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The HA Supports Paul Cartledge at Sparta Lecture By Ashley Holt On Wednesday October 5th Professor Paul Cartledge hosted a talk entitled “Sparta – Totalitarian or not?” at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe. We began the evening with a meal in ‘Santorini’, the Greek restaurant just down the road in Hazlemere. This provided a good opportunity to listen to a number of Classics scholars discussing all things Greek. Feeling decidedly out of my depth I chose to hold my own council... until Marathon was mentioned and the practicalities of fighting. I couldn’t resist ‘selling’ the priceless experience of being a member of the Hoplite Association and participating in the 2500th anniversary re-enactment. This certainly caught the interest of several and I gave out a number of HA business cards, so hopefully some will turn academic interest into real experience! I attended the talk in armour to greet the guests and act as a prop for the talk, which proved to be a useful overview about Spartan attitudes and ethos. It was a great experience to hear ‘Mr Sparta’ (sic) explaining why he reached the conclusions he had. In effect, he felt that Sparta was not totalitarian, but rather it was authoritarian. A very interesting point was the degree to which ‘Sparta’ is used as a brand, for example the Hyatt hotel chain’s advert suggesting that the Battle of Leuctra in 371BC was lost because the Spartans had not had a good rest the night before - like they could have had at the Hyatt! A ‘Spartan regime’ of training and diet was practiced by the Oxford University boat club in 1906/7. More recently, Terry Deary’s books, audios and BBC programs ‘Groovy Greeks’ talk about ‘Suffering Spartans’. In short, a fantastic evening, and I for one will be glad to attend another talk in the future. As always, members be kept informed if the opportunity to attend arises.
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