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.
In this paper I wanted to get a good general understanding of cultural anthropology and how it related to Ancient Greece, so I made sure that one of my references was an overview of the subject – Cultural Anthropology, The Human Challenge. This would lay the foundation for the research. I then sought out a book on Greek culture in general – The Greeks and Greek Civilization by Jacob Burckhardt – and one about the great war between Sparta and Athens – The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan. It was through these two books where I learned most of the cultural details about Sparta, as well as some context in comparison to some of the other Greek states.
Like most Greek states of the Archaic and Classical Era, the Spartan city-state was a militaristic one. Sparta, however, took the idea to its extreme. In order to become the best soldiers, Spartan citizens had to dedicate their entire lives to the occupation. In fact to be a soldier – a hoplite – was the full infrastructure of Spartan society. While most Greek city-states looked down on labor, physical work, and even working for profit, they still had to work for a living, produce something. “The Spartans a...
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...ion of his tail. But are we any better than the Spartans? It’s easy to look back on past cultures and see where they went wrong. But can we in the present ever truly see our own failings, or will we be just another failed culture in future history books?
Bibliography
Burckhardt, Jacob, The Greeks and Greek Civilization, St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10010, 1998.
Kagan, Donald, The Peloponnesian War, Penguin Books, 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England, 2004.
Prins, Harald & McBride, Bunny, Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge,
Runciman, W.G., Greek Hoplites, Warrior Culture, and Indirect Bias, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 4 No. 4, Dec. 1998.
Talbert, Richard, The Role of the Helots in the Class Struggle at Sparta, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte , Bd. 38, H. 1,1st Qtr., 1989.
...litary end even the women in Sparta would have been affected by the military ways of life almost as much as the young men. From childhood they were being primed to raise a family, they were taught in the ways of mid wifery, learning the correct manner in teaching the future young men of Sparta and keeping themselves fit to produce fit children.
Demand, Nancy. A History of Ancient Greece, Indiana University. McGraw-Hill, Janson by Ruttle, Shaw & Wetherill, Inc., 1996, pp. 185-196.
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
In ancient Greece, Sparta was known as a prominent city-state and a dominant military power, emerging victorious in numerous armed conflicts. Sparta’s success was believed to be attributed to its political and social system, which mainly focused on military training, and was created by the constitution drawn up by Lycurgus, a lawgiver. However, Sparta progressively declined and in 371 BC, they suffered a calamitous defeat at the Battle of Leuctra, ceasing to be a dominant military power. While various reasons could have led to Sparta’s decline, it was primarily population issues, which appeared to be due to Sparta’s overly strict citizenship requirements, which ultimately led to Sparta’s defeat at the Battle of Leuctra. This essay will examine how Sparta’s demanding citizenship requirements were linked to the strict military requirements, corruption and unequal land distribution, which reduced the number of male Spartans in the population, causing
In order to save Sparta from destruction and corruption, Lykurgos passed reforms to evict humanness out of every single Spartan and to pass down values of obedience to their posterities. Corruption, in his beliefs, led to destruction of the government and it was an inevitable part of the humanness. However, through Lykurgos’ reforms, he successfully made the Spartans corruption-free. “Spartan education... turns out men more obedient, more respectful and more strictly temperate,” ( Xenophon, Lac. , 2.12). His education eliminated human sluggishness as well as their pompous virtues; it also evicted their humanness and greed of appetites towards superfluous luxuries. Requiring the children to wear no sandals and starve, he engraved the ideas of obedience and sacrifice into the children. They were taught since young to sacrifice on the behalf of the state, and their only reason of appearance t...
Sparta had very different values than that of societies today. Located on Peloponnese, a peninsula in southern Greece, it slowly grew enough to be considered a city-state. The people there valued military more than morals. The Spartans owned helots and fought against an army much bigger than theirs and everyone died but stopped the Persians using the phalanx. The strengths in Sparta’s education system outweigh the weaknesses because boys were taught the proper attitude, to care for and use their bodies, and how to be prepared for whatever comes their way.
Kaltsas, Nikos E. Athens-Sparta. New York, NY: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA) in Collaboration with the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, 2006. Print.
In 725, the oligarchy of Sparta needed land to feed a dramatically growing population, so the Spartans went over the Taygetus mountains and took over Messenia, where a fertile plain was enough to support themselves and their newly conquered people. However, like all conquered people, the Messenians fought back in 640 BCE and almost destroyed Sparta itself. Almost defeated, the Spartans invented a new political system as dramatically revolutionary by turning their state into a military state. The Messenians were turned into agricultural slaves called helots, "serfs", where they worked small plots of land on estates owned by Spartans. 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.
Sparta was one of the strongest Greek city-states to ever exist. They fought valiantly in many wars, all because their strong military force could defeat almost anyone. They were the neighbors of Athens, a city-state that prided itself on their arts and strong government. Sparta’s dominance stems from its long history as a militaristic society. The lives of the soldiers were hard because they had to be so disciplined to last in the tough military schools that all men seemed to have attended from a very young age. Their women were held to higher standards than the neighboring city-states because the men could do nothing but be in the military. Women were given a new level of respect that was not seen anywhere else at that time. Spartan soldiers were the ultimate hoplite warriors, devoting their lives to training as heavy infantry (ancientmilitary.com, 2013).
...ing, wresting, and throwing the discus and javelin. Those who failed their training risked societal rejection by their families and friends. Girls trained to survive childbirth and bear the next generation of courageous warriors. Boys trained to be heroic soldiers, indoctrinated to rather die for Sparta than run from death. Although this harsh social system allowed Sparta to have the greatest army in all of Greece, it did however poison the minds of the Spartans. The Spartan paranoia of being conquered led to the advancement of military strength, but also led to the neglect of stability within the Spartan community (Richard). Being an individual in a society that rests on human disposability is impossible, and this very flaw prompted the Founders to stress the importance of individuality, memorialized in the saying “e pluribus unum” or “out of many there is one”.
The Battle of Thermoplyae is a good example of Sparta’s unique military capability, still recognized today nearly 2500 years ago. Although Sparta’s iconic military strength is usually associated with the bravery, skill, and professionalism of its soldiers one must acknowledge the equipment, training and tactics of the Spartan soldier which made him Superior to all other infantry in the Ancient times (with the exception of the Roman Legions).
Sparta...was it really worth all the attention we give it here in America. We write movies about its strong military and tough culture and glorify its way of life ignoring the actual atrocity that was the Spartan society. Sparta was a Greek city-state located on the Peloponnesus peninsula The city-state’s society was based on its brutal educational system. This system was known as the agoge system and it was basically a military training that the young Spartan boys were forced to go through from the young age of seven to the age of twenty-one. (thirteen years of training). Sparta’s agoge system had many weaknesses but it also had many strengths. Which one outweighed the other? To me the answer is obvious. The weaknesses of the Spartan society outweighed the strengths because the Spartans destroyed families, they abused their youth and they murdered their own people.
The people in Sparta were divided into three groups. The highest class were the equals. They were descendants of the families who first founded Sparta. Then, there were half-citizens. Half-citizens had to pay taxes and serve in the army. Most importantly, they were free. The lowest class were the helots. They were the slaves. Since there was no moving between classes and since each class had specific roles everyone knew where they belonged and what they were supposed to do within their class. Sparta’s rigid class system provided the best life for its people because it allowed Sparta to run smoothly and with little
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.
First lets discuss Sparta and how their governmental system worked. The Spartans were divided into three different groups, there were native-born Spartans, there was a group of non-Spartans called the Periokoi, and there was the slaves called the Helots. "The Periokoi were free non-Spartan men that