Are you saying Herodotus wasn't racist? I dunno, maybe, but most of those ancient greeks were pretty anti-persian. Ever read the Persian Expedition? The point is is that the ancient Greeks saw themselves as valuing freedom and reason and piety and so forth better than the rest of the world. Furthermore, they saw their freedom and reason and piety and so forth as being the sources of their military success. (One of the things I didn't like about the movie that was applying contemporary worldviews on to the story was the contempt for religion by most of the Greek protaganists.) But ya, basically, that's the way people all the time everywhere act and think if you look at history, (the Persians were themselves not especially tolerant back in that day either, and hey, they're still pretty intolerant today!) basically up until the last couple decades when brilliant people like the apportioner came along and realized that all these myths were just racist justifications for power and so forth. But I think such people should let the atavists have their fun once in a while, I mean, human beings have been acting and thinking like this since forever, you can't expect them all to give it up just because you read some book about post-colonialism.

the spartans (and several other greek states) didn't have an issued weapon and armor, everyone had to buy their own crap and keep it maintained themselves, I though they had this going on and there would be guys with cool custom shields and stuff.

My science teacher told me that the Spartans, beause they didn't wear much armour, developed a way of being able to suck their testicles back into their bodies during battle, so the enemy didn't have an obvious target to go for :eek

That's a perversion of an urban legend about Sumo Wrestlers doing the same thing, which was perpetuated by one of the James Bond novels or something.