As Athenian philosophers pondered virtue and justice after the end of great conflict between Athens and Sparta, the Greek world was still finding reasons to make war-although that warfare was changing. As Athens, Sparta, and Thebes spent the next 60 years vying for the position of top polis, often switching alliances, Athens and Sparta had to make do with fewer farmer-citizens filling the hoplite ranks and more mercenary soldiers and armed slaves. Athens had to increase taxes to finance the ongoing wars, and Athenian farmers were finding it harder to sell their produce as other trading partners, such as Syracuse, had their own economies disrupted by war and invasions. Hence more people left their farms to join the armies as fulltime professional soldiers. In fact, Greek soldiers were much in demand because they had been proven against the Persian Empire as among the best in the world.
In 401 B. C.E., thousands of men joined the army of Cyrus the Younger (c. 424-401 B. C.E.), a Persian satrap (provincial governor) who was trying to wrest control of the Persian Empire from his half-brother, Ar-taxerxes (r. 404-c. 358 B. C.E.). One of the Greek mercenaries, Xenophon (c. 431-c. 352 B. C.E.), recounted in his book Anabasis how Greek mercenaries marched 1,500 miles to Babylon, were defeated by Artaxerxes, and marched another 2,000 miles back home (as recounted in Thomas Martin’s Ancient Greece). Although the huge venture was a failure, it featured some new developments in Greek warfare that proved successful. For example, hoplites began using lighter armor and the army began making more use of men in the previously low-esteemed light-armed troops (such as archers), who protected the hoplite phalanxes at their flanks, or sides. The expedition also demonstrated that troops could travel with less baggage on long expeditions and scavenge provisions along the way. These lessons would be put to use when Alexander the Great crossed the same
Territory later in the century-with far more success.
Spartan Simplicity
Today, a spartan lifestyle means simplicity almost to the point of deprivation. The term, of course, comes from the ancient Greek people whose citizens lived in modest homes with little difference between those who were wealthy and those who were not. In fact, there was more equality between the classes in Sparta than in a large city-state like Athens because, with the enslavement of the Messenians, no Spartan citizen had to work.
Luxury and indulgence were rejected because they encouraged weakness. The Spartans also regarded cultural pursuits such as literature, art and music, as unnecessary. Xenophon wrote that the Spartans thought of food and drink as something of which "there should be neither too much or too little" (as quoted in The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece). The Columbia History of the World quotes an unnamed visitor to Sparta as saying, upon sampling the local food, "Now I know why the Spartans do not fear death."
In 395 B. C.E., Sparta began the Corinthian War against Corinth and its allies, Athens, Thebes, and Argos. In 394 B. C.E. it won the largest hoplite battle since Plataea in 480 B. C.E.; it was to be Sparta’s last peak of power in Greece. Since Sparta’s army now dominated the Greek mainland, the city-state set its sights on Greek Asia Minor, which the Persian Empire also wanted to control. Unable to take on the Persians, Sparta withdrew in 386 B. C.E., leaving rule over the Greek city-states there to the Persian Empire. Although Sparta remained the dominant force on mainland Greece, wealthy Persia checked Spartan power by financing a new fleet of ships for Athens. When a new Athenian naval league was formed, other city-states in the league, re-
Calling Athens’s aggressive leadership of Delian League, formed coalitions designed to keep Athenian power in check. This scenario was repeated many times over the first half of the fourth century B. C.E.: Sparta or Athens would gain an upper hand until the other city-states, who may have been enemies in recent years, joined together to defeat whoever was strongest.
But Sparta, despite its military might, could never assert its leadership over fellow Greeks the way Athens had in the previous century. The city-state was unwelcoming to foreigners, and its militaristic society did not have much to offer its neighbors in the way of civics or culture. And the Spartan population had been shrinking for decades. Long years of mandatory military service meant men spent little time at home with their wives, and fewer Spartan citizens were produced with each passing decade. Sparta’s army was filled with increasing numbers of non-citizens, who eventually came to greatly outnumber the Spartans themselves.
World History
