The Bronze Lie

By: Myke Cole

Narrated by: Alexander Cendese

The story of the Spartans is one of the best known in history, from their rigorous training to their dramatic feats of arms - but is that portrait of Spartan supremacy true? Renowned novelist and popular historian Myke Cole goes back to the original sources to set the record straight.

The Spartan hoplite enjoys unquestioned currency as history's greatest fighting man. Raised from the age of seven in the agoge, a military academy legendary for its harshness, Spartan men were brought up to value loyalty to the polis (the city-state) above all else, and to prize obedience to orders higher than their own lives. The last stand at Thermopylae made the Spartans legends in their own time, famous for their brevity and their ability to endure hardship, to control their emotions, and to never surrender - even in the face of impossible odds, even when it meant their certain deaths.

But was this reputation earned? Or was it simply the success of a propaganda machine that began turning at Thermopylae in 480 BC? Examining the historical record, both literary and material, paints a very different picture of Spartan arms - a society dedicated to militarism not in service to Greek unity or to the Spartan state itself, but as a desperate measure intended to keep its massive population of helots (a near-slave underclass) in line, forcing them to perform the mundane work of farming, cleaning, building and crafting to permit the dandified Spartan citizens (spartiatai) the time they needed to focus on their military training.

Covering Sparta's full classical history, The Bronze Lie examines the myth of Spartan warrior supremacy against the historical record, delving into the minutiae of Spartan warfare from arms and armor to tactics and strategy. With a special focus on previously under-publicized Spartan reverses that have been left largely unexamined, it looks at the major battles as well as reexamining major Spartan "victories". Most importantly, it reexamines Thermopylae itself, a propaganda victory utterly out of proportion to its actual impact - a defeat that wasn't even accomplished by 300 Spartans, but rather by thousands of allied Greeks, all for the net effect of barely slowing a Persian advance that went on to roam Greece unchecked and destroy Athens itself.

©2021 Myke Cole (P)2021 Recorded Books

From a veterans point of view

How better to hear about this very deep and influential subject than from an actual vet?

Fascinating analysis of actual history

So much of the legend of Sparta is shaped by pop culture. The historical record, as studied by the author of this book, shows a vastly more complex and fascinating culture.

Narrator needs a pronunciation guide

The narrator's creativity in finding ways to mispronounce well-known names and places is maddening. Good book, bad narration. For example: Agesilaus, correctly pronounced Agg-ess-ill-ay-us, is in the narrator's vivid imagination Age-iss-louse. It took me a bit to figure out who he was talking about. Considering how often Agesilaus is mentioned, this makes for a frustrating listen.

He hates Spartans, Religion, Republicans, readers

First, I want to say that I have often felt the legends about the Spartans were mostly propaganda and agree that they often didn't perform to the level of their hype. I also agree that they often did dumb or perhaps cowardly/selfish things. I also don't love their culture of slaves, etc.

However, I have some major issues with this book and the authors crusade to correct this horrible lie that somehow makes modern Republicans evil, etc. I really enjoyed his Legion vs. Phanlanx book, though I never got the definitive point he thought he made about the Legion's superiority. But now, after reading this book, it has tainted my views on his arguments in that book as well in that I now can clearly see his disdain for things he doesn't like. I still like that book but not as much after reading this book and I probably won't read anything else he puts out.

Now to specifics:
1. He hates his audience:
In the intro, he goes out of his way to insult USA conservatives generally and their intelligence and integrity. I don't see how a love of legendary heroes (based on fact or fiction) or enjoyment of epic battles and action movies has any bearing on politics unless he is trying to perpetuate a biased and largely untrue characature of warmongering conservatives clinging to their guns and bibles cheering every splash of blood in media and real life. He also treats the Greeks' religious beliefs as utter rubbish. He doesn't have to believe they are true to respect the fact that they actually believed things. And he tangentially seems to disdain all religious beliefs. I don't know his religious or political beliefs but he seems to knowingly disparage the religious and political beliefs of the majority of his audience who would find this subject fascinating and it appears that this is on purpose to "correct" their misguided ideas that somehow are related to the myth of Spartan invincibility.
2. He always assumes the worst given any choice at all. I'm not saying he doesn't have some justification for many of his interpretations of events but seems to make this a holy crusade of why we should not only stop believing the myth about Spartans but also that they were the worst and most vile and most pathetic warriors even when he grudgingly mentions that they probably could do some things well.

3. Some of the things the Spartans were famous for are precisely the things criticized by the author, such as their stoic and stubborn resolve to fight a certain way even when it was foolish to do so. I don't recall it ever being part of their legend that they had great tactics or siege abilities or that they were flexible and adaptive. I think everyone knows they were supposed to just be really disciplined and able to fight well in a phalanx. they also possibly performed well in the Olympics and stuff, which might have helped bolster their image. No one said they always fought like Alexander or Hannibal. I think the fact that they were able to control a large faction of Greeks and were selected to manage the war against Persia is very telling even if it wasn't wholly justified by their historical military performance and their unwillingness to help when it really mattered.

Finally, he does make a lot of good points and valid arguments, so if it weren't for the above issues, I would have very much liked and appreciated this book.

exhaustive & slanted

this does exhaustively go through the issue of if the Spartans were the warfighters of their reputation. but the author chooses only to believe the sources that support his pov. he keeps asserting no one ever did stupid things tactically. to which I say -- Pickett's charge in the civil war and the repeated charges in WWI in trench warfare. his dislike of modern use of the myth of sparta by a political group he dislikes ( other unnecessary comments throughout show this) is evident in his " moron" chapter. apparently he is unaware that much of history makes heroes or villains for every culture. this drastically diminished the value of this work a it shows an inability to analyze impartially why there was a myth of Sparta at all. glad I got this on discount.

informative

I enjoyed the objective enthusiasm evident in this book. Highly recommend for anyone that enjoys ancient history!

Truth be Told

For those of us who’ve read a lot of academic works on Sparta, this book comes as no surprise. I like the fact that the author immediately challenges the reader as to why they would be enthralled, at a cultural level, by Spartans. The Sparta myth has become so absurd that a solid, no nuance deflating is in order. That is unquestionably the strong suit of the book and the author makes no bones about his intentions in that regard. I would rate the recounting of history as only “good” and I can’t really say that the book adds substantially to the body of knowledge about classical Greece. However, this work is accessible to non-historians and people who would get bogged down by turgid academic prose. The histories of battles are written in language that will be familiar to readers of nonacademic modern military history. That has upsides and downsides.

Highly recommended for anyone not in the top 1 percentile of knowledge about classical Greece, the Peloponnesian wars and Sparta. Even if you’re in that 1%, it’s still enjoyable.

Biased

The author’s “rule of common sense” doesn’t apply to the instances he continued to highlight as disproving the “myth”.

Dilettante history with a clear political motivation

What can be said about this book, well the funny thing is I agree with the idea that the Spartan mystique exceeded the Spartan reality - and like most anyone who’s read in Greek history knows that their society was not at all ideal by our standards. But this work is extremely amateurish. The cherry picking of events is far from a scholarly and serious approach and the overall attempt to use it just for a ham handed political attack was so pathetic it left me feeling embarrassed for the author. Ps: the rule of competence is asinine and could never be considered axiomatic as a historiographical tool - sometimes people are incompetent, that’s reality, it’s hard to believe that this half wit author thinks this is a great principle.

I could sum up the whole book like this; the Spartans weren’t so great and neither are guns rights activists, right wing extremists, or really anyone on the right. Now enjoy me cherry picking history and making generally unqualified conclusions which will largely support my thesis.

politics

it got into politics bashing conservative values withing the first few minutes. I love history because for the most part is not effected by modern political lines.