Sparta

[aleathiel]

Grr I hate LJ!! I just typed all these ideas out and then it messed up and I have to do it all again! Here it is in shorter form:


I'm taking a paper on classical Greece this year which currently includes lectures on classcal Sparta. It hit me today what a fantastic setting this would be for an AU.
It has insitutionalised homosexuality, boys and men divided into military sets supervised and punished by each other, an

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Grr I hate LJ!! I just typed all these ideas out and then it messed up and I have to do it all again! Here it is in shorter form:


I'm taking a paper on classical Greece this year which currently includes lectures on classcal Sparta. It hit me today what a fantastic setting this would be for an AU.
It has <b> insitutionalised homosexuality</b>, boys and men divided into military sets supervised and punished by each other, an <obessession with whipping</b> as a route to honour...

But I'm too insanely busy to think it through, let alone write it! Maybe over Christmas I can write something.

On a different (slightly!) note, Helen of Troy was Queen of Sparta before running off with Paris, and we've done a section on Spartan women (their sharing of wives to produce the strongest boys and to sever familial ties to keep loyalty to the state etc), so if anyone is writing FPS after 'Troy', then I can help with info. In fact, by then I will have more on other parts of Greece as well.

Comments

[plaidwater.livejournal.com]

The Oresteia suddenly makes more sense ... Sparta, two kings ... if only I'd gotten to this /before/ our discussion of it today in class.
And the girls are sent to gymnastics school and such, if I'm remembering those notes right ... much with the forced homo-ness

[aleathiel.livejournal.com]

That's right. Two kings, all children belonging to the state not to families and basically selective breeding of people.
They also seem to have had a strange fascination with whipping boys as a test of their endurance and as a way to gain honour.
I think it would be an interesting place to base a fic, but then I'd need the time to write it!