted only defensively, and he argues his point using Thucydides.

Despite the accurate reading of Thucydides, or perhaps because of it, Luginbill's assertion that the Spartans were a people motivated by fear and were otherwise slow or unwilling to act, the History of the Peloponnesian War only supports this theory to a degree. That the Spartans were a people that were cautious cannot be argued. Thucydides' account is unequivocal on this account. However, like Archidamus himself believed, slow and cautious may just as easily be considered wise and sensible. By looking that e examples taken from the text itself and used by Luginbill to illustrate these national characteristics of the Spartans, it is possible to see that the Spartans were often mistreated by Thucydides and this has led to Luginbill's assertion that the Spartans were only motivated by fear.

In the third year of the war, the Spartan fleet was defeated by Phormio in the Crisaean Gulf. The Athenians had twenty ships while the Spartans had manned forty-seven. The Spartans had not believed that the Athenians would attack the much larger force. The superior skill of the Athenian sailors provided decisive and the Spartans were defeated. Despite this, the Spartans were eager to engage the Athenians again. Three commissioners were sent out to re-equip the ships and to gather more ships. However, Luginbill states that the Spartans were reluctant to face the Athenians again because they were fearful following their first encounter with the Athenians. Placing emphasis on the word "fear," Luginbill argues that the Spartan leaders only sought a battle because they feared that the Athenians would get reinforcements. Thucydides does not support this argument. Instead, Thucydides stated that Cnemus, Brasidas and the other Spartan generals "wanted to bring on a battle quickly, before reinforcements arrived from Athens," (Boulomenoi en taxnei ton naumaxnian poiosai prin ti kai apo ton Athwnaion epiboothosai). The idea of fear is not presented in these lines, yet Luginbill attributes fear to the Spartan commanders. In order to support his theory he needs to show that they were afraid. In fact, Cnemus and the others were merely following sound tactical thought when they wished to engage the enemy before reinforcements arrived.

While Luginbill occasionally misinterprets Thucydides' comments regarding the national character of the Spartans, there is no doubt that Thucydides believed the Spartans were slow and cautious by nature. Again, a reading of book eight chapter ninety-six will verify this. Given this viewpoint it is unsurprising that the Spartans are treated unfairly from time to time within the History. One such example is that of the aborted attack on the Piraeus led by the aforementioned Cnemus and Brasidas. The account of this action comes from book two, not long after the events in the Crisaean Gulf discussed above. The Megarians persuaded the Peloponnesian commanders to make an attempt on the Piraeus. The Megarians argued that due to the Athenians decided superiority at sea, the port had been left unguarded and open. Convinced, Cnemus and the other commanders, including Brasidas, agreed to make the attack. They led their men overland from Corinth to Megara. At Nisaea, forty vessels awaited the Peloponnesians. The Spartan led force immediately set sail, but inexplicably decided, out of fear according to Thucydides, to attack Salamis instead of the Piraeus. Thucydides stated that they "greatly feared the risk" (katadeisantes ton kindunon), but gives no reason for this sudden fear. At one point the Peloponnesians had been happy to attack the Piraeus. Nevertheless, having marched overland, they decided upon launching their ships to forgo their original plan. The Spartans truly look foolish and cowardly in this account.

However, while Thucydides gave us this account, I think he also provided us with the reason the Spartans changed their minds and attacked the lightly defended Salamis instead. Thucydides stated in 2.93.3 that there was no fleet on guard at the Piraeus. However, at 2.94.2 he informed us that at dawn, having been warned by the signal fires from Salamis, the Athenians launched their ships from the Piraeus and sailed to Salamis. It would appear that the Athenians did indeed have a fleet at the Piraeus. It is possible that the Peloponnesians had believed the Megarian claim that no fleet was in the Piraeus. Upon arriving in the waters outside of Nisaea, the Spartans learned that there was indeed a fleet defending the harbor of Athens. Doing the only thing they could, they attacked Salamis, captured the ships there and plundered the island before heading back. Diodorus Siculus stated that the Athenians manned a considerable number of warships (7.49.4) reinforcing the belief that the Spartans did not face an undefended Piraeus. While it may have still been possible for the Spartans to attack the Piraeus, it was unlikely to succeed given the fact that the Spartans had been misled by the Megarians concerning the defenses of the harbor and the Athenian superiority at sea. Again, this was not an act motivated by fear, but an acknowledgement of the circumstances. The attribution of fear is unfair considering the Athenians quite likely did have a fleet stationed in the Piraeus.

One final example of Thucydides' bias and Luginbill's error in attribution because of that bias comes from the Mytilenian revolt from the Delian League in 428. The introduction of the Spartan general Alcidas here is of importance for in Luginbill's mind Alcidas is the personification of the negative traits of the Spartans, namely slowness and lack of daring. Again, the characterization is not accurate.

First, some background. When most of the island of Lesbos decided to revolt from Athens the Mytilenians sent an embassy to Sparta asking for aid in their upcoming struggle against the Athenians. The Spartans agreed, and in fact exhibited a notable zealousness for the task. In fact, the Spartans were quite excited about the prospect of aiding Mytilene in their revolt. Thucydides makes it clear that the Spartans were enthusiastic about the venture. This very fervor for aiding the Mytilenians in their revolt belies Luginbill's assertion that the Spartans only acted out of fear. Indeed, this was an act of boldness and hope, the characteristics that Thucydides and Luginbill give to the Athenians, not the Spartans. Thucydides, however, was intent on showing the Spartan commander in an unfavorable light.

The Spartans ordered a fleet sent to aid Mytilene. The man chosen to lead the fleet was Alcidas. Given 42 ships from the Allies, Alcidas was to sail across the Aegean in order to give aid to the rebels. Twice in the account of this rebellion Thucydides takes issue with the speed with which Alcidas went about fulfilling his command. At 3.27 Thucydides says that the ships from the Peloponnese "so far from putting in an appearance continued to waste time on the way." Again, just a few lines later in 3.29 Thucydides states that the Peloponnesian fleet wasted time. Thucydides, and thus Luginbill, see the slowness of Alcidas as one more illustration of the slowness of the Spartan war effort. No less an authority than Donald Kagan agrees with them saying, "The delay of Alcidas was fatal to the rebels of Mytilene."

Thucydides provides little information about the actual voyage of Alcidas. We know that they left the Peloponnese before the invasion of Attica took place and we know that they arrived at Ambaton in Erythrai seven days after Mytilene surrendered to the Athenians. We are also told that they made several stops along the way. It certainly appears that Alcidas was negligent in his duties. However, the very lack of information concerning this voyage raises questions about how it was carried out. The Spartans were excited about their effort to aid the revolt and it seems unlikely that the man chosen to lead the mission would have acted so slowly deliberately.

So why did Alcidas arrive so late? One of the first things that must be noted was that his fleet was composed of ships from a number of different Allies. Thucydides informed us in 3.15 that the allies were not excited about aiding Lesbos. Given the lack of enthusiasm from the allies, the very people from whom Alcidas had to gather his ships, it seems likely he would have trouble getting his ships. Thucydides stated that Alcidas' fleet wasted time in their voyage around the Peloponnese and Luginbill argues that this illustrates an aspect of the Spartan national character, slowness and dilatoriness. However I find it more likely that the time spent sailing around the Peloponnese was probably used by Alcidas to obtain the ships from his reluctant allies. Without the ships, it would not have mattered how fast Alcidas sailed to Mytilene.

There is a more compelling reason to disbelieve that Alcidas proceeded leisurely from the Peloponnese to Erythrai. Joseph Roisman argues that given the lack of any timetable by Thucydides, one can merely use conjecture in trying to determine the speed of Alcidas' voyage. Starting at Cyllene the fleet sailed around the Peloponnese. The distance from Cyllene to Erythrai was 736 kilometers. Using two sets of speed estimates, one from W. W. Tarn and the other from L. Casson, Roisman attempts to determine how quickly the fleet could have arrived at Erythrai, and thus Mytilene. Using the estimate of Casson, Rosiman argues that there was no way for Alcidas to have arrived in Mytilene before the surrender of the city. Nor could he have don so using the speed of travel offered by Tarn. Alcidas would still have been sailing to Mytilene when the city surrendered. Using the fastest rate of speed suggested by Tarn, it is possible that the fleet had not even left the Peloponnese when the Mytilenians submitted to the Athenians. Given favorable sailing conditions and the fastest theoretical speeds, it is possible that Alcidas could have made it before the city fell, but only barely. So Thucydides statement that Alcidas proceeded at a leisurely pace seems unfounded. It would seem that Mytilene surrendered to soon.

Thucydides' attack on Alcidas does not end here. Teutiaplus, an Elean commander tried to convince Alcidas that a surprise assault on the Athenian fleet and nighttime attack against Mytilene would see Sparta recapture Mytilene. Alcidas rejected this plan. Thucydides thus characterizes Alcidas as fainthearted and stated that Alcidas was in a great hurry to get back to the Peloponnese. But his own critical account of events tells the lie of his bias. Rather than returning quickly home, Alcidas sailed to Myonnesus and attacked that city. He then moved to Ephesus where he received envoys from the Samians. Only then did he return home. Again, Kagan accepts Thucydides' interpretation. Kagan believed that had he been successful, the loss of 42 triremes would have been worthwhile for the price Athens would have had to pay for a siege and lost revenue. However, it was very unlikely that the attack would have succeeded. Alcidas would have been attacking a larger and more experienced Athenian fleet, and he would have been engaging in a nighttime assault on Mytilene. Neither aspect of the plan guaranteed success. Nighttime attacks are always hazardous, as much for the attacker as for who is being attacked. Alcidas, like Cnemus and Brasidas earlier made a sound tactical decision. It was not based on fear, faintheartedness or any other negative characteristic. True, he had chosen caution over foolhardiness, but this is hardly a reason to castigate him. Thucydides and Luginbill misinterpret Alcidas.

The Spartans were a cautious people. They always thought through their actions before hand in order to be prepared for whatever might result. When they determined that the possible gains were not worth the possible loss, they chose not to act. While Thucydides sometimes criticizes their lack of initiative, it is apparent that for the most part he agrees with their cautious nature (5.65 and 5.70). A. Gomme, when talking about the battle of Mantinea also agreed saying, "They had won this victory not by the enterprising genius of Brasidas . . . but by their traditional slowness."

Brasidas and other Spartans (notably the young but very active navarch Callicratidas) are counter examples to Luginbill's assertion that the Spartans were by nature fearful and dilatory. Had Brasidas been the lone exception, perhaps Luginbill's ideas would merit more attention. However, Thucydides own account tells the lie in the interpretation that the Spartans were slow, fearful and dilatory. Cnemus, Alcidas, Brasidas and Callicratidas, among others, all stand as counter examples to the characteristics attributed to Spartans by both Thucydides and Luginbill.

Our understanding of Spartan character is so dependant on the writing of Thucydides. Thucydides, like every other historian, cannot completely separate his own biases from his text. For many reasons (none raised in this article) Thucydides wished to portray the Spartans, and some Spartans in particular, as fainthearted and slow. We must look beyond the written text and see that the Spartans may not have been as enterprising as the Athenians, but they by no means were as dilatory as Thucydides makes them out to be.

THE ORIGINS OF THE COW GODDESS
by Hapshetsut Nebet

The goddess Hathor was one of the pre-eminent divinities of ancient Egypt. Her origins are obscure but she came to be an important figure within the Egyptian pantheon. A bovine goddess, her name means ‘Mansion of Horus’ and designates:

"...the closed space through which Horus travels as sun-god. . .[Hathor] plays the role of protective, regenerative container. . .represented from ancient periods onwards as a female countenance seen face-on, she symbolises the face-to-face encounter between the sun and the element in which he appears at the moment of creation.” (Meeks)

The name Hathor was used in Greco-Roman times and seems appropriate to use here as this is the name she has been most commonly referred to by Egyptologists both now and in the recent past. Throughout Egyptian history a variety of related names were given to this cow goddess: Het Hert (Het Heret), Hathor, Hat-Hor. She has links with Isis (Aset) and both have shared characteristics at different times. Like Isis, Hathor’s influence spread beyond Egypt and aspects of her incorporated in foreign goddesses. One historian, Marina Warner, has even postulated that, as nurturer, she amongst others contributed to the formation of the Christian Mary, elements of Mary having been assimilated from pagan goddesses in the development of very early Christianity.

An ancient goddess whose origins stretch far back into prehistory, Hathor may be the goddess depicted as early as the First Dynasty on the Narmer Palette, a schist object that shows her as a human with the horns and ears of a cow, the stars figuring in the background pointing to her status as a cosmic and celestial goddess. She may have been an amalagation of both foreign divinity and a divinity native to Egypt. Her depictions include animal form, mixtures of animal and human form and as fully anthropomorphic, each one of these manifestations alluding to particular characteristics or aspects of her nature. Hathor was worshipped in all these forms concurrently.

As cow goddess, she is nurturing and protective. These aspects point to her likely origins as an animal divinity from prehistory when humans were involved in cattle herding, long before indigenious Egyptians moved from the Sahara to the Nile area. The cow goddess may have come about as a logical development from the nurturing of calves and cows by women in an unforgiving environment which forced a symbiotic relationship between animal and human as a simple method of mutual survival. Hassan suggests that:

“Both cow and woman gave milk. Both were the source of generation and life. Droughts not only enfeebled cattle and people, but also wrought starvation and death. In the desert, the birthplace of Egyptian theology, life and death are paramount. Water, cattle, milk, and women were the source of regeneration and nourishment. Without water or milk there was nothing but sickness and death. These mental associations were of deep psychological significance. Together they laid the foundation of the fundamental notions of Egyptian religion: birth, death, and resurrection.”

When did the primordial cow goddess ‘divide’ into the named bovine goddesses such as Hathor, Isis, Nut and Neith amongst others? Did this begin with the development of small chiefdoms in the Nile area? Was it when the cow goddess began to be worshipped alongside local territorial deities? As this appears to have happened in prehistory, the answer to that is not obvious.

On the consolidation of Egypt as a nation state which possibly occurred around 3200 BCE, the cow goddesses came to be incorporated into the cosmogonic myth that supported the king’s claim to divinity. Hathor was one of three goddesses closely associated with kingship in early Egypt. However, it was as secondary characters - the bovine goddesses were no longer the independent divinities they had been in the past.

Even as their roles became more sophisticated and wrapped in myth, the roles of nurturer, nourisher, protector and regenerator were always essential aspects of their being. Hathor was no exception.

Sources:
Fekri Hassan, The Earliest Goddesses of Egypt ~ Divine Mothers and Cosmic Bodies, a chapter in the book Ancient Goddesses, British Museum Press

David P Silverman, ed. Byron Shafer, Religion in Ancient Egypt ~ Gods, Myths & Personal Practice, Cornell University Press

Dimitri Meeks & Christine Favard-Meeks, Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, Cornell University Press

Photo credits: © D. Gonzalvez 2003

BACK TO THE BEGINNING: SUMERIA PART II
by Leah Enkidu

Forests spread, and those animals were replaced by red deer, wild pigs, and cattle. Dogs had already been domesticated for a few thousand years. Sedentary communities settled down in southwest Asia about a thousand years before wheat and barley were domesticated, supported by herds of wild sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs, which were all domesticated by 6000 BC.

Women were probably responsible for learning how to cultivate plants, as they seemed to have done most of the plant gathering. Women also probably invented potting, spinning, and weaving. Men used to hunting probably took care of the herds and, after the plow was invented, castrated bulls to use oxen to pull plows and carts, though a Sumerian poem refers to a woman in the fields with the plow.

Dug-out canoes were used for fishing and as transportation for trading such items as obsidian, shells, salt, food, and clothing. As more farmland was needed, the invention of the ax enabled people to cut down trees and use wood for building houses. At first houses were round like the communal caves and huts, but soon rectangles were used so that additional rooms could be added. In such villages the family replaced the band as the basic social group.

The oldest city discovered so far is Jericho, which had two thousand people between 8350 and 7350 BC. A large stone wall surrounded the settlement. In the Zagros mountains people living at Ali Kosh hunted gazelles, wild asses, and pigs, fished in the Mehmeh River, and caught wild fowl about 7500 BC. Soon they were growing two-rowed barley and emmer wheat. Between 6250 and 5400 BC Catal Huyuk in the Taurus mountains of Anatolia had a population of about 5,000.

Numerous bull skulls and horns found in the houses indicate that people probably engaged in rituals as families. Corpses were put out somewhere to be picked clean by vultures before their bones were buried under the floor in their houses. The simplicity of most grave objects indicates that this probably was a fairly egalitarian society.

Before the use of metal there seems to have been little warfare and much greater equality between men and women. Pottery vessels, which have been found in Japan as old as 12,000 BC, became widespread in the Near East by 6500 BC.

THE NUPTIALS OF LUGH - A BRIEF HISTORY OF LUGHNASADH
by Vortigern Aedui

“Long was the sorrow, long the weariness of Tailtiu, in sickness after heavy toil; the men of the island of Erin to whom she was in bondage came to receive her last behest. She told them in her sickness (feeble she was but not speechless) that they should hold funeral games to lament her - zealous the deed.”

Metrical Dindsenchas, vol. 4.

Lughnasadh, a festival that has recently ended in Celtia, was a sacred harvest festival celebrated by the Celtic peoples of both Insular and Continental Celts. The festival itself included bilberry picking, a ritual relating to abundance of the harvest, as well as a series of Olympic style games for young men to prove their virility. Lughnasadh was also a time when many hand-fasting, or temporary marriages, took place. The couples involved in the marriage were only required to stay together until the festival of Beltane, where at that time they could separate or renew their marriage for another half a year.

According to Irish myth, the god Lugh founded the original Lughnasadh in honor of his foster mother Tailitu. It has been said that Tailitu cleared the forest and trees from around the mound in order for the people of Ireland to plant their crops at this site. Once she had finished the task, Tailitu dropped dead, and Lugh buried her body beneath the mound and named it Tailitu mound. Tailitu is also referred to as the earth-goddess, as she was goddess of the harvest and many times likened to the goddess Brigid, the goddess of life. This is an important aspect when discussing Lughnasadh because it was a celebration of the coming darkness.

The festival was usually started with a symbolic battle between light and dark, with Lugh representing the light and Crom Dubh representing the dark. It has been argued that Crom Dubh, or the cult of Crom Cruiach, was a pre-Celtic cult still worshipping in Ireland by the arrival of St. Patrick. The cult was brought about by an Irish prehistoric king known as Tighermas around 1500 BC, with the favored form of ritual sacrifice being decapitation of the victims. Later in Celtic tradition Crom would spend half of the year underground with his mistress, Eithne, or ‘corn goddess’, who is also another form of the Brigid/Tailitu earth goddess. During the dark half of the year though, Lugh would retire to the underground prison with the sun.

It might be important here to briefly describe the Celtic calendar. According to the Colligney Calendar, a bronze calendar found in some woods near Bourg in the Ain region of France in 1897. The calendar dates to around the 1st century AD and while written almost exclusively in Gallic, it does show that the Celts used a lunar cycle to separate the months of the year. The months would begin on the night of the first full moon, which would place the time of the actual Lughnasadh to be a moveable festival, and the celebrations would last the duration of the month. The ancient Celts also regarded the month as being divided into two parts; A light half and a dark half, represented by the phases of the moon. This would explain the battle that kicked off Lughnasadh between Lugh, the light one, and Crom Dubh, the dark one.

While the festival today is normally celebrated on the first of August, this didn’t come about until the reign of the Emperor Augustus. In Gaul during the first century BC, Lughnasadh was an occasion when the Council of the Gauls met in Lyons. The Celts of Gaul called Lyons Lugdunnum, or City of Lugh, and was a major trading center between Gaul and Greece. This fact was neatly manipulated by Caesar Augustus when, in 12 BC, he relocated the Gaulish consilium to Lyons and required them to meet annually at the Alter of Rome and Augustus (Cunliffe, 189). It has also been suggested that by doing this, Augustus was demonstrating the unity between Gaul and Rome by equating himself with Lugh.

The festival of Lughnasadh quickly faded away in Gaul with the coming of Christianity, it was still celebrated up until 1169 under the High King Ruraidh O'Conchobhar. These were the last of the Lughnasadh events held in Ireland that is under the name Lughnasadh. The festival underwent a name change during medieval times to Lammas, in which many of the same customs were celebrated, only instead of celebrating Lugh, the patron saint this time being Patrick. Christian legend states that it was Patrick that climbed Tailitu mound and banished the false idols of Crom from the hill. Although the actual celebration of Lughnasadh is not celebrated in the same for that the ancient Celts celebrated it, there are still traces of it in today’s world with country fairs that usually occur in August as a celebration of the harvest. Lugh may be dead, but definitely not forgotten.

Sources:
Cunliffe, Barry. The Ancient Celts. Penguin Books, London. 1997
Markale, Jean. The Druids: Celtic Priests of Nature. Inner Traditions, Vermont. 1999
Metrical Dindsenchas, vol 4. translated by Edward Gwynn. Hodges & Figgis, Dublin 1925.

Photo Credits:
Photograph 1: Cunliffe.

Page I

On 8 Cuauhtli, 14 Teotleco, the Phoenix will be arriving again to the ports of Machu Picchu. This means there will be lots of tourists around, looking for souvenirs, things to eat, things to wear - an ideal oppourtunity for all citizens of Machu Piccu to make a modest profit by tendering their wares! Reserve your place on time, limited trading space available. The first 8 applicants will receive a premier location in the middle of the square. Reservations to be sent to: Dinnsear Ayaatl Tupac (Market Master) within 14 days of publication, please, to ensure preferential treatment

A new group, Eternal Gods, Eternal Lives has been formed in Egypt and is under construction. This roleplaying group will concentrate on the Netjeru, gods and goddesses of Egypt. Join before the playing starts!