Stephen Hodkinson | University of Nottingham (original) (raw)

Videos by Stephen Hodkinson

A webinar given at the Universita di Trento, November 2020

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Podcast for History Hit, The Ancients series, 22 July 2021

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A podcast for the History Hit, The Ancients series, 29 June 2021

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Presentation at the conference 'Classical Controversies in 2020', Leiden, 11 November 2020: https... more Presentation at the conference 'Classical Controversies in 2020', Leiden, 11 November 2020: https://www.rmo.nl/en/research/conferences-and-congresses/conference-on-classical-controversies/

Classical Sparta is typically viewed as a militaristic society exclusively devoted to war and military training. My talk first examines how this image of the Spartans, popularised by the film 300, is being appropriated by Far-Right groups, especially in the USA. I argue that this is the latest of several episodes since the American and French revolutions in which modern political, intellectual and cultural trends have created a ‘mirage of Spartan militarism’: a mirage that stands in stark contrast to Renaissance and early modern European perceptions that Sparta maintained balance between its civil and its military elements. I conclude with thoughts about the responsibility upon academic historians to produce more subtle interpretations of the Sparta's relationship with war.

244 views

Journal Articles & Chapters in Edited Books by Stephen Hodkinson

Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 41, 141–175, 2024

This article examines the impact on Spartan historiography of Chapter IV of G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’... more This article examines the impact on Spartan historiography of Chapter IV of G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s Origins of the Peloponnesian War (1972), focusing on his discussions of Spartan politics and society in Sections v–vi. These sections fit oddly within the overall chapter, but they blew a breath of fresh air into Spartan studies through their revisionist approach,
intimations of the socio-economic bases of policy-making, and extended accounts of ‘real-life’ political episodes across the classical period. Along with Moses Finley’s near-contemporary article on Sparta, OPW significantly influenced the following generation of British historians (including the author), although they often adopted different interpretations or developed new perspectives on Spartan society only hinted at by de Ste. Croix. OPW also had an important impact on Western European historiography on Spartan politics. Its combination of constitutional and societal approaches gives it an enduring currency in the context of developing Historical Institutionalist approaches to political studies.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.

Sparta in Plutarch's Lives, edited by Philip Davies & Judith Mossman, 2023

My paper explores a significant but neglected inconsistency in Plutarch’s presentation of Sparta’... more My paper explores a significant but neglected inconsistency in Plutarch’s presentation of Sparta’s military characteristics within his Parallel Lives of the Spartan lawgiver Lykourgos and the early Roman king, Numa. The inconsistency in question involves a striking divergence between how Plutarch presents Spartan society and its military characteristics in the Life of Lykourgos and how he presents them in the Synkrisis comparing Lykourgos’ work with that of Numa. In the Life he presents Sparta’s military features as no more than a subsidiary aspect of the Lykourgan politeia. In contrast, in the Synkrisis he presents the Lykourgan politeia as significantly martial in character. This divergence has been insufficiently appreciated in previous scholarship, despite the long-recognised tendency of Plutarch’s synkriseis to problematise perspectives adopted in the preceding Lives. In my paper, Sections 1 and 2 examine the details of Plutarch’s divergent portrayals of Spartan society and its military characteristics, looking first at the Life of Lykourgos, then at the Synkrisis. Section 3 discusses the reasons for this divergence and how we should assess it in terms of Plutarch’s literary methods, his sources, his intellectual agenda, and historical perceptions of the character of classical Sparta.

Classical Controversies: Reception of Graeco-Roman Antiquity in the Twenty-First Century, 2022

This article, and the entire volume in which it is published, are also available to read Open Acc... more This article, and the entire volume in which it is published, are also available to read Open Access for free at https://www.sidestone.com/books/classical-controversies: see pp. 59-83

The display of ‘Spartan’ symbols during the insurrection of 6 January 2021 represented the culmination of an increasing recent trend whereby the U.S. Far-Right has appropriated martial images of the Spartans (linked especially to the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC) to support their causes. Three strands of appropriation have been prominent: first, exploitation of the phrase MOLON LABE, supposedly uttered at Thermopylae by Sparta’s king Leonidas, by the firearms industry and gun-rights activists as a selling-point and a rallying cry against restrictions on gun ownership; secondly, use of imagery from Zack Snyder’s film 300 (2006) by supporters of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign; thirdly, invocations of ‘Spartan’ military symbols and Sparta’s martial reputation to mobilise violence against the leftist movement labelled ‘Antifa’. These appropriations are rooted in the increasing polarisation of U.S. politics and rise of new Far-Right groups following the election of Barack Obama and then Donald Trump. What turned the Far Right specifically to Sparta was the popular appeal of 300, which followed its source-text, Frank Miller’s 1998 graphic novel, in valorising white masculine martial violence. However, Far-Right appropriations are also underpinned by a longer-term phenomenon, the ‘modern mirage of Spartan militarism’: an erroneous consensus about the overwhelmingly martial character of Spartan society spanning the political spectrum and intellectual and popular culture, produced by the reciprocal relationship between Western politics and scholarship since the American and French revolutions. Challenges to Far-Right appropriations need to be grounded in less militaristic scholarly re-evaluations of Spartan society, but the argument must also be taken outside the academy. Such public engagement may rarely convince committed Far-Right activists, but can assist uncommitted audiences and practitioners combatting Sparta’s historical misappropriations. Recent projects of popular dissemination and public history suggest the existence of a sizeable audience with a considerable degree of critical historical enquiry.

E. Stewart, E. Harris & D. Lewis (eds.), Skilled Labour and Professionalism in Ancient Greece and Rome (Cambridge UP, 2020) 335-361, 2020

Contrary to orthodox views, Sparta’s full citizens, the Spartiates were not professional or speci... more Contrary to orthodox views, Sparta’s full citizens, the Spartiates were not professional or specialized full-time soldiers and, apart from practice in elementary drill, their training focused mainly on physical fitness. In so far as Sparta’s armies excelled in technical proficiency, it was through their tight-knit organization and hierarchical command structures and their methodical, if often inflexible, implementation of set manoeuvres.

The Historian (magazine of the UK Historical Association), 2020

[NB Please ignore the gobbledegook text that appears when you click the article title. The articl... more [NB Please ignore the gobbledegook text that appears when you click the article title. The article pdf should download perfectly correctly.]

In: A. Powell (ed.), A Companion to Sparta, Hoboken NJ (Wiley, ISBN: 978-1-405-18869-2), 2018

In this chapter I have set out to examine one of the central aspects of the debate about whether ... more In this chapter I have set out to examine one of the central aspects of the debate about whether Sparta was an exceptional polis: namely, whether the Spartan polis constituted an exceptional domination of state over society. I posed three key questions: first, whether the state determined the nature of Spartan society and the lives of its citizens to an unusual degree compared with other poleis; second, whether Spartiate citizens had significantly less scope than citizens elsewhere to exercise personal agency in their household affairs; and, finally, to what extent Spartiate citizens were able to exercise private influence over affairs of state.

On the first question, we have seen some respects in which Sparta was unusual, especially the state’s imposition of a common citizen life‐course, including institutions such as the boys’ public upbringing and the daily evening syssitia. However, the degree of direct control exercised by the state over these institutions and, in general, over the daily lives of Spartiate citizens was more limited than usually portrayed in modern scholarship On the second question, we have seen that Spartiate families had considerable scope, often more than citizens in other poleis, to exercise private control over their household affairs. On the final question, we have seen that Sparta was not a totalitarian state. On the contrary, the private influence of wealthy citizens conditioned all levels of public activity, from the operation of the small‐group koinōniai in which Spartiates led their everyday lives through to the highest levels of official policy‐making. By the fourth and early third centuries the private activities of wealthy Spartiates had become so free from state restraints that they undermined the very economic basis of the common citizen way of life and, with it, the foundations of Spartan power.

Was the classical Spartan polis, then, marked by an exceptionally close fusion of state
and society, as some scholars have claimed? In the usual meaning of that phrase, the permeation of society by the state, the answer must be ‘no’. One might argue, indeed, that over the course of the classical period Sparta came increasingly close to exemplifying the phrase in the opposite sense, the permeation of the state by society. On a long‐term perspective, Sparta in the fourth and early third centuries had become a type of polis similar in key respects to archaic Sparta of the seventh century: a plutocratic society marked by severe inequalities of wealth and dominated by private interests and acquisitive behaviour of the rich. In between, for a couple of centuries or so following the sixth‐century revolution, a partially effective compromise was reached, in which the lifestyles and interests of rich and poor were brought together to some degree through Sparta’s distinctive state institutions and citizen way of life. Over time, however, both public institutions and affairs of state became thoroughly penetrated by societal influences stemming from the private resources and activities of wealthy Spartiates.

In: L.F. Bantim de Assumpção, Esparta: Política e Sociadade (Curitiba, Editora Prismas, 2017) 187-231.

In: V. Pothou and A. Powell (eds.), Das antike Sparta, Stuttgart (Franz Steiner Verlag) 57-86

In: M.G.L. Cooley (ed.), Sparta (London Association of Classical Teachers Original Records 21) 15-18

Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar 5.9, 2016

Hay dos motivos fundamentales por los cuales hemos decidido acometer esta traducción. El primero ... more Hay dos motivos fundamentales por los cuales hemos decidido acometer esta traducción. El primero de ellos tiene que ver con nuestro deseo de promover dentro de la RUHM los estudios sobre la guerra y de historia militar centrados en la Antigüedad. En segundo lugar, pensamos que este texto de Stephen Hodkinson trascendía con mucho los intereses de los historiadores de la Edad Antigua y el público con una debilidad por dicha época. Y es que, el autor pone claramente de manifiesto hasta qué punto nuestras visiones del pasado están mediatizadas por el presente, es decir, por superposiciones de relatos interesados o construcciones míticas fabricadas a posteriori en base a razones de índole política, todo ello a través de un caso paradigmático como es el de Esparta. Por tanto, este brillante y sugestivo estudio de Hodkinson sobre los elementos militares de la sociedad espartana y su verdadero alcance pone de manifiesto la necesidad de que abordemos el pasado de forma crítica, tanto el gran público apasionado de la historia como los que nos dedicamos profesionalmente a ella, máxime cuando se trata de cuestiones muy envueltas en codificaciones mito-poéticas como son las militares. En este sentido, tan sólo nos queda invitar a los lectores a sumergirse en este ejercicio de desmitificación, deconstrucción o, cuanto menos, matización de los relatos hegemónicos en torno a la realidad de la polis lacedemonia.

Ancient History: Resources for Teachers, 41-44 (2011-2014) 1-42, Mar 2015

In: Journal of Classics Teaching 27, Spring 2013, 16-25

In: S. Hodkinson & I. Macgregor Morris, Sparta in Modern Thought, Swansea (The Classical Press of Wales), 2012

In: S. Hodkinson & D. Geary (eds.), Slaves and Religions in Graeco-Roman Antiquity and Modern Brazil, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Cambridge Scholars Publishing)

In: E. Hall, R. Alston & J. McConnell (eds.), Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood, Oxford (OUP), 2011

This paper discuss the importance of Spartan helotage in the framing of early British parliamenta... more This paper discuss the importance of Spartan helotage in the framing of early British parliamentary motions, between 1791 and 1796, for the abolition of the slave trade. Helotage, particularly illustrated from the evidence of Plutarch's Lykourgos, consistently appears as the primary ancient example of the inhumanity of servitude, cited both by some of those who wanted to argue for the legitimacy of their own (allegedly more lenient) slave-holding practices and by abolitionists. The discussion covers the non-parliamentary sources in which these ideas were promulgated and developed--journalism, sermons, school textbooks--and shows ho the comparison and helotage and West Indian slavery was consistently intertwined with the comparison of helots and the Irish peasantry. The changes in approaches to the Spartan system over a relatively short space of time between the English Commonwealth and the early nineteenth century illustrate the complexity of the slavery arguments in the process of their legislative evolution.