And, dude, basically EVERY GOD DAMN Greek male was fuckin jacked; especially Citizens (the upper class) as this was the period where a paragon of a man was fashionably considered to display temperance, that is to excel in numerous areas of focus. To concentrate on a single liar purpose was considered a faux pas, and it was viewed as admirable to be able to defend the polis with word and deed among all levels of Greek society (once again, especially as a Citizen. If you were rich enough tk have free time you were expected to make the state better by martial training, scientific study, and philosophizing with your bros while drinking watered down wine). Plus, every level of Greek society could expect to be drafted for military duty at some point in their life; if not for direct combat than def. For training1.

Spartans had one thing and one thing only going for them: they had more metric fuck tons of iron than basically every other goddamn empire and state put together. They had so much fucking iron they minted coins with that shit. Some historians hypothesize that the whole martial tradition/training regime was developed out of necessity combined with smithing techniques just so Sparta wouldn’t get their shit pushed in. Sparta was relatively small compared to a lot of other Augean societies, and terribly under developed. They had to rey pretty consistently on capturing slaves for skilled labor (meaning constant war, which is certain to go over like a lead ballon with your neighbors who took the time to research how to do said craft), breeding helots (which were constantly diminished, as every Spartan boy had to kill one to complete training; also see above), or trade or encourage skilled workmen and settlers to emigrate (not common as they on ky had fucking iron while Athens, Troy, etc. we’re throwing around gold and their dicks; and not likely due to the extreme xenophobic culture of Sparta).

Sparta kind of sucked. No one gave a shit about Sparta until the 20th century. Athens we’re the fucking big dicks on the block for hundreds of years, at least in their neighborhood.

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