Sparta: life in the warrior city

Ancient Sparta lay in the valley of the river Eurotas, in Laconia, in the south of the Peloponnese. Its other name was Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων). It was not a city of grand buildings. The historian Thucydides wrote that if Sparta were ever left empty, people in the future would not believe how powerful it had been, because its temples and houses were so plain.

Three groups of people lived on Spartan land. The Spartiates (Σπαρτιᾶται) were the citizens. They were few, and the men did not farm. The perioikoi (περίοικοι, “those who live around”) lived in the towns nearby. They were not slaves, but they had no say in Sparta’s government. The helots (εἵλωτες) worked the land and were not free.

Sparta had two kings at the same time, from two different families. A council of elders, the γερουσία, had 28 men over the age of sixty, plus the two kings. Every year five ephors (ἔφοροι, “overseers”) were chosen, and they had great power. In the assembly, citizens voted by shouting. The Spartans said their laws came from a wise man called Lycurgus, but even the ancient writer Plutarch admitted that nothing about him was certain.

The Spartan training for boys was called the ἀγωγή, which means “upbringing”. According to Plutarch, a boy left his family at the age of seven. He lived in a group with other boys and obeyed the bravest boy of the group, who was its leader. Older men watched the boys and made them compete.

Life was hard on purpose. The boys had their hair cut short and walked barefoot. From the age of twelve, Plutarch says, each boy got only one cloak a year. They slept on beds of reeds, which they pulled from the banks of the Eurotas with their bare hands. They learned to read and write, but only as much as they needed. Most of the time they learned to obey, to put up with hunger and cold, and to fight.

Girls did not join the agoge, but they also exercised: they ran, wrestled and threw the discus and the javelin. Sparta also had music and poetry, and the poet Alcman wrote songs for choirs of girls. Remember that Plutarch lived more than 500 years after classical Sparta, so historians read his stories with care.

Spartan citizens could train all the time because other people worked for them. The helots farmed the land and gave part of the harvest to their Spartan masters. Many of them lived in Messenia, a region that Sparta had conquered. There were many more helots than Spartans, and the Spartans feared revolts, which sometimes happened. The historian Herodotus says that at the battle of Plataea, in 479 BC, each of the 5,000 Spartans brought seven helots: 35,000 helots in all.

A Spartan soldier was a hoplite (ὁπλίτης), a foot soldier with heavy armour, a spear and a big round shield, the ἀσπίς. Hoplites fought side by side in a long, deep line called the phalanx (φάλαγξ). Thucydides explains that each man tried to keep close to the shield of the man on his right.

Men ate together in groups of about fifteen, at the syssitia (συσσίτια, “shared meals”). Each member brought barley, wine, cheese and figs every month. Their most famous dish was a black broth. Plutarch tells of a foreign king who bought a Spartan cook just to taste it, and then did not like it at all.

In 480 BC, King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, with their Greek allies, fought the huge Persian army at Thermopylae. They lost, but they became famous for their courage. A year later, at Plataea, the Spartans helped to defeat the Persians for good. Afterwards Sparta and Athens became rivals, and in the long Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) Sparta finally won.

But the number of Spartan citizens kept falling. A century later the philosopher Aristotle wrote that there were not even a thousand of them left. In 371 BC the Thebans beat the Spartans at Leuctra. Sparta then lost much of Messenia and many of its helots, and it never became the strongest city in Greece again.

The Spartans were also famous for saying a lot in very few words. Plutarch tells that Philip II of Macedon once sent them a threat: “If I invade Laconia, I will drive you out.” The Spartans wrote back one word: “If.” This kind of short, sharp answer is still called laconic, after Laconia.