China has been mentioned as a parallel for the Vilani, but this
discussion puts me in mind of ancient Sparta.

Before the 6th century BCE (ie the 500s BC) the Spartans enjoyed healthy
trade and diplomatic relations, art, poetry, pottery, bronzeworking as
well as some decent (though far from invincible) hoplite soldiers and
laws forbidding the misuse of children. Over the course of the 6th
century BCE, just a few generations, Sparta became an utterly different
state (great simplification of considerable historical debate): a police
state with professional military, no trade and limited craft, boys
raised by the state solely as soldiers and increasingly dodgy abuse of
children as a requirement of citizenship.

Spartan bronze- and iron-working technology over that period degenerated
from a high standard to very basic shield, shortsword and pot helmet.
Spartans appear to have lost access to tin, copper and iron necessary
and were reduced to repairing and reworking a shrinking stock of older
metal items. Likely they had very few bronze and iron workers compared
with before.

One constant: Spartan professional soldiers always sucked at sieges,
while the Athenians excelled at the same -- many had relevant real jobs
as carpenters, stonemasons, miners etc.

Disregarding Frank Miller's "300" as a bizarre soft-core fantasy that
tells more about the inside of Frank Miller's head than ancient Sparta
-- a deliberate decision to freeze Spartan culture in the interests of
stability (internally, to control a vast helot slave population;
externally, to maintain the 'purity' of Spartan society).

Note that this was in the highly competitive environment of the Greek
city-states. Sparta won the Peloponnesian War with the help of the
Persians, plague in Athens and the Athenians themselves becoming
distracted in a pointless and losing side-war against Syracuse (in
Sicily!). With the collapse of Athens, Sparta inherited the Athenian
Empire but its governors lacked the slightest ability or inclination to
rule subject populations.

Ring in a couple of centuries of Spartan military dominance, with the
full-force Spartan army remaining undefeated until the Battle of Leuctra
(371BCE) where the Thebans defeated the Spartans using the unheard-of --
shock, horror -- outflanking attack.

Leuctra was a blow from which Spartan prestige and confidence never
recovered. Ironically, the Thebans had caught up with the Spartan
military -- then surpassed it.

In Thebes at the time a young prince was held hostage to ensure the good
behaviour of tiny, tribal Macedon. Later, Philip used the lessons of
Leuctra to build a Macedonian phalanx and cavalry force that
specifically exploited the weaknesses of the Greek phalanx.

Philip also called his boyhood friend to tutor his son and a couple
dozen sons of other Macedonian nobles. The tutor was Aristotle, and
Alexander an unparalleled military genius.

Mere decades later Macedon swept up Thebes with the rest of Greece as a
warm-up act to swallowing the entire Persian empire plus a chunk of India.

I see many parallels with the Vilani story. Hell, I see parallels with
the geopolitics of 2014.

Michael Barry