Spartan Reflections

"For starters, I couldn’t really talk about five books about Sparta and not mention something by Paul Cartledge, because he is the doyen of the discipline. I could have chosen his Sparta and Lakonia: a Regional History 1300-362 BC , which came out in 1979 and was reprinted in 2002. I could have talked about Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta , which came out in 1987. I could have talked about one of his popular books, The Spartans: an Epic History or Thermopylae: the Battle that Changed the World . I went for this one because it’s one that has been put together based on book chapters and journal articles written over the course of his career, but with some tweaks and additions. It’s written by someone who began their career in the late 70s, and who, by the time this volume was put together, had really had a chance to have his say and then start to respond to some of the reactions his work had produced over the years. Every important topic is covered in this volume. You’ve got women, you’ve got Spartan literacy, government, archaeology, Hoplites, warfare, education, pederasty—a notorious topic. They’re all in manageable portions. So, if someone wants a book that will give them a detailed expert discussion of different aspects of Spartan society, this is it. Yes, definitely. And I think because the chapters have their origins right back in the 1970s, you can see how much things have changed over time. He’s been able to reflect on changes in attitudes that we, as academics, have had towards Sparta over the years. There’s been a real sea change in Spartan studies since the late 1980s, and you can see his response to that in different ways. Yes, it was. One of the things that always fascinates me in the early modern period is that Sparta was often put forward by thinkers of the day as a model for democracy. Athens was, for some thinkers, too radical a role model, whereas in Sparta citizenship was linked to owning quite a serious amount of land and being men of substance. Yes, Sparta had kings and a citizens’ assembly, but ultimately there was a ruling aristocracy that kept them both in check. Because of that system of checks and balances, Sparta was a role model for a type of moderate democracy. That was very much the case in the ancient world, as well. For every thinker in Athens who thought democracy was great, there was another one who thought that Athens should be more like Sparta. Over time that debate has continued, although I don’t think many people today would dare to advocate Sparta as a model for modern democracy. Absolutely, yes. Popular culture constantly leaves out the Helots. They are not actually very often referred to as slaves in the primary sources, but they were servile labourers and that was why Sparta could produce the type of men whom Herodotus describes at the Battle of Thermopylae. Spartan citizens were landowning gentlemen who had the leisure time to devote to the types of practices that would enable them to be elite warriors because they had other people doing the work for them. Sparta is not a great role model in that regard, to say the least. The tradition was that the first Helots were the local indigenous population of Lakonia, who were conquered by the Spartans. The Spartans then conquered their neighbours in Messenia and enslaved them too. The Messenians were said to be the Spartans’ Dorian cousins, who had come with them to the Peloponnese with the returning children of Heracles—that was the myth. The Helots are often referred to as serfs. They are unfree labour and there’s no way of getting around that. There have been some suggestions recently that the helots may not have been conquered pre-Spartan populations, but that’s something that’s going to be debated for some time. But the tradition in the primary sources is that the Spartans had enslaved their neighbours and Herodotus actually tells us that they tried to enslave their nearest neighbours, the Tegeans, about 100 years before the Persian Wars and they failed to do so. The fact that they were thought likely to have tried it again suggests that no one in ancient Greece thought that it was implausible that they’d done this already with the Lakonian and Messenian Helots. Sparta doesn’t change much in the Classical period. The rules are that to be a citizen you have to have a certain amount of land and you need the Helots to work that for you. They were all members of a common mess and they required to bring in a certain amount of food to that mess each year. If they defaulted on that, they would be effectively relegated from citizenship. There’s a status of ‘inferior’ that we suddenly hear about in the early 4th century, and it’s obvious that it’s been a problem at some point in time in the 5th century, as well. “These days, the standard line of thought in Spartan scholarship is that if something is only in one of the later sources, we worry about its reliability” Athens is different in how it works. In Athens citizens can be staggeringly wealthy or dirt poor. In Sparta only wealthy men can be citizens. Sparta seems quite unusual in just how stratified a society it is. There are other societies where there are servile workers, and Athens is no different in that way. But the idea that there’s a citizen class, ruling over this ethnic slave class makes Sparta quite unusual. The only obvious comparatives are Thessaly in central Greece and Heraclia Pontica, a Greek city on the Black Sea. Sparta is not entirely unique but it’s very different from the norm. Absolutely. The highest figure we’re ever given for Spartan citizens is 9,000 or 10,000. The latest suggestion from modern experts has been that, even as far back as the Persian Wars, there may have been only 6,000 or 7,000 Spartan citizens. As for the Helot population, we’re never told enough for anyone to be really confident about it, but the modern estimates range from 75,000 to 150,000, so they massively outnumber their masters. One number that is either really useful or just completely made up is given by Herodotus, who says that at the battle of Plataea the Spartans sent 5,000 citizens and seven Helots to accompany every one of their citizens. If nothing else, that tells you that the Helots were definitely perceived as massively outnumbering their masters. Yes, if there were only 6,500 or 7,000 Spartan citizens, that 5,000 is pretty much all men of military age. The lowest modern estimates of adult male Helots come out at about 45,000. So 35,000 is almost all of them. If these figures are right, then this is significant, to say the least."