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Political and military of Athens and Sparta
Social structure in sparta
The process of spartan education
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Did Sparta Achieve Her Goal?
Sparta is the most formidable city known in history. Famous for her impressive military power, she proved that strength didn’t lie in numbers, it lay in Spartan discipline. Sparta started out as a small city fighting only to survive against enemy invaders. Her goal was to avoid defeat from other city-states and she very nearly succeeded in achieving it. Using self-denial, strong discipline and harsh training, Sparta focused almost all her attention on achieving her goal. Known as the ‘tamer of men’, her strength made all but Spartan men shrink in fear. However, Sparta did not wage war any more lightly then any other army, she simply waged it better. Despite the cold, military driven surface, Sparta often engaged in merriment. Festivals were celebrated with vigor, men were good to their families and their women were renowned for their beauty. Nevertheless, they always refused to become distracted from their purpose. Civil wars and ancient rivalries made it painfully clear that Sparta had no intention of allowing Athens or any other rival take over. However, she was still quite willing to join arms with the same rivals to fight off foreign invaders. When Greece was threatened by Persia, Sparta halted her competition with Athens and relentlessly fought back the enemy forces. After her triumph over the Persians, Sparta’s temporary peace with Athens was short-lived. The Greeks soon returned to their petty affairs. For 75 years Sparta and Athens fought for supremacy. Eventually, Sparta won, but in doing so she finally allowed all of Greece to witness her tragic flaw. Militarily, Sparta was more than impressive. However, in many of the city-states she now had in her power, she set up harsh discipline and dictatorships. This proved that Sparta’s weakness lay in organizing peace among her new found successes. When the disaster of Sparta’s catastrophic defeat from little Thebes reached her people, they continued to celebrate their Youth Festival refusing to show any emotion-this was still Sparta. It would be long before Sparta would fade away, but nevertheless she quietly withered away; ironically still displaying the quiet, stubborn Spartan discipline. Her goal of surviving against all other forces was so close to being attained but she made a small but dire mistake. Foolishly underestimating the power of Thebes, Sparta failed to see that Thebes was incredibly similar to her younger self. Sparta began as a small city merely waging war in order to survive; Thebes had the same motivation for war, except that their key to survival was to knock out Sparta.
Imagine two countries, so different from each other, that conflicts were inevitable. Athens and Sparta were not countries, however, they were city-states of Greece with many contrasting values. Athens was the city of the arts, reading, and writing. Meanwhile, military was the only thing the on the Spartans’ minds. Athens and Sparta differ in many ways due to their governments, economies, and cultures.
Sparta was known for being strong, but was it really? In case you don’t know, Sparta was a Greek city-state. Sparta only focused on war. Spartans were only taught the basics of other topics. Spartans were trained for 13 years just to fight. Reading and writing were only taught in Sparta for practical reasons. The strengths didn’t outweigh the weaknesses. There were more weaknesses to Sparta than there were strengths. The strengths of Sparta didn’t outweigh the weaknesses for three reasons. The first reason is that the babies were killed just if they looked weak. The second reason is that the Spartans barely new anything about other topics (math, reading, writing, etc). The third and final reason is that the helots outnumbered the Spartans 50 to 1.
Dating back to 449 B.C., Sparta and Athens always had an alliance, but as time grew that balance slowly began to fall as one felt threatened by another. Before any sight of unsteadiness the Spartans and Athenians had a bound partnership. Beginning after their domination of the Persian war, the two states slowly became aware of one another’s growing power. More time went by, and the Spartans began to grow conscious of the other states, feeling wary and paranoid around them (Fox, 170). No state was particularly to blame for the strain on their peace treaty, nor for the war, it came as the two states developed. Eventually the two states had clashed enough and declared war. Although the Spartans gave the Athenians a chance to back down and temporarily stall war, the two states would never be equal, their allies resented one another far too much. The growing urge for power was bound to take over sooner or later. Finally, after 7 years of uneasy tension, Sparta could wait no longer and declared war against Athens (Fox, 167). Although the Athenians and Spartans lived together in peace for so long, they existed in a fragile balance that was bound to eventually lead to war.
The war between Athens and Sparta was a lot like an ancient Greek tragedy. Athens thought they could win the war and sent a huge army, of almost all of their soldiers, to destroy Syracuse, but were defeated. Athens was hubris in the war, so they
Spartan culture is a great example of how a society’s infrastructure will directly affect both, its social structure and superstructure. It also serves as a warning that any society that becomes too rigid in its structure and too static in its values will not last long when confronted with more agile and adaptable cultures. This paper will explore why Sparta became the Hellenic army par excellence, how this worked to create a very specific social structure founded on martial values, and, finally, how that social structure would ultimately be the undoing of the culture.
Sparta was a key city state which was located on the Peloponnesian Peninsula in southern Greek, which today is referred to as Laconia. Sparta is historically known for their strong military training, warfare tactics, and numerous victories. This city state included full citizens known as the Spartans, the helots, and the Perioeci. The men of Sparta had a main obligation to become strong warriors, fight with their brothers, and protect against any invasions or attacks. The helots where owned by city state of Sparta. They came from Messenia and were forced into slavery after being invaded by the Spartans in c.735. The helot’s responsibilities included farming, being of help if needed during battles, used as nurses, and for any other task that need to be accomplished. Unlike many traditional slaves, the Messenia’s were given certain leeway. They had
During the Persian War, Sparta and Athens worked together to defeat the Persians. The discipline and strength of Spartan Army helped saved Greece from invasion. Afterwards Sparta and Athens alliances were formed. Athenians had superior naval force and enforced the democratic rule in states allied to Athens. Neighboring allied states depended on the trade provided by Athens navy. In the same time Athens had established themselves as the head of the empire. (Lecture 7 notes). Sparta had superior land army and they destroyed Athens crops in order to have a hold on Athens and force them to surrender. The war lasted 10 years with neither side winning the war. At the end they agreed to a truce. A few years later, Athens tried to conquer Sicily, but the Sicilians defeated Athens. Athens lost much of its army and navy. The Spartans took advantage of this weakness and attacked Athens and cut of their trade routes and food supplies. Spartans won and Sparta became the most powerful city in
The Spartans did not heed Archidamus’ warning that “unless we can either beat them at sea, or deprive them of the revenues which feed their navy, we shall meet with little but disaster.”8 From the beginning, Sparta should have developed an alternative course of action, a branch plan in modern American military terms, to execute if the invasion of Attica did not quickly end the war. There was little time for Sparta to build or develop a naval force to match Athenian naval power, but an alternative plan to erode away the Athenian empire, similar to the one employed by Brasidas in 424 BC, was possible much earlier in the war and could have eroded Athenian financial support from their empire. For as Thucydides tells us, “the strength of Athens being derived from the money brought in by their [allies] payments.”9 Conditions were present for Sparta to reduce the Athenian empire as many Greeks wanted or feared losing their independence from the Athenian empire.10 While not excusing Sparta’s initial failure as described above, it is understandable, based on the conservative Spartan culture, why they did not develop an alternative course of action for defeating
Sparta was a city-state based on strict military ruling, at the age of seven a young Spartan would start out training and be trained into killing machines. When a Spartan baby is born, high elite Spartan soldiers would observe the baby to see if it was healthy and strong, if not the baby was ill and weak so it would be taken up a mountain and left there to die. This is just one example that shows how Sparta only wants a strong army and doesn't care about anything else. Strict rules of the government made it so that every Sp...
Sparta was a strict military city-state. The people were Dorians who conquered Laconia. This region lies in the Peloponnesus, which lied in southern Greece. The invaders turned the conquered people into state owned slaves, called helots. Since the helots greatly outnumbered their rulers, Spartans established a strict and brutal system of control. The Spartan government had two kings and a council of elders who advised the monarchs. An assembly made up of all citizens approved all major decisions. From child-hood, a Spartan prepared to be part of the military. All newborn were examined and the healthy lived and the sickly were left to die. Spartans wanted future soldiers or mothers of soldiers to be healthy. At the age of seven, boys trained for a lifetime in the Spartan military. They moved to the barracks and endured brutal and extensive training.
When examining the causes for the Peloponnesian War, which was between 431-404 B.C., there are a number of causes that factored into the cause of this war. However, one of the most important causes to this war was largely due to the fact that the Spartans feared the growing power and success of Athens. The Spartans were “particularly alarmed at the growing power of Athens” (Cartwright, “Peloponnesian War”). During the Persian war in 479 BC, Athens grew fiercely strong with power with help of its many allies and continued with their no mercy attacks on Persian territories. When the Persians left Greece, Athens further enraged Sparta when they built large and tall walls around its empire in the event of an attack, which was mostly thought to be from Sparta if it happened.
It's hard for textbooks to say anything nice about the Spartans. one may find that the Spartans described as "an armed camp," "brutal," "culturally stagnant," "economically stagnant," "politically stagnant," and other fun things. The reality, of course, lies somewhere behind the value judgements.
“No man ever proves himself a good man in war unless he can endure to face the blood and the slaughter, go against the enemy and fight with his hands.” The preceding was quoted from “The Spartan creed” by the poet Tyrtaeus. There are two authors in this primary resource reading which include Tyrtaeus as well as Xenophon, whom authored “The laws and customs of the Spartans”. These two works give great detail to the Spartan society. As history has presented it, Sparta was a smaller polis and yet was one of the most, if not most, influential societies in history. What we know of this culture comes to us from excavation of its heritage as well as literary works such as these. But are these “eyes” into history factual and creditable enough to base our own interpretations of such a masterful race? These writings are great resources for Spartan’s war enhanced values and societal customs, but lack in evidence of governmental affairs and religion. This lacking may have been due to both writer’s motives for their work.
From this evaluation and historical representations given by philosophers and historians during approximately the same era that is represented within 300. It is argued that the popular culture incarnations of Sparta as the ‘Noble, selfless fighters with a warrior mentality’ and the Persians as the ‘Evil, tyrannical, overindulgent, oppressors’ were not entirely historically accurate.
Because of the tranquil times, the civilization’s society had more time to focus on writing, math, astronomy, and artistic fields, as well as trade and metallurgy. Out of all the city-states of Greece, two excelled over all the rest, Sparta and Athens. Even though they were the most advanced and strong civilizations, they were bitter enemies. While Athens focused mainly on the people’s democracy and citizen rights, Sparta were ferocious and enslaved its original inhabitants, making them unable to leave and kept under a close eye to prevent insurgence (History of Greece:The Golden Age of Greece). Additionally, Sparta had strict and trained soldiers that underwent intense physical exercising and instruction.