Sparta or Rome/ Which Had The Better Constitution?

[de officiis]

Rome never had a Constitution. It was more like custom.

[GloryofGreece]

Rome never had a Constitution. It was more like custom.

Are you saying this because they didn't write it down...they certainly had laws. Aristotle collected something like 150 Greek constitutions. We only have one that's intact. But Xenophon (great source) wrote about Sparta a lot.

As far as Rome I think it can be described as a Constitution. Its beyond simply customs.

In my mind things like the following make it a "constitution", "even though the constitution's evolution through the years was often directed by passage of new laws and repeal of older ones.

Concepts that originated in the Roman constitution live on in both forms of government to this day. Examples include checks and balances, the separation of powers, vetoes, filibusters, quorum requirements, term limits, impeachments, the powers of the purse, and regularly scheduled elections. Even some lesser used modern constitutional concepts, such as the bloc voting found in the electoral college of the United States, originate from ideas found in the Roman constitution."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Constitution

[de officiis]

Rome never had a Constitution. It was more like custom.

Are you saying this because they didn't write it down...they certainly had laws. Aristotle collected something like 150 Greek constitutions. We only have one that's intact. But Xenophon (great source) wrote about Sparta a lot.

Yes.

[TheReal_ND]

Both have their issues. At least in the context of law. I'm no real expert on either. I guess I prefer the one that didn't go extinct from institutional pederasty.

As for the Rome and their informal constitution the Twelve Tables could possibly be considered a proto constitution. At one time plebs were encouraged to read it and memorize.

[GloryofGreece]

Both have their issues. At least in the context of law. I'm no real expert on either. I guess I prefer the one that didn't go extinct from institutional pederasty.

As for the Rome and their informal constitution the Twelve Tables could possibly be considered a proto constitution. At one time plebs were encouraged to read it and memorize.

Yea its really difficult to grasp the fact that they had institutional boy rape. Add to it the whole encouragement of basically starving their military cadets and allowing them to steal as long as they don't get officially caught. And the whole wives making themselves somewhat disguised as boys by cutting their hair ultra short and some other "customs" and you have a very bizarre culture, and beyond the admiration of their bravery and dominance on the battlefield things start to not really add up. Maybe mostly its just too much time that has passed by to really appreciate and understand that distant culture really.

[BjornP]

There seems to be a rule that societies that place so much emphasis on male-exclusive bonding that it leads to males not even seeing women outside their own family untill their -usually arranged - marriage, end up practising pederasty and/or other forms of male on male rape. Sparta, Catholic priests, long-term prison inmates, Pashtuns. If any society was most like Sparta today, I'd point to the Pashtuns.

[GloryofGreece]

Probably the best guy alive to speak on what we know about Sparta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP1POpsqin4

Its interesting that if you go back and listen to some of the countless speeches/talks/interviews with Victor Hanson it appears he really doesn't admire the Spartan society and looks to Athens much more but at the same time really criticizes Athens (justly so but still) much like Xenophon or the Old Oligarch would.

[Speaker to Animals]

There seems to be a rule that societies that place so much emphasis on male-exclusive bonding that it leads to males not even seeing women outside their own family untill their -usually arranged - marriage, end up practising pederasty and/or other forms of male on male rape. Sparta, Catholic priests, long-term prison inmates, Pashtuns. If any society was most like Sparta today, I'd point to the Pashtuns.

Well, you'd be exactly ass backwards wrong again. Athenians didn't much give a shit about their women. Spartan women were revered and held far more power than than those in Attica.

In fact, I think the the total opposite of what you said is true. Cultures in which males and females do not have their own spaces tend to gravitate towards males not appreciating females for much more than utilities, and vice versa. Maintaining gender roles and gender-exclusive spaces and activities is not going to guarantee you don't get something truly toxic like you see in Islamic societies everywhere, but it's a good hedge against it if you can keep something like Islam out of the culture.

Look at our own cultures as an example. Women are not revered any longer. They are there for sexual pleasure. Marriage rates are declining fast. Men are better off anyway just buying a surrogate mother and raising children on their own. Men already have access to sex and women are not some mysterious group that we rarely get to interact with either. There really is nothing magical about them at all, and really no chance that we will ever in these generations be able to recover what was lost. The magic and mystery is gone.

We were much better off when men and women had their own spaces and could develop social bonds with other members of their gender. All you have to do to see I am right is observe a few beta males who orbit around females all the time like they are waiting in line. It's terrible what we have become.

[Fife]

There seems to be a rule that societies that place so much emphasis on male-exclusive bonding that it leads to males not even seeing women outside their own family untill their -usually arranged - marriage, end up practising pederasty and/or other forms of male on male rape. Sparta, Catholic priests, long-term prison inmates, Pashtuns. If any society was most like Sparta today, I'd point to the Pashtuns.

[BjornP]

There seems to be a rule that societies that place so much emphasis on male-exclusive bonding that it leads to males not even seeing women outside their own family untill their -usually arranged - marriage, end up practising pederasty and/or other forms of male on male rape. Sparta, Catholic priests, long-term prison inmates, Pashtuns. If any society was most like Sparta today, I'd point to the Pashtuns.

Well, you'd be exactly ass backwards wrong again. Athenians didn't much give a shit about their women. Spartan women were revered and held far more power than than those in Attica.

In fact, I think the the total opposite of what you said is true. Cultures in which males and females do not have their own spaces tend to gravitate towards males not appreciating females for much more than utilities, and vice versa. Maintaining gender roles and gender-exclusive spaces and activities is not going to guarantee you don't get something truly toxic like you see in Islamic societies everywhere, but it's a good hedge against it if you can keep something like Islam out of the culture.

Look at our own cultures as an example. Women are not revered any longer. They are there for sexual pleasure. Marriage rates are declining fast. Men are better off anyway just buying a surrogate mother and raising children on their own. Men already have access to sex and women are not some mysterious group that we rarely get to interact with either. There really is nothing magical about them at all, and really no chance that we will ever in these generations be able to recover what was lost. The magic and mystery is gone.

We were much better off when men and women had their own spaces and could develop social bonds with other members of their gender. All you have to do to see I am right is observe a few beta males who orbit around females all the time like they are waiting in line. It's terrible what we have become.

Men and women "having their own spaces" or gender roles, that I nowhere object to or link to pederasty or male-by-male rape. I object and point to isolationism, to men and women having no shared spaces, and point out that societies and social groups that practise not having or severely limiting such shared spaces, lead to the sort of culture of sexual behavior you see from the prison inmate population, ancient Spartans, Pashtun and occasionally Catholic clergy. In Christian Western and Northern Europe, there was no point at which male and female society was as sexually isolated from each other as Spartans or Pashtuns. Or US prisons.

As for no "reverence" or women not being "magical or mysterious" anymore. Seriously? If you want magic and mystery, play some DnD and if you want to revere anything, you're supposed to be a God-believer of some sort, so revere God. But women? They are human individuals, not abstract totemic representations of virtue to be worshipped in your mental shrine.