OK, every Greco-Roman war film ever made always features these guys who look like they just stepped off the cover of Men's Fitness. Gladiator, Troy, 300 - you get the idea.  Having looked at some of the nutritional requirements of the actors playing those roles got me to wondering if you could even create 300 soldiers with that kind of physical conditioning in that era.  Just the demands in protein alone would be massive, let alone training time.

It seems like the Spartans have the best chance at it - they rely on slaves to do most of the food production, leaving them time to train and work out without cutting into available nutrition as much.  The number involved is relatively small (300) so it is conceivable a large, functioning society could support that many elite troops.  So from a physical nutrition standpoint, could Sparta raise and support an army of 300 that were in similar physical condition to the movie actors goven the constraints on food production and nutrition?  If they actually could do such a thing, would those soldiers be better in a phalanx?

What kind of logistics chain would you need to support such an army if you could create it?

What is the nutritional value of black gruel?

You like gladiator movies don't you Johnny?

From what I understand, the lack of food reserves, fat, would be detrimental to troops of that type and era.

I would agree. It wasn't like today where you just bust out an MRE. Their meals were probably few and far between by today's standards.

 

I'm under the impression that a soldier in that era would generally be in top physical condition if for no other reason than they had to do so much more manual labor. Heavy things were moved by hand and with simple machines (no trucks). They had to walk everywhere (again, no trucks). Their food was all natural also and probably better for them. Darwinism was also prevalent, the strong survive and the weak are discarded. Of course, I'm not a scholar on that subject, so I may be wrong.

Ahhh, no.  Back then, for the most part,  you were either fit or dead.

salt, pork, vinegar & blood.....

The average size of a Spartan Warrior was 5'4"-5'5" and 120-130lbs.

Most would likely be small, strong wiry guys.  You may know the type:  welder/fabricator who looks like nothing but skin and tendons who can work anyone to the ground and doesn't seem to eat.

 

And probably wiry cockstrong motherfuckers!

There is no question they are going to be physically fit.  The question is can you get them enough nutrition to build an army of 6' 200lb super-cut guys like the actors in the movies?  If you went back in time could you achieve that goal given the constraints of the era?

I thought those were meth heads.

Yea... that blue collar worker look.

Probably why they had so many slaves to work on their farms.

You have been watching too many movies.

The OP needs to do some basic research. The Spartans were not the steroid-beefcake types shown in the movie, nor was something like that even possible in that day and age. If anything, the typical Spartan would have shown signs of poor childhood nutrition, and a whole host of other issues. That typical Spartan might not have even been able to pass a draft physical for the WWII US Army.

It was a different time, and the tales that have grown up around those people since are laughably off-base. The Spartans were raised on diets of stolen food, and kept "fit" by making them steal what they ate as teenagers, past a certain basic diet.

Sparta was, in a lot of ways, the North Korea of the Greek world. They were utter bastards, and totalitarians. The history of that nation should be an embarrassment to anyone who holds them up as some sort of example, and all the Spartan-worship out there these days ought to result in the people doing it being ostracized from decent society. It's no accident that many totalitarian regimes in the modern world have used the Spartans as templates, not the least of which were the Nazis.

Before holding some group up as paragons of virtue, it would be wise to first research their actual history. The Spartans were thieves who moved in on a decent community, enslaved them, and then exploited them with a set of laws and customs that would have embarrassed the KKK. Which went on for generations, until the Thebans and Epaminondas freed the Helots and destroyed the Spartan hegemony. The Thebans are the ones who ought to be looked at as role models and exemplars, not the Spartans.

I'm actually embarrassed every time I hear someone hold the Spartans out as some kind of good example, for anything. They were generally craven cowards at home, who used their teenagers as KKK-like night riders to terrorize and oppress the actual natives of the country they'd taken over, much as if we used college fraternity members as some kind of secret society dedicated to keeping blue-collar workers in line through sheer terror. If a Helot was successful, and managed to make a decent life for himself or his family, he could count on a visit from the Krypteia, and likely death at the hands of a wild pack of teenage thugs.

Fuck Sparta. For every one day of honorable service in battle at places like Thermopylae and Marathon, there were decades, centuries even, of oppression and horror inflicted in the name of keeping their death-grip on the nation they stole. Thugs and thieves, all of them.

Dunno. But Conan just pushed the wheel of pain for 20 years straight, then bam! Super swole.

sorta not really related but

saw a .doc on the study of bones that belonged to some bad ass Confederate Tier 1 troops..They were woefully fuked by today's standards. They were all underweight, had terrible backs(all major back problems from horse riding etc..) and knees that were also shot to hell from walking. Most of them were in their early 20's but were in actual physical age closer to late 60's. Your basic urban teen skateboarder would run right over them in battle in a straight physical endurance contest.

if youre training from birth to be a warrior.. well.. possibly?

You know who comes to mind?  Dick Proenneke.  That guy grew or hunted most of his own food (most of it so fresh it was still twitching), was extremely active 18 hours a day, and was small framed yet built like Popeye.  In his 50's he looked like this:




If Proenneke could do it solo merely as a side effect of working his ass off, I could imagine heavily trained troops well fed by slaves being ripped.

Ooooo lawd! This guy just schooled y'all!








He sounds kinda angry 'tho.. Like he was fleece johnsoned by a Spartan or something..... Just saying!

That sounds about right. In addition, there was a difference in the philosophy between the hellenic and the roman soldier/society. The ancient Hellenes placed a premium on the symmetrical development of the body. The idea of symmetry and beautiful proportions was central to the Hellenic way of thinking and it was reflected in their architecture, their art and sculpture, and even in what they considered a well developed body structure. To them, bulked up and muscle bound athletes would have just looked ugly. I think the idea of bulk started with the romans.

The Hellenic phalanx soldier was absolutely aerobically fit and possessed the lean, wiry strength of constant drilling and a spartan lifestyle. The kind of strength they showed in the battle of Marathon where they closed in by running the last mile to the enemy in full gear (imagine running in one inch thick bronze armor, breastplates, helmet, and long spear) and fight to victory against a numerically superior force. One thing they were not is bulky the way Hollywood portrayed them in 300.

Leave it to somebody who didn't sleep through World History class to piss on everybody's hero worship!

Tonight my friend...YOU DINE ALONE!

http://i39.tinypic.com/2qd036t.jpg

That's crazy talk! ARFCOM has taught me that the Spartans loved guns, made fun of the Athenian fancy-boys and their entire history is so awesome it can be condensed into a bumper sticker slogan.

All this arrogant lecturing, just to make a complete ass of yourself. You obviously didn't even read the OP's post. Your reply was a non sequitur. Utterly irrelevant to the topic posted.

I think a Spartan took his lunch money when he was a kid...


John

As stated above probably small and agile.  Just like the soldiers that they faced.  Great endurance though.  Up until the 20th century, the average person walked about 5 miles a day just going about their daily lives.  

Gladiators on the other hand tended to be pretty beefy guys.  The added muscle and fat allowed them to absorb blows and survive wounds better.

The Greeks invented the gym, wrestling, olympics, various sports, etc. I doubt they looked like the dudes in the movie, but I'm sure they were in far better shape than the average human of the era.

Yes, as TheRealBlueDog noted, most everything you wrote is a non-sequitr that didn't even address my point.  I've got Victor Davis Hanson's book on Thermopolyae on the bookshelf along with a few others; but if you'd like to recommend any further reading I am always keen to read a good book.

However, thekirk missed my point entirely.  I am not interested in the reality.  I am interested in the proposition I described.  Is it even physically possible to create such an army given the food and nutritional constraints of the day?  Would there be any point to it since once you had to march 20 days on typical rations of that time, the body would start breaking down those muscles for calories?  Is it feasible to create a logistical chain that could both create this army and support it in the field?

I used the Spartans because they are an example everyone here is familiar with and the contrast of the movie 300 with historical reality vividly illustrates the contrast.  If that disturbs you greatly, feel free to substitute "Troy" or "Jason and the Argonauts" or "Spartacus" etc.

I can't jerk off to that

Basically 300 Bruce Lee's coming after you. That would suck.

 

No, black gruel is pretty much cream of burnt barley. Basically, Spartan men ate semi-solid Guiness 24/7 with bacon in it. Probably why they were so cranky.

ETA: I stand corrected, forgot about the other ingredients, blech.

Lolololol!!

Which brings up a similar question - if you could do it, would the resulting soldiers actually be any better at fighting?  Would it require an impossible logistics chain to keep their bodies from wasting away during the march?  Would any of that bulk be beneficial to the way a phalanx actually fought?

They were fit runts by today's standards, who would have been fighting other fit runts.  The Spartan warrior was probably better fed than the rest of the spartan population but I imagine animal protein was rare in their diets compared to our's.  Nutrition has come a long way since then.

So Socrates was basically a proto-Nazi? Huh?

That ain't what goggle said!

Renditions of spartan hoplites just for kicks.

DAMMIT BUTTHEAD WHY DO YOU HAVE TO TEAR DOWN EVERYTHING GOOD IN MY LIFE?!





 

......and the Athenians gave us "Democracy"............fancy word for mob rule.

You didn't understand the whole point of the movie 300 then.



It was purposely meant to be a propagandized re-telling of the battle at Thermopylae. You see because when you look at Greek made monuments and chiseled pictures of the story the Spartans wanted to tell you. That all the Spartans were big, strong, and very fit with perfect bodies and they fought without the need of breast plates because they were so good at fighting or just so brave they didn't care.



When in reality, they were heavily armored when they went into battle.



So when you watch the movie 300. You should understand that it is just telling the story as how exactly the Spartans wanted us to view the battle as if they had a time machine that took a propaganda minister from Sparta and had him write and direct the story.

Heavy infantry would have had some armor on the torso and legs.

Not likely, nor was the look in the movie supposed to be historically accurate.

The movie was told from the POV of a Spartan to other Spartans, which is why the appeared ripped, beautiful, fair skinned, and virtious.  The Persians, on the other hand, were depicted as dark skinned, deformed, and in some cases bestial.  The story itself was nothing more than propoganda intended to rile up other for other Spartans.

Superficially, the physical distinctions between the two armies seems kinda racist but that's because it was supposed to be.

Nothing like strong warriors wielding their swords, fighting for honor, truth, and freedom, glistening in the moonlight.......

Here's a modern recreation of Roman food.



An entire empire/nation working to bulk up 300 guys? No problem.

Those guys look like Phoenicians, not Dorians.