Download Sparta

Sparta
It’s hard for textbooks to say anything nice about the Spartans. Take up any world
history textbook and read; you’ll find that the Spartans were “an armed camp,”
“economically stagnant,” “Politically stagnant,” and other negative assessments.
The reality, of course, lives somewhere beyond these value judgments. Greek history
does, after all, come down to us through the eyes of the other major city-state in
Greece, Athens, a better enemy and arrival of Sparta. The two represent
diametrically (completely) oppose concepts of the Greek polis and its relations with
other city-states; they also represent diametrically opposed concepts of the
individual’s relationship to the state. Despite all the rhetoric in Athens and in the
European historical tradition, we should keep in mind that the Spartans believe they
lived in the best of all Greek worlds, and many of their Greek neighbors agreed with
them. The rivalry, then, between Sparta and Athens, which would erupt into a
disastrous war for Athens, was also an ideological and cultural rivalry.
The single, overwhelming fact of Spartan history is the Messenean War. In the
eighth century BC, Sparta, like all her neighbors, was a monarchy with a limited
oligarchy. In 725, however, meeting land to feed a dramatically growing population,
the Spartans marched over the Targets Mountains and annexed all the territory of
their neighbor, Messenia. The Messeneans occupied a fertile plane in the Spartans
found themselves with more than enough land to support themselves and their
newly conquered people. However, like all concord people, the Messenian’s did not
appreciate the loss of their independence. With the help of the city-state of Argo’s,
the Messenian’s revolted in 640 BC. This was no ordinary revolt, for not only did the
Messenian’s almost win, they almost destroyed Sparta itself.
Here’s how the situation stood for Sparta at the end of the Messenian revolt. Almost
defeated, controlling the territory of a subjected to population that outnumbered
their own population 10 to 1, it was only a matter of time before this subjected
population would overrun their conquerors. So the Spartans invented a new
political system as dramatically revolutionary as Athenian democracy in the north:
they turned their state into what amounts to a military state.
The Messenians were turned into agricultural slaves called Helots. We described
their lives as he life of a “serf,” for they worked small plots of land on the estates
owned by Spartans; part of their produce went to the master of the estate, and the
remainder went to the helot farmer and his family. There’s no question that the life
of the helots was a miserable life. Labor was long and hard and the helots always
lived right on the border of subsistence.
But Spartan society itself changed. The military and the city-state became the center
of Spartan existence. The state determine whether children, both male and female,
we’re strong when they were born; we clean infants were left in the hills to die of
exposure. Exposing week or sickly children was a common practice in the Greek
world, but Sparta institutionalized it as a state necessity rather than a domestic
choice. At the age of seven, every male Spartan was sent to military and athletic
school. The schools talk toughness, discipline, endurance of pain (often severe
pain), and survival skills. At 20, after 13 years of training, the Spartan male became
a soldier. The Spartan soldiers spent his life with his fellow soldiers; he lived in
barracks and ate all his meals with his fellow soldiers. He also married, but he didn’t
live with his wife; one Athenian once joked that Spartans had children before they
even saw the face of their wives.
Government
Spartan government was an odd affair, but its overwhelming characteristic was stability.
The Spartans, in fact, had the most stable government in the history of ancient Greece
(some historians call this stability, "political stagnation"). At the top of government was
the monarchy; the monarchy, however, was a dual monarchy- they had to kings. Below
the monarchy was a council that was composed of the two kings plus 28 nobles, all of
whom were over 60, that is, retired from the military. The council debated and set
legislative and foreign policy, and was the supreme criminal court. Below the council (or
above it), was an assembly of all the Spartan males (a democracy, in other words) that
selected the council and approved or vetoed council proposals. Above the mall, however,
was a small group of five men known as the Ephors. For all practical purposes, Spartan
government was run by the Ephors, for these five men lead the counsel, ran the military,
ran the educational system, ran the infant selection system, and head veto power over
everything coming out of the council for the assembly. They even had power to depose
(remove) the king; however, they needed powerful divine proof (in the form of omens or
oracles) to exercise this power. So what kind of government was Spartan government? It
was a democratic timocratic monarchial oligarchy. Chew on that a few times.
The anxiety-ridden situation with the helots led the Spartans to fear even their neighbors,
who were often sticking their spoons in that pot to brew up trouble. So in the sixth
century BC, the Spartans began to set their military sites on neighboring states.
However, when they conquered their neighbor, Tegea, they set up a truce with them
rather then annex their land and people. They demanded instead an alliance. Tegea
would follow Sparta in all its foreign relationships, including wars, and wood supply
Sparta with a fixed amount of soldiers and equipment. In exchange, the Tegeans could
remain an independent state. This was a brilliant move on the part of the Spartans. In a
short time, Sparta had formed alliances with a large number of states in the southern part
of Greece (Called the Peloponnesus), and had become the major power in Greece when
the Persians invaded in 490 BC. Their power eclipsed that of even the powerful neighbor
in the north, Athens.