Sparta
In ancient Greece, the great rival of Athens was Sparta. The city-state and its
surrounding territory were located on the Peloponnesus, a peninsula
southwest of Athens. Sparta (also called Lacedaemon) was the
capital of the district of Laconia.
From the vigorous iron-hearted warriors of this city-state has come
the adjective Spartan. Sparta prided itself not on art, learning,
or splendid buildings, but on its valiant men who served their city
in the place of walls of bricks. Athens, with its beautiful temples
and statues, its poetry and philosophy, dominated the intellectual
life of the world. In the end, however, Sparta wrested temporary
political supremacy from its cultured opponent.
The Spartan government was founded on the principle that the life
of every individual, from the moment of birth, belonged absolutely
to the state. The elders of the city-state inspected the newborn
infants and ordered the weak and unhealthy ones to be carried to a
nearby chasm and left to die. By this practice Sparta hoped to
ensure that only those who were physically fit would survive.
The children who were allowed to live were brought up under a
severe discipline. At the age of 7, boys were removed from their
parents' control and organized into small bands. The strongest and
most courageous youths were made captains. The boys slept in
dormitories on hard beds of rushes. They ate black broth and other
coarse food. They wore the simplest and scantiest clothing. Unlike
the boys of Athens, they spent little time learning music and
literature. Instead they were drilled each day in gymnastics and
military exercises. They were taught that retreat or surrender in
battle was disgraceful. They learned to endure pain and hardship
without complaint and to obey orders absolutely and without
question.
They were allowed to feel the pinch of hunger and were encouraged
to supplement their fare by pilfering food for themselves. This was
not done to cultivate dishonesty but to develop shrewdness and
enterprise. If they were caught, they were whipped for their
awkwardness. It is said that a Spartan boy, who had stolen a young
fox for his dinner, allowed the animal he had hidden under his
cloak to gnaw out his vitals rather than betray his theft by crying
out. Girls were educated in classes under a similar system, but
with less rigor.
Discipline grew even more rigorous when the boys reached manhood.
All male Spartan citizens between the ages of 20 and 60 served in
the army and, though allowed to marry, they had to belong to a
men's dining club and eat and sleep in the public barracks. They
were forbidden to possess gold and silver, and their money
consisted only of iron bars. War songs were their only music, and
their literary education was slight. No luxury was allowed, even in
the use of words. They spoke shortly and to the point in the manner
that has come to be called laconic, from Laconia, the district of
which Sparta was a part.
There were three classes of inhabitants in Laconia. Spartan
citizens, who lived in the city itself and who alone had a voice in
the government, devoted their entire time to military training. The
peroikoi, or dwellers-round, who lived in the surrounding villages,
were free but had no political rights. They were tradesmen and
mechanics occupations that were forbidden to the Spartans.
The Helots were serfs, little better than slaves, bound to the
farms and forced to cultivate the soil for the citizens who owned
the land. These Helots, whose marriages and children were not so
strictly controlled by the state, were the most numerous class and
bitterly hated their masters. Only the amazing organization and
fighting powers of the Spartan state kept them under control.
Another strange feature of Sparta was its government, which was
headed by two kings who ruled jointly. They served as high priests
and as leaders in war. Each king acted as a check on the other.
There was a sort of cabinet composed of five ephors, or overseers,
who exercised a general guardianship over law and custom and in
later times came to have greater power. The legislative power was
vested in the assembly of Spartan citizens and in a senate, or
council, of 30 elders consisting of the two kings and 28 other men
chosen from the citizens who had passed the age of 60.
Sparta at War
The Spartan armies, though usually quite small, were
well-disciplined and all but irresistible in combat. Each citizen
soldier was inspired by the resolve to win or die. The Spartan
mother, when she gave her son his shield, would say: Bring back
this shield yourself or be brought back upon it, referring to the
manner in which the dead were carried on their shields from the
battlefield. Among Sparta's most heroic achievements was the stand
taken by its fighting men at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC,
during the Persian Wars.
The Spartan constitution is said to have been founded by Lycurgus
in the 9th century BC. Under the rigid discipline of its laws,
Sparta extended its conquests over the neighboring states until it
gained control of most of the Peloponnesus.
Sparta's prowess naturally brought rivalry with Athens, the leader
of the northern states and for a time of all Greece. This rivalry
culminated in the Peloponnesian
War (431-404 BC), which resulted in Athens' ruin and Sparta's
supremacy. But the tyranny of the Spartans aroused hatred and
rebellion among those who had been conquered, and the jealous
limitations on citizenship gradually reduced the number of
specially trained warriors until only a few hundred remained. After
about 30 years of Spartan domination, the Thebans under Epaminondas
defeated Sparta in 371 BC and ended its power.
The long war with Athens had weakened many of the city-states.
Their weakness and disunity left them prey to a greater power that
was emerging in the north Macedonia and its King Philip II. He came
to the throne in 359 BC, and within a year he was already waging a
war of expansion. By 339 he had achieved control of Greece,
including Sparta. In the 2nd century BC Sparta was absorbed by
Rome's legions.
The ancient city of Sparta was destroyed by Visigoths in AD 396.
The modern town, called New Sparta locally, was built in 1834 after
the War of Greek Independence. It occupies part of the ancient site
near the Eurotas River, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the
Gulf of Messenia. Population (1981 census), metropolitan area,
14,388.