THE PEOPLE OF SPARTA

There is a story about a Spartan boy who, in order to conceal a fox which he had stolen, hid it beneath his cloak and allowed the fox to gnaw him rather than let the theft be revealed. He died of the wounds. If he had been discovered, the disgrace would not have been in the stealing, but in allowing it to be detected. The boy's action illustrates the main purpose of the Spartan educational system, which was to produce men capable of showing such bravery as soldiers. Military strength was felt to be essential to Sparta for the very survival.

Sparta was the ruling city of the area of Laconia in the southern Peloponnese. It lay in the valley of the river Eurotas. Of the people in the towns and villages which she controlled, some were free, known as perioikoi or neighbors, although they were inferior in status to the Spartans themselves. Others, because they were felt to be a greater threat, were kept in a state of slavery as publicly owned agricultural laborers. These were called helots. Furthermore, around the end of the eighth century B.C when other Greek states were obtaining the extra land which they needed by sending out colonies , Sparta took over the adjacent area of Messenia and made the Messenians helots as well. Not long afterwards the Messenians revolved , and it is clear the Spartans only just managed to retain their control.

At the battle of Plataia in 479 B.C, five thousand Spartiates as the genuine Spartans were called, fought against the Persians, according to the historian Herodotus.With them were five thousand perioikoi and 35,000 helots. The Spartiates were determined to remain a select group, not inter-marrying with the rest of the population, nor sharing privileges with them. With their subjects vastly outnumbering them, as the figures for Plataia indicate,it can be seen why Sparta felt it essential to have enough military strength to ensure internal security. Every year the Spartans made a formal declaration of war on the helots, so that it did not count as murder to kill any.

Sparta had deliberately chosen, during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C, to develop into a city-state very unlike others , because of the underlying fear of a helot uprising.

Previously Spartan life had not been greatly different from that elsewhere. Ruled over by two kings,the aristocratic society had been typical, importing luxury goods, emplying skilled craftsmen, enjoying art and poetry. The changes which took place were traditionally ascribed to Lykourgos.To some he was a man, to others a god. Plutarch, wrote a 'Life' of Lykourgos, valuable for its description of Spartan ways, a long time after the period in question. Even the Delphic oracle was puzzled, according to Herodutus, saying, ' I do not know where to speak of you as a man or a god, but rather, Lykourgos, I think you are a god'.

At all events the Spartans themselves attributed the institutions of their society to Lykourgos, although it is in fact unlikely that one person at one time can have been responsible for all of them.

Upbringing

Everything was now dedicated to making each Spartiati a superb and unquestioningly loyal soldier. The Process started at birth. Newly-born babies were inspected by a committee of elders, and, if considered too weak , they were left to die by exposure on the sloped of Mount Taygetos. Those who survived were carefully brought up as Plutarch describes:

'The women did not bathe the babies with water, but with wine, making it a sort of test of their strength. For they say that the epileptic and sickly ones lose control and go into convulsions, but the healthy ones are rather toughened like steel and strengthened in their physique. The nurses displayed care and skill:they did not use swaddling -bands, making the babies free in their limbs and bodies? they also made them sensible and not fussy about their food, not afraid of the dark or frightened of being left alone, not inclined to unpleasant awkwardness or whining. So even some foreigners acquired Spartan nurses for their children.

At the age of seven, a Spartan boy came directly under the control of the city, and remained so in effect until the time of his death. From this age boys were brought up in packs, which had a prefect system, and were under the general charge of a state director of education , the paidonomos. The military emphasis is explained by Plutarch:

'They learned reading and writing for basic needs, but all the rest of their education was t make them well-disciplined and steadfast in hardship and victorious in battle. For this reason, as boys grew older, the Spartans intensified their training, cutting their hair short and making them used to walking barefoot and for the most part playing named. When the boys reached the age of twelve, they no longer had tunics to wear, but got one cloak a year. Their bodies were tough and unused to baths and lotions. They only enjoyed such luxury only a few special days a year.They slept, in packs, on beds which they got together on their own, made from the tops of the rushes to be found by the river Eurotas. These they broke of f with their bare hands, not using Knives.'

The smallest offences were punishable by whipping, and food was deliberately rationed, so that the boys were forced t to steal to get more -'if they are caught theft are whipped severely, for stealing carelessly and unskillfully'. The packs of boys were matched against each other in violent games with a ball and in straightforward fights.As they approached the age or twenty and manhood, the training grew more and more severe and military. At the festival of the goddess Artemis Ortheia, the older boys had to take part in a contest in which they snatched as many cheeses as possible from the steps of the altar to the goddess. To do so it was necessary to run the gauntlet of guards, with whips, who were instructed to use them as hard as they could. Some youths died as a result. Another test was the Krypteia, or 'period of hiding', during which the boy had to live alone and under cover in the countryside.

The boys were taught music and poetry as well, but these were mostly military in tone and based on religious or patriotic themes, in keeping with the rest of education. As far as the girls were concerned, Lykourgos, according to Plutarch, ' took all possible care. He made the girls exercise their bodies in running, wrestling and throwing the discus and javelin, so that their children, taking root in the first place in strong bodies, would grow the better, and they themselves would be strong for childbirth, and deal well and easily with the pains of labour' . In athletic activities and in processions the girls, like the boys were nearly naked.

Adult Life

At the age of twenty came the most critical time in s Spartan man's life. He now tried to get election to one of the dining clubs, rather like an army 'mess' , to which the men belonged. There were about fifteen members of each syssition of this kind. In the ballot each member of the mess dropped a pellet of bread into an urn,and if a single man squeezed his pellet flat, the candidate was rejected, To fail to win election to any mess at all meant becoming a social outcast. Members of the mess ate all their meals communally, and each man had to provide monthly a fixed quota of barley, wine, cheese and figs. The diet was plain, including usually a type of broth or porridge,which was well-known outside Sparta for its nastiness.It was apparently dark gray in color.The syssition was a military section, and the Spartan was now no less at the beck and call of the state than he had been as a boy.

' Their training continued right into manhood, For nobody was free to live as he wished, but the city was like a military camp, and they had a set way of life and routine in the public service.They were fully convinced that they were the property not of themselves but of the state. If they had no other duty assigned to them, they used to watch the boys, either teaching them something useful, or learning themselves from seniors. For indeed one of the fine and enviable things which Lykourgos achieved for his citizens was a great deal or leisure. He forbade them to practice any manual trade at all.There was no need for the troublesome business and efforts of making money, since wealth had become completely without envy and prestige.The helots worked their land for them, supplying the fixed amount of produce.'

One reason why wealth was less desirable lay in the fact that Sparta's authorities refused to adopt the system of making silver into coins in the manner of other Greek cities. Instead she continued to use unwieldy iron bars for money. The historian Xenophon commented that ' a thousand drachmas' worth would fill a wagon'.Spartans were also forbidden to travel abroad , except on state instructions, and foreigners were not admitted to Sparta without supplying a very good reason for doing so . This was to prevent the citizens from being corrupted by foreign ideas and morality.

The Constitution

The constitution was organized so that individual power was closely checked and change by peaceful means very difficult. The fact that there were two kings meant that, as in the case of the two Roman consuls, one could prevent the other from becoming too powerful on his own account. The original powers of the kings were greatly restricted, and they became principally generals. When the army fought outside Sparta, however, one king only was allowed to go as its commander, as the possibility of a disagreement or the loss of both kings was too great a risk.At home they had some powers but were, in fact, less important than the ephoroi or 'overseers' , five magistrates elected annually from the people. Each month the kings and ephoroi exchanged oaths,the kings swearing that they would govern according to the laws, and the ephoroi that, as long as the kings obeyed the laws, they would see to it that the kingship was unharmed.

The ephoroi kept a close watch on the kings: two went along on any foreign campaign , and they had the power to call the kings before them to explain their conduct. They could even fine or arrest them. The ephoroi were generally responsible for the discipline of the state, acting as judges, dealing with foreign ambassadors, presiding over meetings of the council and the assembly. It was they who annually declared war on the helots, and on beginning their years of office they issued a decree that all citizens should 'shave their top lips and obey the laws'.

The counsel (gerousia) was another strong influence in the city. Consisting of twenty-eight men over the age of sixty, elected for life from certain ancient families. Finally there there was the assembly, the members of which were the people , or at least adult males. Although the assembly had the right to approve or reject proposals put before it, there was an important law to the effect that 'if people make a crooked decision, the kings and elders have the power to withdraw the matter.

The Spartan Achievement

Many of Sparta's ways seem curious to us, but the fact remains that the system was on the whole remarkably effective. Internally , Sparta was free from unrest except on isolated occasions, such as the revolt by the Messenian helots in 465 B.C., when they took advantage of the chaos caused by a great earthquake.Externally, by virtue of her military strength and sound diplomacy, she was able to build up for a long time an importance in the Hellenic world rivaled only by Athens.Sparta soon realized that to continue enslaving her neighbors, as she had done in the case of the Messenians, was a policy which could only create anxiety. So she turned to a policy of alliances with other cities in the Peloponnese, such as Corinth, Tegea, and Argos.In this way , Sparta was by the end of the sixth century B.C., the leader of the Peloponnese.

When it was necessary to fight, the effectiveness of the training was proved many times. The army was not beaten in a strength fight from the period of the Messenian Wars (800 B.C) until the battle of Leuktra in 371 B.C. Plutarch's account of their preparations, and conduct in, a battle makes it easy to see why they were such fearsome opponents:

' In times of battles the officers relaxed the harshest aspects of their discipline and did not stop the men from beautifying their hair and their armor and their clothing, glad to see them like horses prancing and neighing before races. For this reason they took care over their hair from the time when they were youths, especially seeing to it in times of trouble so that it appeared sleek and well-combed, remembering a saying of Lykourgos about the care of hair, that it makes the handsome better-looking and the ugly more frightening. They also had less rigorous exercises, and they allowed the young men a regime in other respects less restricted and supervised, so that for them alone war was a rest from the preparation for war... It was an impressive and frightening sight to see them advancing in time to the flute and leaving no space in the battle-line, with no nervousness in their minds, but calmly and cheerfully moving into the dangerous battle to the sound of music. For mean in this frame of mind are unlikely to suffer from fear or excessive excitement, but rather to be steady in their purpose and confident and brave as if their god were there with them. The king when he marched against the enemy always had with him someone who had been crowned victor in the Olympic Games. There is a story that one man was offered a great amount of money to lose at the Olympics , but refused it. When he had thrown his opponent after a great struggle, someone asked him, "Spartan, what good have you gained from your victory?" and he replied with a smile , "I shall fight by my king against the enemy."

It easy to gain an impression of the Spartan as a totally dour and joyless people - all that is indicated by the word 'spartan' as it is used in English. There was however, another side. There is no evidence that the Spartans as whole ever became restless over their way of life although, of course, there are examples enough of Spartans who failed to live up to the ideal standards expected of them. For many the communal spirit and decimation to the state must have been very satisfying. It was also a feature of life in the messes that there was a great deal of banter, which was neither to be resented nor repeated outside the mess. Another Hellenic adjective for Spartan -lakonikos- has also passed into our language in the word 'laconic' , used of a dry wit which say much in a few words. This was the style which the Spartans encouraged and for which they were famous.

When a Spartan was asked why it was that Lykourgos had made so few laws he replied, 'Men of few words require few laws.' Another, in reply to someone who was praising the people of Elis for their fairness in the management of the Olympic Games, answered, 'Yes, they deserve a lot of praise if they can do justice on day in five years.' The retort of a Spartan to an Athenian who had said that the Spartans had no learning was, 'You are right. We alone all the Hellenes none of your bad qualities.'

It can be seen from such remarks that the Spartans were both intensely patriotic and sure of their superiority over others.They had chosen to remain a select minority dominating a majority of inferiors in the form of the helots and the perioikoi. The helots did all the everyday work, so that the Spartans could be free to become exceptional soldiers. Curiously, in order to preserve their privilege position, they adopted a system of living in which their individual freedom was very slight. Nevertheless, there were many people from other parts of Greece who greatly admired Sparta. Among these was the philosopher Plato, and when in the course of his philosophical inquiries he constructed an imaginary 'ideal state', it had many points of similarity to Sparta.Most of the admirers were people whose political views were in favor of aristocracy. Living very often in city-states which had reached democracy by a series of upheavals, they looked enviously at Sparta with it's order and discipline. Sparta had avoided the total democracy of many other states by compromising at an early stage and adopting a constitution which had some of the the features of monarchy , some of aristocracy (the gerousia), some of democracy(the ephoroi and the assembly).