askchapo

Spartans are about the most pathetic culture to have ever existed.

They were also a bunch of idle fancy lads whose requirement for citizenship/personhood was literally "rich enough to come chill at the country club with the lads all day without ever having to work even a single day" while also being extremely greedy so that they'd buy up the land of anyone whose wealth dipped a little leading to their "eligible for military service" class consistently shrinking all the time to the point that they did major land redistribution twice in order to restore the size of their citizen class (since they were the only ones allowed to be "real" soldiers, as opposed to all the non-citizen light soldiers and enslaved canon fodder they also used).

And before you think "oh, so given their supposed martial prowess they were using that free time to stay in shape and do drills or something?" the answer is no, they were literally just hanging out drinking and eating at their rich boy clubs all day and their actual military performance was not measurably distinct from other Greek city states (including their neighbors) for most of their history, even though they liked to wank about how they were best and coolest because "remember Leonidas?" and shit, with only a pretty brief window where they seem to have actually started to try to live up to their own propaganda and managed to be a regional power before then failing again and rapidly diminishing to the point that the city of Sparta itself became lost and forgotten with the descendants of the Spartans reduced to just being some small time fishermen in a tiny village well before the Roman era.

If I recall correctly, I think the chad who led the Persians through the mountain pass was a Helot.