Many decisions in life can be made through boldness; the boldness to quit your joyless job to start your own business, the boldness to ask out that person you've been longing for night and day, the boldness to throw down that cheeseburger and pick up a salad. However to really stand out, you need courage. Find out the distinction below.

Spartan Bravery and the Difference Between Courage and Boldness

What was the core difference between Athens and Sparta? The Spartan naval admiral Lysander stands before thousands of Spartans and their allies in the lead-up to the Battle of Notium and gives them a rousing speech. In it, he lays out the differences between Athens and Sparta and makes the case for why the Spartan way of life is superior, and why, in the end, his men will prevail.

For Lysander, the heart of what separates Spartans from Athenians is this:
“We, Spartans and Peloponnesians, possess courage.
Our enemies possess boldness.
They own thrasytes, we andreia.
Pay attention, brothers. Here is a profound and irreconcilable division.”

For the Greeks, the word andreia meant both courage and manliness. Courage was the sine qua non of being a mature man; the two qualities were inextricably intertwined.
Thrasytes, on the other hand, was more of a boyish trait.
“The bold man is prideful, brazen, ambitious,” Lysander explained. “The brave man calm, God-fearing, steady.”

While Lysander set up a stark dichotomy between boldness and courage, acting with the former can occasionally be useful even for a grown man; sometimes impulsive, even reckless action is needed to seize a fleeting opportunity.
But where boldness exists, it must always be coupled and harnessed with courage; courage must be the prevailing quality of a man’s character.

Boldness Is Impatient and Fickle; Courage Is Steady and Enduring

“Boldness honors two things only: novelty and success. It feeds on them and without them dies.”
“Boldness is impatient. Courage is long-suffering. Boldness cannot endure hardship or delay; it is ravenous, it must feed on victory or it dies. Boldness makes its seat upon the air; it is gossamer and phantom. Courage plants its feet upon the earth and draws its strength from God’s holy fundament.”
“The enemy’s weakness is time. Thrasytes is perishable. It is like that fruit, luscious when ripe, which stinks to heaven when it rots.”
“Those qualities most pleasing to heaven, we believe, are courage to endure and contempt for death.”

Many men today often approach their own battles with an Athenian mindset. They get a great idea for a business or feel fired up about tackling a new goal. For a few weeks they feel a burning passion and excitement to do what it takes to make their new venture a reality. At first there’s lots of “sexy” stuff to do — pick a band name, choose a weight lifting plan, design their new website. They may find a little initial success, and feel as though they’re skimming through the water, the foam from the waves flying in their face. It’s exhilarating. Victory seems just around the corner.
Then setbacks arrive. Their initial success reaches a plateau. It starts taking a lot longer for things to get going than they anticipated. And there’s a lot more work than they expected. Hard work. Boring work.

Time goes on. They start working on their project less and less. Then they start ignoring it altogether. They make excuses. It feels like a slog, and shouldn’t something you’re passionate about be fun? They decide the problem isn’t their work ethic but simply that they’re pursuing the wrong thing and need to do something else. They get another burning idea; the excitement returns. For awhile. And then the cycle repeats itself.

These guys have thrastyes but not andreia; they have the boldness to start things but not the courage to finish them. When the hot sun of hardship and doubt rises over their project, their motivation evaporates. They have not developed the patience to stick with something when the initial excitement fades — the grit to push through difficult plateaus.

Boldness is Impulsive and Reckless; Courage is Prudent and Prepared

The reckless man underestimates the challenges he’ll have to face, and blindly and impulsively rushes into things. As a result of this impulsivity, his idea isn’t ready and flops, he doesn’t have the skill and confidence needed to find success, or he outright quits after realizing the kind of sacrifice victory will demand.

The courageous man avoids those extremes. He knows there’s a time for boldness, and a time for restraint. His hones the skills and confidence he’ll need for the fight ahead, but also realizes that sometimes you simply have to take action and learn as you go. He actively trains and prepares himself for the arrival of the right opening, but also knows there’s no such thing as the perfect opportunity. He neither dithers nor hastily surges; he uses practical wisdom to decide when the time is right to strike.

Boldness Is Prideful; Courage Is Humble

Thus, while the Spartans were rightly renowned for their bravery on the battlefield, their courage was perhaps even more keenly demonstrated at home. Beginning at age seven, Spartan boys entered military training that centered on inuring them to hardship. They wore only a tunic in both summer and winter, subsisted on scanty rations, and constantly drilled in the martial arts. As Plutarch observes, Spartan warriors “were the only men in the world with whom war brought a respite in the training for war.”

The Spartans understood that victory is won not in the heat of battle, but in all the small tasks and practices that lead up to it — that what is needed is not only courage for special times of crisis, but the everyday courage of discipline.

Boldness Seeks Glory; Courage Seeks Honor

At the age of 20, after over a decade of training, a Spartan citizen became eligible for military service. At this point, he joined a syssitia — a mess group of 15 other men. Each day a warrior was solemnly obligated to meet around the table and share a meal with these comrades, for the express purpose of building camaraderie. In fact, before the 5th century BC, the syssitia was simply known as andreia — which in this context meant “belonging to men.” As the men broke bread together, they learned to rely on each other and formed a bond of support that would enrich their days in times of peace, and contribute to military success in times of war.

Membership in a syssitia was thus mandatory for belonging to the homoioi — Sparta’s full-fledged citizens and soldiers. The homoioi in other words was an honor group — a tribe of men pledged to check personal interest in support of their brothers.

Developing this courage of honor was of acute importance on the battlefield, as each Spartan warrior fought as part of a phalanx formation. Members of a phalanx marched forward as a single entity, and met the enemy together. Each warrior stood side-by-side with his brother, locking shields to form a wall of protection; each warrior depended on the courage of the man to left and right of him for success and survival. The phalanx was thus only as strong as its weakest link, and relied upon each member working together for the greater good. A man who acted dishonorably, who broke off because of personal fear, or personal ambition, put the whole phalanx at risk.

In seeking to honor, support, and protect their brothers, the Spartans lived for a purpose higher than self. In contrast, they felt their enemies lived only for their own interests. Boldness, Lysander argues, is marked by personal ambition — the desire to gain wealth and do deeds that will redound to one’s own glory.

Many modern men center their lives on this kind of personal ambition, and care nothing for how their exploits and foibles affect other people, and their country. They do whatever they want — whatever is best for themselves, gratifies their desires, and flatters their flaws. If cheating will get them to their goal, they cheat even if it hurts innocent bystanders. If the standards and ideals of manliness are too difficult for them to reach, they disparage them, or move the yardsticks in order to include themselves. If they feel like collapsing in self-indulgent pity when their friends and loved ones need them, they indulge this urge, bringing others down with them.

Such men have boldness, in the sense they “audaciously” do whatever they feel like doing. But they lack the courage of honor — the commitment to strengthen and uplift their fellows, celebrate a code of ideals, and respect others enough to do the right thing, even when it’s hard.

Especially when it’s hard.

Boldness is Blasphemous; Courage is Reverent

The Athenians began to think of themselves as gods, and thus had little use for the worship of greater deities. Thrasytes wrongly convinced them that they were entirely in charge of their own destinies. And so they began defying the gods. The night before the Sicilian expedition — a battle during the Peloponnesian War — all the heads of the Hermes statues in Athens were chopped off. Many suspected riotous Alcibiades was involved. Some would call this a silly prank, but for the Athenians about to embark on a major war expedition, it was a sign they thought themselves greater than the gods, and had no need for divine assistance.

The Spartans, on the other hand, maintained piousness. They understood that while they could prepare as much as possible or fight with all their might, oftentimes the results were out of their hands. The gods or fate doled out success or failure how they wished.

Conclusion: Courage Is the Firewall Against Personal and National Decadence

Two-thousand years after the decline of Greek civilization, America’s Founding Fathers would mine the lessons of the divergent paths of Sparta and Athens. The Founders were astute students of classical history and looked to the two city-states for inspiration on how best to govern their nascent republic. They, like Athens’ famous philosophers, admired the Spartans’ stable, balanced constitution, and unbending discipline and principle. And while they praised the Athenian protection of individual freedom and revered their art and philosophy, they also saw Athens as an example of the societal rot that sets in when the love of personal liberty, luxury, commercial success, and democracy are not tempered with a devotion to duty, frugality, virtue, and honor.

They saw the danger of a becoming a people who primarily choose boldness, over courage.

For the republic to be a success, the Founders believed, individual men had to cultivate not only martial bravery, but the courage of endurance, control, contentment, discipline, reverence, and honor — courage that not only manifested itself on the battlefield but was exhibited in everyday life.

Courage is deciding to stay home and work on your side business when your friends are going out; courage is eating a chicken breast and broccoli when you really want a Big Mac; courage is keeping your junky car instead of getting an upgrade, and using the money saved to pay down your debt and become financially independent.

Courage is digging deeper into pat media narratives instead of coasting with the masses to form a political opinion; courage is taking on small ways to serve in your community instead of deciding that if you can’t make a big difference, it isn’t worth trying at all; courage is choosing sincerity and earnestness over cynicism and apathy.

Courage is deciding to live virtuously in your day-to-day life, even when those who lack integrity seem to be the ones getting ahead.

Courage is a man’s bulwark against physical cowardice and weakness.

Courage is a country’s firewall against civic and moral decadence.

Boldness can be described as the flame behind the initial act while courage is what feeds the flame until the job is done. Had the Spartans relied only on boldness, they would have turned tail after their first glimpse of the Persian army. This is an important distinction to be made, and should be remembered throughout daily life, especially in your SHTF preparedness plans.

You may be driven by the preps you see online, but when it comes to actually carrying out your plans, when others are criticizing you for the time and money being put into these plans, only courage is going to help you see your preparations through.

When SHTF, you'll need courage to defend yourself and your family from the lawlessness that will prevail from those who have prepared nothing. Start making the change from boldness to courage today and you'll really start to see your life turn around.

This is perhaps the most important article on survival mentality we've seen in awhile, and we strongly encourage you to read the entire text at The Art of Manliness (yes, you ladies, too). You won't regret it.