Sparta

The ways in which the hoplite class adapted to changing political conditions can be seen in the history of the two most important cities of the Greek mainland in this period, Sparta and Athens. Neither were typical city-states. Each had, in differing ways, access to far more resources than the smaller cities, and as a result both were able to act on a wider stage. They played a dominant role in the Persian Wars of the early fifth century and then, perhaps inevitably, they became locked into deadly conflict with each other in the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 Bc, a war in which Sparta emerged victorious before collapsing a few years later from exhaustion. (For an introduction to Sparta, see Paul Cartledge, The Spartans: An Epic History, London, 2002.)

In popular imagination, especially that of the Athenians, Sparta has been seen as a conservative and rigid society, dedicated to keeping order over its population and placing success in war above all other values. Education was confined to rigorous training and the instilling of patriotic virtue. This was the image of Sparta that persisted through into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When the French revolutionaries were designing a new education system for their ‘Republic of Virtue’ it was the Spartan they took as a model. In England, Sparta inspired some aspects of the English public school system. Beatings and rough games were acceptable parts of the system, which would finally produce reserved but steady citizens. (Richard Jenkyns describes these attitudes well in his The Victorians and Ancient Greece, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1980.) It is hardly surprising that Hitler was an admirer of the Spartans. This image may be too much of a stereotype but the limited sources make it hard to discover the reality.

The city of Sparta lay along a series of low hills overlooking the river Eurotas in the south-eastern Peloponnese. Its immediate territory is known as Laconia or

Lacedaemonia, a name recorded in the Linear B tablets. The site had good natural defences, and no city wall was built around it until Roman times. The city had originated as a number of scattered villages. It never had the great public buildings enjoyed by other cities and it is now a desolate place to visit. When the villages were joined to form a city-state some form of compromise must have been hammered out between two ruling families. The result was that Sparta was left with two hereditary kings. These played heavily on their mythical descent from the hero Heracles whose descendants, the Heraclides, it was said had regained their ancient territory in Laconia in association with a so-called Dorian invasion. They held a whole range of traditional powers and privileges, but by the sixth century their most important role was as religious leaders and as commanders of the Spartan armies. They were also members of a largely aristocratic body of thirty councillors, the gerousia, elders elected by the citizen body by acclamation from those who had reached the age of 60. As in most cities, there was also a citizen assembly. Its role appears to have been consultative, listening to proposals put forward by the kings or elders and approving or disapproving them.

At some point in her history Sparta began subduing surrounding villages. Although their inhabitants, known as the perioikoi (‘those living around’ i. e. on less fertile hill-land), were totally dependent on Sparta, they retained their settlements, enjoyed some aspects of local government, and were free to engage in crafts and manufacturing. They were seen to be part of a wider Lacedaemonian community and even provided their own contingents for the Spartan army. However, those living outside the central villages that made up the core of Sparta were given no political rights. By the eighth century the city was looking further afield, across Mount Taygetus to Messenia to the west. The motives for the expansion are unclear. The land was rich but Sparta had already enough to meet her needs in the valleys of Laconia and conquest of Messenia left her with a less defensible boundary. It may have been more a matter of defining an identity through successful war. After twenty years of fighting in the late eighth century, Messenia too was subdued. Tradition tells of the harsh treatment of the native population, the helots, possibly ‘those who have been taken. It does appear that by the sixth century the helots were in some form of bondage to the Spartans and they were portrayed as a continual threat to their owners. Sparta was now the largest polis in Greece, controlling two-fifths of the Peloponnese and, at 8,000 square kilometres, its territory twice as large as the next largest, the Sicilian city of Syracuse.

It was clear from the start that the Spartan hold on Messenia was a precarious one, not only because the native population did not take to its fate easily but also because Spartan expansion aroused the suspicion of neighbours. One of these was the city of Argos to the north-east of Sparta. There are hints in the literary sources that Argos may have been the first city to use hoplites (the earliest known hoplite helmet, of about 725 Bc, has been found there). According to a much later source, the Argive army, perhaps exploiting its superiority, inflicted a traumatic military defeat on Sparta at Hysiae in 669. If so, Sparta must have been shaken to the core, especially when there is also evidence of a rebellion in Messenia that took another twenty years to subdue.

It was probably during these years that, as a response to these crises, the Spartan constitution became oligarchic. The only evidence for the development is a passage by Plutarch, written many centuries later, but probably drawing on a work by Aristotle on the Spartan constitution. It involved a rhetra, or pronouncement, that was attributed to a (possibly legendary) lawgiver, Lycurgus, and which claimed to have had the approval of the oracle at Delphi. The passage is difficult to interpret but it appears that the citizen assembly had acquired some kind of sovereignty in decision-making although, the passage goes on, when this was abused the kings and the elders had the right to overrule decisions. What the passage does not say is that the assembly also had the power to elect annually five ephoroi, ephors, from among the citizen body. The ephors were responsible for maintaining the overall good order of the state from day to day, in particular through scrutinizing the activities of the kings. They alone, when sitting on their official seats, had the right to not stand up in the presence of the king. Every month they renewed their loyalty to the kings in return for the kings’ promise to respect the laws of the state. In short this was a balanced constitution, in which kings, elders, ephors, and the assembly each had a role to play. It is certainly the first known in Greece.

Alongside political change came social change. If the city was to survive it had to build a hoplite army of its own, and here Sparta had a distinct advantage over other Greek cities. The perioikoi and the helots could provide for the economic needs of the state and so this left the entire male citizen body free for war. Unlike other cities, where hoplites formed a richer minority drawn from the citizen body, in Sparta all male citizens were hoplites by virtue of their citizenship. There is evidence that the change took place under aristocratic supervision. The tightly disciplined hoplite ranks were very different from the old aristocratic warrior bands, yet in Sparta the same terminology was used to describe them both. The messes in which the soldiers ate were made up of fifteen men, the same number as in an aristocratic ‘symposium’. It seems, therefore, that aristocratic cultural forms continued to be dominant. Certainly, once the second Messenian war was over and the city relaxed in what was a period of peace and prosperity, this is the impression that remains. There was widespread trade with the east, and bronze craters (mixing-bowls, one of the main symbols of aristocratic conviviality) from the city are found as far afield as France and southern Russia. (The Vix crater may be one of them (see p. 154.)) Spartan athletes dominated the Olympic Games throughout the seventh century. The gerousia remained an integral and influential part of the political system.

It was not to last. There were pressures on Spartan society that gradually destroyed the possibility of aristocratic lifestyles. It can be sensed in the word the Spartans used of themselves, homoioi, ‘those who are similar’ Uniformity was imposed upon them by fear, the continuous threat of revolt by those they had subjugated. The Spartan state became heavily militarized, with every aspect of the life of its male citizens defined from the moment of birth. This was hoplite society at its most extreme, the subjugation of individual identity into the service of the state. In the sixth century there was a dramatic increase in the number of hoplite figures offered as votive offerings at the shrine of Artemis Orthia. One measure of the citizen’s

Commitment to the state was the need to provide a monthly ration to the communal dining tables, and this goes hand in hand with the intensification of farming, the land owned by Spartans but worked by the helots. So developed an egalitarian society that rested on the rigid exploitation of others. (See Chapter 14 for a fuller discussion of Spartan society.)

It was only to be expected that such a conservative society should gradually isolate itself from the outside world. Few Spartan victors are recorded in the Olympic Games after 570 bc. Trade contracted as the state moved towards self-sufficiency. Iron bars were retained as currency by the Spartans long after the rest of the Greek world had moved on to silver coins. There was also an idealization of the past, and, in the sixth century, the Spartans even went so far as to associate themselves with Agamemnon, the legendary leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War. The constitution was given a hallowed status that protected it against reform. The bringing of eunomia, good order, was prized as its main achievement. The rituals of Sparta, those relating to the succession of the king, for instance, were also unlike anything known elsewhere in the Greek world and the funerals of the kings were lavish occasions.

The morale of the Spartan citizens (as with that of the subjects of any totalitarian state) needed to be maintained by continual mobilization. The city was not always successful. In about 560 bc at the Battle of Fetters against the city of Tegea in southern Arcadia (it was called this because the Spartans marched out with fetters with which to enslave the Tegeans when they had been overcome), it was Sparta who was defeated. She now acted in a more restrained way. When Tegea was eventually conquered she was maintained as a dependent city, but not, like previous conquests, incorporated into the Spartan state. In the 540s Sparta had her revenge on Argos and extended her influence into the eastern Peloponnese. She was now the most powerful state in the peninsula. Even Corinth was prepared to accept her dominance, partly because Argos, for centuries the most powerful city of the eastern Peloponnesian coast, had been an enemy of hers too. The cities of the northern Peloponnese were encouraged to form alliances with Sparta. As Sparta had eliminated the possibility of tyranny for herself she helped to overthrow those who had tyrants and forced them to adopt an oligarchical model instead.

With her position secure in the north, Sparta’s ambitions now extended across the Isthmus. She continued to champion oligarchy against tyranny. In 524, with the help of Corinth’s navy, she tried, unsuccessfully, to overthrow Polycrates, tyrant of Samos. In 510 and again in 508 Spartan troops were to be found intervening against the tyranny of the Peisistratids of Athens. Sparta’s interventions were motivated not just by her hatred of local tyrannies. She was increasingly conscious, as was all Greece, of the looming power of Persia. Embassies had come from several peoples outside Greece, the Lydians, the Scythians, and Egyptians, asking for help, but Sparta had been unable to save any of them from Persian expansionism. Persia, as a monarchy, aligned herself naturally with the tyrants of the Greek world and Sparta found herself left as the most powerful defender of Greek freedom and independence.

Sparta may have appeared powerful to the outside world but in fact her strength was limited. There were several factors that inhibited a forceful foreign policy. First, she never became a major sea power and this restricted her ability to act beyond the Greek mainland. At the same time she always remained vulnerable at home. The helots were not like the slaves of a typical Greek city who had no common heritage. Those in Messenia, at least, had a shared culture and experience of oppression. A revolt which took place while the Spartan armies were abroad would have been catastrophic, and Spartan leaders never forgot the possibility that it might happen.

There was also the question of leadership. A king who left the Peloponnese in search of military glory abroad risked upsetting the delicately balanced constitution at home. This became clear during the reign of king Cleomenes (520-490 Bc). Once out of his city and with an army under his command, Cleomenes became increasingly assertive. After 510 he tried to define Spartan policy towards Athens and her ruling families with such high-handedness that even Sparta’s allies baulked. In 494 he crushed a reviving Argos with such brutality (6,000 Argives were reputedly burnt alive in a wood) that his city feared the revenge of the gods for this act of hubris (overweening pride). Faced with the opposition of his fellow king Demaratus, Cleomenes had him deposed. When Cleomenes finally returned to Sparta he was soon dead, presumably liquidated by the oligarchy. From now on the Spartans would be reluctant to let a king out of sight.

Sparta’s power was limited in another way. There was no way she could hold down the entire Peloponnese. Her policy of alliances with the northern cities showed she recognized this. However, if she was to expand across the Isthmus she had to cross their territories. At first, and typically, Cleomenes acted as if the allies would simply do what he wanted. When, however, in 506, Cleomenes’ plans for another attack on Athens were resisted, notably by Corinth, the Spartans were forced to compromise. They had to accept becoming part of a federation, known to historians as the Peloponnesian League. The League was clearly under the dominance of Sparta, who had the largest and best-trained army, but its structure included a council of all member states, each with one vote. A majority could prevent any military action proposed by Sparta (as happened in 440 when the Spartan assembly voted for war with Athens but was overruled by the League). The League was an early example of inter-state cooperation. It survived (until as late as 366) because no member state could stand up to Sparta, while Sparta was increasingly dependent on the allies’ manpower.