Would-be Similars learned to depend on themselves and their unit-mates—and the devil take everyone else.
Institutionalized thievery is the context of the story of the Spartan boy who had stolen a fox and hid the live animal under his cloak. Upon being apprehended, the youth bluntly denied the theft and never flinched as the desperate canine chewed through his innards. While surely apocryphal, the often-told tale gives some notion of the standard of toughness the Spartans had established as an ideal for themselves, and the steadfast, dying Spartan thief stands as a fitting symbol for a society that would eventually find itself dead on its feet, eaten away from the inside by its own unyielding code.
Upon reaching age twenty, the young Spartan sought induction into one of the collectivized mess units around which the lives of the Similars were organized. A youth who failed to be inducted into one of the units never became a true Similar; he was forced to join an inferior caste, his life in ruins before it had properly begun.
The mess units, which contained about fifteen men each, were the basis of the organization of army and society alike: a Spartan fought beside, lived with until marriage , and ate with his mess-mates. He owed them absolute fealty, and he owed them dinner on a regular rotation. In principle, each Spartan inherited a state-assigned plot of land, and a set of Helot-serfs to farm it. That land was notionally adequate for his sustenance, and adequate to provide his regular contribution to the mess unit.
Disobeying an order or demonstrating any hint of fear during battle were further grounds for expulsion. There was, in brief, a good deal of social mobility in Sparta, but mostly downward. A Similar could be demoted for a variety of failings; neither he nor his descendants could expect to ascend back into the privileged elite. The key privilege enjoyed by a Similar was the opportunity to participate full-time in public affairs: military training, battle, oversight of the youth, and state government.
Money-making was meant to be strictly irrelevant to his life. Many did make money, but they had to be sneaky about it. All adult Similars were members of the Citizen Assembly of Spartans the Apella , and as such they had the right to acclaim all matters of state policy especially decisions on whether or not to go to war. Normally, however, their approval was indicated only by shouting in favor of the decisions reached by an inner elite of Spartan magistrates.
In addition to two hereditary kings, who served as religious officials and field marshals, Sparta was run by five state officers called Ephors Overseers , elected annually by their Similar equals. The Ephors were in turn advised by a body of twenty-eight Elders, who were chosen from the ranks of the senior Spartans. There was much room for confusion in this system; the lines of authority between the two kings and the Ephors were unclear, and much depended in practice on the personality of individuals.
Clashes between competitive, headstrong kings and intransigent Ephors led to deadlocks in Spartan policy. Those deadlocks were sometimes broken by personal initiatives, alternately bold or foolish.
The internal social rigidity of Sparta was weirdly complemented by highly erratic foreign policy. The Spartan Similar did not enjoy much physical comfort—at least in public. Each Spartan was expected to dress in rough clothes exactly like his fellows, to maintain his family in a simple house no different from that of other Spartans, to dine on the rough fare especially a black bean soup famous among the Greeks for its unpalatability provided in the mess units. He would spend most of his life in public, under the jealous and watchful eyes of his fellow Similars.
He would not spend much time at home. His male children, of course, were growing up in the herds, under the same harsh regime that he had endured. He spent little time in the company of his wife; indeed he might lend her to another Similar for breeding purposes. Spartan women were expected to accept this sort of treatment without demur, and to devote themselves to inculcating the doctrine of obedience, bravery, and duty in their children.
For a long time, from the mid-seventh century through the early fourth, this austere system worked to produce the best soldiers in the Greek world. The Spartan Similar spent his entire life preparing for the rigors of battle, and he became extraordinarily good at it. This does not mean that he was a berserker, capable of defeating multiple opponents in single combat. The fifth-century historian Herodotus imagined a conversation on the topic of military valor between Demaratus, an exiled Spartan king living in Persia, and Xerxes, the king of the Persian empire: In B.
Xerxes was preparing to invade Greece with a huge army, and he was interested in learning about what sort of men he might encounter. Hearing that the Spartans were the best warriors in Greece, he summoned Demaratus. Since Xerxes expected to fight at odds close to ten to one, he supposed that he would not encounter any great difficulties. But Demaratus quickly disabused him: it was not outstanding capacity for fighting as individuals that distinguished the Spartans; rather it was the intense discipline and training that allowed them to fight effectively in the close order of the hoplite phalanx.
Because the Spartans did not break ranks but advanced steadily, shoulder to shoulder, with shields locked, they took full advantage of the phalanx formation: an unbroken wall of shields bristling with thrusting spears. The Spartan phalanx, some 9, men strong at the time Demaratus addressed Xerxes, was massive by Greek standards; on its own ground it was as close to an unstoppable force as the ancient world had ever encountered.
Geopolitical Futures. Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Privacy Policy. Create an account. Password recovery. Recent Articles. Website Security Contact. My account. During that time, Sparta sent three delegations to Athens to avoid war, offering proposals that could be viewed as a betrayal of Corinth. He returned to Athens in B. Pericles, following a political uprising that led to his censure, succumbed to the plague in B.
Despite this major setback for the Athenians, the Spartans saw only mixed success in their war efforts, and some major losses in western Greece and at sea.
Meant to last 50 years, it barely survived eight, undermined by conflict and rebellion brought on by various allies. War reignited decisively around B. Sparta sided with Syracuse and defeated the Athenians in a major sea battle. Athens did not crumble as expected, winning a string of naval victories against Sparta, which sought monetary and weapons support from the Persian Empire. Under the Spartan general Lysander, the war raged for another decade.
By in B. Lysander decimated the Athenian fleet in battle and then held Athens under siege, forcing it to surrender to Sparta in B. The Peloponnesian War marked the end of the Golden Age of Greece, a change in styles of warfare, and the fall of Athens, once the strongest city-state in Greece. The balance in power in Greece was shifted when Athens was absorbed into the Spartan Empire. It continued to exist under a series of tyrants and then a democracy.
Athens lost its dominance in the region to Sparta until both were conquered less than a century later and made part of the kingdom of Macedon. Martin, published by Yale University Press, Not registered? Sign up. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search.
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