Lecture 2 sparta (1)

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Archaic Classical Hellenistic

Greek History

They were big

They were butch

They were Spartans...…

Sparta – Better to die than to eat the food?

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

1. Reminder of last week’s key message about land crisis in Archaic period

2. Sparta’s unique solution to the land shortage in Greece

3. The problem of finding reliable sources for Sparta4. How Sparta produced super-soldiers to control their

conquests5. Greek opinions on what made a good political

constitution (in Greek ‘constitution’ = politeia)6. The massive problems within the Spartan system7. Did Sparta destroy itself?

Running Order

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

There was an alternate solution to land hunger (other than go abroad)

Sparta, a small town in southern Greece, first absorbed Laconia, then ca.725-650 conquered neighbouring Messenia, taking control of land and population.

Land Crisis in the Peloponnese

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryLocation of Laconia and Messenia.

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• How do you maintain control of the conquered territory?

• With a large army – but what would that army expect in return?

• Political rights. All Spartan citizens were given a degree of equality, but it was very different from our notions of democracy.

• Their key aim appears to have been to create perfect military state. How well did they fare?

Sparta’s ‘new’ way of doing things

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• Francois Ollier coined the term ‘le mirage spartiate’ to describe the stumbling block to understanding what really went on at Sparta.

• Sparta was a closed society, not keen on outsiders, not keen on writing.

• Most witnesses were outsiders, often writing much later.

• Do they tell us the truth, what the Spartans wanted others to hear, what others wanted to believe about Sparta?

Cf. North Korea today

The BIG problem – the Spartan ‘mirage’

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

Xenophon Constitution of the Spartans (written ca.400 BC). Contemporary, but a super-fan.

Can we trust our two most important sources?

Plutarch Life of Lycurgus – not so biased, but writing 600 years later when Sparta was a kind of Roman theme park.

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• The French Revolution, the Nazis, and the Cold War…• Many leading lights of the French revolution were serious

‘laconophiles’; Hitler praised the Spartan military setup, and Spartan ‘equality’ was compared to Communism by Russian academics

• Put simply, Athens has often been compared to GB or USA – the ‘goodies’, while Sparta has often been equated with the Jacobins, the Nazis, or the Soviet Union – the ‘baddies’

• Which today makes us wonder if modern historians (e.g. Finley) have wanted to believe that Sparta brought about its own downfall for political reasons?

There is a further problem

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

Sparta has a mixed constitution with a little for everyone:1.For lovers of monarchy – not one, but two kings. 2.For lovers of aristocracy, there is the gerousia, a council of 30 of the best men aged over sixty.3.For lovers of democracy, five ‘elected’ ephors. And an assembly of male citizens (that can say yes or no).A system of checks and balances that stays stable for centuries.

Sparta – what do we know?

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistorySide Note: Constitutions Greek style

Herodotus (3.80-2) describes three constitution types: monarchy, rule by few, and rule by the majority

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• Start early – women exercise exercise to produce healthy babies.

• Eugenics - Killing weak or disabled children

• From age 7 boys educated via agōgē away from home.

• Competitive and very disciplined. Harsh lifestyle and worse…

• “From the very beginning of boyhood they are trained and disciplined for land warfare” (Xenophon, Hellenica 7.1.8)

But how to make the perfect soldier?

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryEducation Spartan Style

• Clothing – strictly limited• Diet – strictly limited; theft encouraged• Behaviour monitored – constantly observed• Flogging – meted out regularly• Dancing and choral singing.• Cheese stealing and whipping at shrine of

Artemis Orthia.• The crypteia – hunting and killing of a helot

(serf).• Bisexuality – adolescents/adult males. Why?• Observation and flogging maintained into early

adulthood

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

It is a beautiful thing when a good man falls and dies fighting for his country.The worst pain is leaving one’s city and fertile fields for the life of a beggar,wandering with mother, old father, little children, and wedded wife…[so]we must fight to the death for our land and children, giving no thought to lengthening life.Fight in a stubborn, close array my boys! Never waver or retreat!Feel your anger swell. There is no place in combat for love of life.Older soldiers, whose knees are not so light, need you to stand to protect them.An aging warrior cut down in the vanguard of battle disgraces the young.His head is white, his beard is grey, and how he is spilling his powerful spirit in dust,naked, clutching his bloody groin: a sight for shame and anger.But youthful warriors always look good, until the blossom withers.Men gape at them in life and women sigh, and dying in combat they are handsome still.Now is the time for a man to stand, planting his feet and biting his lip.

Tyrtaeus (frag. 10) on bravery

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• If you survive agōgē , you become one of the so-called ‘equals’ (homoioi).

• You are now allowed to wear hair long and red cloak. Both have point – what?

• Long hair = not engaged in manual labour i.e. you are a professional soldier (unique in Greece). A red cloak hides bloodstains.

• The only money is iron spits – why?• No coins means no obvious displays of

wealth. If it is too big to carry about, then you can’t ‘flash your cash’!

• You all look the same and act the same!

The Spartan ‘equals’ or ‘peers’

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=ZbpZzhXKG1Yz6M&tbnid=dm4xncMng20GuM:&ved=0CAgQjRwwAA&url=http://www.moroccotravel101.com/essaouira-pure-gold-purple/&ei=hdASUZ2HA-mQ0AXjzYGQDQ&psig=AFQjCNGOpkjKl0k86Dt0J63Ua5_qBT4VbA&ust=1360273925096139

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryThe Common Messes – the syssitia

• Spartan social life was military. • At eighteen each new citizen was elected into a common

‘mess’ (syssition). Citizens brought their own contributions.• The diet was appropriately ‘Spartan’. • The main course was barley groats mixed in olive oil• There was also a meat portion on the side• Their favourite side dish was the notorious Spartan ‘black

broth’ – pork boiled in vinegar, salt, and its own blood!• According to Plutarch, Moralia 128c: “the Spartans give

their cook vinegar and salt only, bidding him to seek what he needs from the animal itself”.

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryBetter to die than to eat the food?

Some say that a Sybarite who had sojourned in Sparta and had been entertained among them at their public mess remarked: ‘It is no wonder that Spartans are the bravest men in the world; for anyone in his right mind would prefer to die ten thousand times rather than share in such poor living’. (Athenaeus, The Sophists at Dinner 138d).

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

“Regarding their equipment for battle, Lycurgus devised that they should have a crimson cloak and a bronze shield, thinking that the former has the least in common with women’s dress, and is most warlike; the latter can be polished quickly and tarnishes very slowly. He also allowed those who had reached adulthood to wear their hair long, considering that they would thus appear taller, more noble, and more frightening” (Xenophon, Constitution of the Spartans 11).

Xenophon on the Spartan ‘equals’

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryLong-haired Spartans being Spartan

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

Acting upon his word Lycurgus distributed the rest of Laconia to the perioeci in 30,000 lots, and divided the part subject to Sparta into 9,000. This was the number of lots for Spartiates. However, some say that Lycurgus allocated 6,000 such lots and that Polydorus added 3,000 later. Others say that half the 9,000 were allocated by the latter, and half by Lycurgus. Each person’s lot was sufficient to provide rent of 70 medimnoi of barley for a man, and 12 for his wife, along with proportionate quantities of fresh produce. He thought that this amount of food would suffice for their proper fitness and health, and they would need nothing more. There is a story that at some later date when on return from abroad he was passing through the country just after the reaping, and saw heaps of grain side by side and all equal in size, he smiled and remarked to the bystanders that the whole of Laconia had the look of a property which many brothers had recently divided between themselves’ (Plutarch, Lycurgus 8).

Plutarch on Spartan ‘equality’

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• But we need to be careful when it comes to Spartan ‘equality’.

• The idea that all Spartans were equal was an elaborate charade designed to both promote internal harmony (in Greek homonoia), and to convince outsiders that Sparta was secure and stable.

• It also masked serious inequalities within the citizen body: e.g. some of the syssitia were exclusive clubs with the rich enjoying luxury items denied to others.

• All Spartans were equal, but…

Spartan equality…

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryThe ideal included Spartan women

“Girls were required to run and exercise so that their babies would grow in strong and healthy mothers. To make them brave, Lycurgus ordered that occasionally the girls had to dance and sing naked in front of all the young men. Therefore the girls were ashamed to be fat or weak, and they were happy to display their beauty to such an appreciative audience. In their songs, the girls praised the men who were brave and strong, and they made fun of those who were weak and cowardly, so they sharpened the men’s love of glory and fear of shame. Thus the women of Sparta got a taste of higher feelings, being in this way admitted to the field of action.” (Plutarch, Lycurgus 14)

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• The ideal was equality within a military life of men living and dying for honour.

• Seen in attitude to deserters – loss of citizenship rights and humiliation.

• And famous advice from Spartan mothers: ‘Come back carrying your shield or on it’ (i.e. stay and fight or come back dead).

The Spartan Ideal

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

“Lycurgus clearly arranged that the brave should have prosperity, and cowards misery. For in other cities whenever anyone shows himself to be a coward, he is only called a coward, and the coward goes to the agora in the same way as the brave man, and sits beside him, and exercises at the gymnasium with him, if he wants to; but in Sparta everyone would be ashamed to have a coward associated with him as a mess-mate, or as an opponent in a wrestling bout. Often such a person is left out unassigned when sides are picked for opposing teams in a ball game, and in choruses he is banished to the disgraceful positions, and even in the streets he has to make way, and on the benches give his place even to younger men. He has to maintain the girls of his family at home, and give them reason for their unmarried condition, while he has to suffer a hearth without a wife and pay a fine for that as well…When such dishonour is imposed upon cowards I do not wonder at their preferring death to such an ignominious and shameful life” (Xenophon, Constitution of the Spartans 9).

Cowards at Sparta – ‘tremblers’

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryThose who fail: the ‘tremblers’

• Cowards were forced to shave off half their beards and wear a patchwork cloak.

• They were the last picked for ball games and banished to the back in choruses

• They were also forced to make way in the streets and to give up their seats even to a junior.

• They were not allowed to smile, or to “behave as though he were a man of unsullied fame”.

• Many chose suicide over a life without honour.

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

Question: Who is doing the work?Answer: The helots (serfs). Modern estimates suggests 8 helot males to every Spartan male citizen.Question: Is this a good life?Answer: Tyrtaeus describes helots as, “Like donkeys exhausted under great loads: under painful necessity to bring their masters full half the fruit their ploughed land produced…” (Tyrtaeus, frag. 6)

But there’s a big problem…

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistorySpartan social structure

Spartiates

perioeci

helots

Cartledge (2002: 117) argues Sparta as had a “political pyramid”.

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryHelotry

“They assign to the Helots every shameful task leading to disgrace. For they ordained that each one of them must wear a dogskin cap and wrap himself in skins and receive a stipulated number of beatings every year regardless of wrongdoing, so that they would never forget they were slaves. Moreover, if any exceeded the vigour proper to a slave’s condition, they made death the penalty; and they allotted a punishment to those controlling them if they failed to rebuke those who were growing fat. And in giving the land over to them they set them a portion (of produce) which they were constantly to hand over” (Myron, frag. 2)

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

“…and in other ways they treated the Helots harshly and cruelly. For example, they would compel them to drink a lot of unmixed wine and bring them into the common messes to show the young men what drunkenness was like. They would also order them to sing songs and perform dances that were ignoble and ridiculous but to refrain from those appropriate to free men. However, such cruelties were, I believe, inflicted by the Spartans only relatively late, especially after the great earthquake…” (Plutarch, Lycurgus 28).

Helotry

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

“the Spartiates’ so-called crypteia…it’s character was as follows:

Periodically the overseers of the young men would dispatch into the countryside in different directions the ones who appeared to be particularly intelligent; they were equipped with daggers and basic rations, but nothing else. By day they would disperse to obscure spots in order to hide and rest. At night they made their way to roads and murdered any Helot whom they caught…” (Plutarch, Lycurgus 28)

The so-called crypteia

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• There were big rebellions in 650, 490*, 464-54.

• When do you think Helots most likely to rebel?

• When Spartans on campaign?• Result – the Spartans often cautious about

fighting away from home.

What do the helots think?“Most Spartan institutions have always been designed with a view to security against the Helots” (Thucydides 4.80.2)

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

1. The educational system. • What kind of soldier did we say the educational

system produced?• Brave? Determined? Strong?• But he is not very adaptive to new tactics?• At Lechaeum ca. 390 an entire Spartan unit was

wiped out by a special force of light-armed troops. • Battles at Leuctra (371) and Mantinea (362) the

Spartans were overwhelmed by heavily massed Theban hoplites (ranks of 50+ vs. ranks of 8)

There are more problems

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

2. The manpower problem.•Spartan men slowly dying out. ca. 8,000 citizens in 480, ca. 1,500 in 371.

There is another problem

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• Bisexuality? Are they just not having enough sex? • Also impact of inequality: Spartans with just one son

best able to maintain their wealth and social position (0 sons ends family, 2 cuts the farm in two so it might not maintain its contributions and ceases to be citizen forever). Women could inherit land too – Aristotle claimed this was the main reason why Sparta failed!

• What is the correct number of sons to have? 1? 2? 3?.• You cannot predict child mortality?• So did Sparta destroy itself with its own brutal

system?

Manpower Problems – Why?

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek History

• Well, it would be nice to believe, and maybe it is right.• But, as we will see they led the Greeks in beating back

the Persian empire and were top dog in Greece from 650-370.

So did Sparta’s system destroy itself?

If that is failure…

800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0


Greek HistoryNext Week – Athens