Descendants of Hercules, the Spartans were ideal warriors. They lived in war, and it is how warriors went down in history. Such fame gave rise to many historical myths about Sparta and the Spartans.
Reasons for the power of Sparta
The Spartan kings considered themselves Heraclids - the descendants of the hero Hercules. Their belligerence became a household name, and for good reason: the battle formation of the Spartans was the direct predecessor of the phalanx of Alexander the Great.
The Spartans were very sensitive to signs and prophecies, and carefully listened to the opinion of the Delphic oracle. The cultural heritage of Sparta has not been assessed in the same detail as the Athenian, largely due to the warlike people’s wariness of writing: for example, their laws were passed orally, and it was forbidden to write the names of the dead on non-military tombstones.
However, if it were not for Sparta, the culture of Greece could have been assimilated by foreigners who constantly invaded the territory of Hellas. The fact is that Sparta was actually the only policy in which there was not only a combat-ready army, but whose whole life was subject to the strictest daily routine, designed to discipline the soldiers. The Spartans owed the emergence of such a militarized society to unique historical circumstances.
Early 10th century BC e. It is considered to be the time of the first large-scale settlement of the territory of Laconia - that is, the future Sparta and the adjacent lands. In the 8th century, the Spartans undertook a colossal expansion of the nearby lands of Messenia.
During the occupation, they did not subject the local population to death, but decided to subjugate it and make them slaves, who are known as helots - literally "prisoners". The creation of a colossal slave complex led to inevitable uprisings - already in the 7th century, the Helots fought the oppressors for several years, and this became a lesson to Sparta.
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Their laws, created according to legend by a king-legislator named Lycurgus (translated as "wolf-worker") back in the 9th century, served to strengthen the further internal political situation after the conquest of Messenia. The Spartans distributed the lands of the helots among all citizens, and all full-fledged citizens had hoplite weapons and constituted the backbone of the army (about 9000 people in the 7th century - 10 times more than in any other Greek city state). The strengthening of the army, provoked, perhaps, by fear of subsequent slave uprisings, contributed to an extraordinary rise in the influence of the Spartans in the region and the formation of a special system of life, characteristic only for Sparta.
For optimal training, boy warriors from the age of seven were sent to centralized state structures for education, and until the age of eighteen they spent time in intensive training. It was also a kind of initiation step: to become a full-fledged citizen, it was necessary not only to successfully complete all the years of training, but also to kill the helot with a dagger as a proof of his fearlessness. It is not surprising that the helots constantly had reasons for the next uprisings. The widespread legend about the execution of handicapped Spartan boys or even babies, most likely, has no real historical basis: there was even a certain social stratum of "hypomeyons" in the polis, that is, physically or mentally handicapped "citizens".
Savior of Greece
The Spartans did not build any defensive walls until the 2nd century BC. e., which is the best demonstration of their fighting efficiency and fearlessness. In fact, in Hellas there was no enemy who had a chance to break Sparta during its heyday. Sparta also possessed the largest territories among the Greek lands - about 8000 square kilometers.
The strengthening of the foreign policy position was facilitated by the initiative of Sparta in the creation of the Peloponnesian Union, designed to protect both the outer borders of the Peloponnesian Peninsula and the territory of Sparta from the revolt of helots.
The further role of Sparta in the history of ancient Greece can hardly be overestimated.
The power of Persia grew, and in 490 the famous battle of Marathon took place, in which the Athenians won a crushing victory over the troops of Darius. But without the Spartans, the Persian army could not be further restrained: after the first defeat, the Persian king Darius decided to return with revenge, and collected a huge army. Already his son, Xerxes, in 480 moved with all the combined forces against the Greeks - both by land and by sea.
Many inhabitants of the Greek city-states joined the army of the Persians on the way, and fought against other Greeks, acting on the principle "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Herodotus paid great attention to this episode of the Greco-Persian wars, and, in particular, the victory of the Athenians in the naval battle at Salamis in 480 and the heroic deed of the Spartans in the battle of Thermopylae pass (those same 300 Spartans).
In the decisive battle at Plataea in 479, the Spartans also played a decisive role, and thus, we can say that it was Sparta, together with Athens, repelled the attack of Persia and won the war. Thanks to the efforts of an excellently trained Spartan army, Greek culture was able to reach its heyday, and if it were not for Sparta, we might not have known classical Greek philosophy and theater now.
Sunset of Sparta
After the war with the Persians, the inevitable wars of the Spartans with Athens began, designed to unequivocally resolve the issue of hegemony in Greece. Sparta won them, but her reign did not last long.
In the 260s, Sparta was defeated by the Herul barbarians. From that time on, Sparta gradually began to turn into a kind of parody of itself, a museum of its own past, which Plutarch mentions, telling that in 100 AD. e. he saw Spartan youths being scourged for the entertainment of tourists, playing on the Spartan myth common in society (to the creation of which he personally had a hand).
However, only Athens and Sparta from all the ancient Greek policies receive from Rome, after the capture of Hellas, a certain independence - so the ancient glory of Sparta served her last service.
The decline of Sparta happened quietly and gradually, but it is worth remembering that she gave the world not only excellent warriors who went down in history, but also poets - such as Tirtaeus, who inspired the Spartans with his poems during the campaign to Messenia, and Terpander, who improved the lyre and invented the nomes … However, the latter came to Sparta from the island of Lesbos, and Tirtaeus, a lame teacher, was sent to Sparta by the Athenians.