Dave's Essay on Sparta

I'd like Manach or Sci0x or one of the other ancient history buffs like myself to tell me what they think of this, if they can handle it.

How far does the period 478-404BC bear out the contention that Spartan policy ‘is always governed mainly by the necessity of taking precautions against the Helots’? (Thuc. IV.80, translated by G.E.M. de Ste Croix.

In their complaints to Sparta regarding Spartan inaction during the period 446-431BC, the Corinthians account Spartan constitutional stability ‘responsible for a kind of ignorance which you show when you are dealing with foreign affairs’ (Thuc. I.68). It is this same constitutional stability which is responsible for the majority of Spartan affairs during the period 478-404BC being foreign affairs, while, for example, Athens on the other hand went through such major reforms as those prescribed by Ephialtes as well as pursuing her imperial ambitions during the same period. It is with this in mind that I address Spartan policy as being more accurately Spartan foreign policy with the exception of two occasions.

In 476, Pausanias, one of the Kings of Sparta, was recalled home by the Ephors on the pretext of medising. The reality for Sparta was much more serious - Pausanias had been intending to free the helot population of as a means to turning Sparta into an absolute monarchy (Bury and Meiggs, ‘A History of Greece’ p202). Long has Sparta relied on the enslaved populations of Messenia and Laconia to work the land and provide the Spartiates with the means to sustain their entire militaristic way of life; freedom of the helots was an anathema to the Spartans as it would spell the end of their way of life. The recall of Pausanias was not in the interest of Spartan foreign policy since he was a thorn in the side of the adventurous Athenians, currently with an army in the Hellespont region, but this was subordinate to the security of the Spartan state towards which all males from the age of seven were drilled (Bury and Meiggs, ibid p96).

The Spartan agoge, ‘a uniquely rigorous and elaborate system of state education’ (Crawford and Whitehead ‘Archaic and Classical Greece’ p115) had been established since some time after the Second Messenian War to ensure ‘little or no insolence, little or no drunkenness and little or no indecency in behaviour and talk’ (Xenophon ‘Lak. Pol.’ V.2-6) and provided the iron discipline of legend (more detail on which later) which the Spartans would have us believe (according to A. Powell, more details on which later) was how they won their wars. Given that the agoge was necessary to keep the helots subservient and the helots were necessary to sustain to Spartan way of life, as it was dictated by the agoge and that this situation remained in place all through the 5th Century BC, it is fair to say this this aspect of Spartan policy was certainly dictated by necessity of precautions against the helots in fact it was a precaution against the helots.

Returning to the Hellespont c476 BC, the Spartan commander Dorcis was despatched to command the Hellenic forces as Pausanias’ replacement but he was recalled soon after, allowing Athens to wrest control of the anti-Persian crusade from Sparta. While this was not in the interest of Spartan prestige abroad, it may have been indicative of trouble brewing within the Peloponnesian League.

In order to understand the significance of the Peloponnesian League within Spartan affairs, one must understand the reasons behind it’s establishment. Around 560BC, Sparta began pushing her frontiers northward and came into conflict with Tegea, a poleis predominant in southern Arcadia. Defeated by 550 BC, Tegea’s subject-ally status became the model on which the Peloponnesian League was founded. The reason for the condition in which Sparta left Tegea in 550 BC may well have been dictated by the need to control and have aid in controlling the Messenian helots who were ever ready to revolt, rather than adding yet more peoples to the subjugate population and thereby increasing the insecurity of the Spartan state rather than lessening it.

By 473 BC, Tegea and Argos (also defeated by Sparta in her bid to control the Peloponnesus) had recovered and were restless - it was from this source that the trouble emanated.

In 473 and 471 BC, the battles of Tegea and Dipaea, fought against Tegea and Argos and the Arcadian League respectively, secured for Sparta the control of the Peloponnesian League, though at the cost of ignoring affairs external to the Peloponnesus rather than formulating a policy for them (namely the creation of Athens own empire). This was in deference to the ‘little’ Sparta policy that the Peloponnesian League was needed to maintain security from the helots, every bit as much as the agoge was needed.

Even the crushing of such dissent within the Peloponnesus did not rid Sparta of her fears as she was forced to acknowledge the synoecism of Elis into a democratic poleis, north of Messenia, and the synoecism of Mantinea, both as reward for remaining apart from the rebellion attempt by Tegea and Argos. Both Mantinea and Elis was to prove the Spartans of this time correct in their apprehensions when they sided with Alcibiades’ Athenian / Argive army at the Battle of Mantinea which shattered the Peace of Nicias.

Nor did the defeat of Tegea and her allies forestall a helot rebellion in Messenia which began in 464 BC, after a great earthquake destroyed parts of Sparta. The implications for Spartan policy quickly became clear. The Spartans had promised the poleis of Thasos aid if they were attacked by Athens. Thasos was a member of the Delian League and had revolted from Athenian control in 465 BC. Athens had already set a precedent in the reduction of Naxos in 472BC and proceeded to attack Thasos. Quite the opposite from their promise, Sparta sent no forces and in fact begged for Athenian aid in ending the helot revolt which had become the siege of Mount Ithome in Messenia, siege-warfare being one in which the Spartans did not excel. This is a clear illustration of Sparta passing up the chance to set her own precedent vis-á-vis the Delian League in favour of taking precautions against the helots.

Between 465 and 459 BC, the year of the end of the helot revolt, Sparta took no actions in the wider world, not even to curb the resurgence of Argos, evidenced by the Argive destruction of Mycenae.

Nor did Sparta intervene in the construction of the Long Walls between Athens and her port, the Piraeus in 458 BC, though several reasons may lie behind this; Spartan ignorance of what the Athenians were doing (Thuc. I.90), respect for Themistocles as a vigorous prosecutor of the Persian War (Thuc. I.91) or possible martial exhaustion after the conclusion of the siege of Mount Ithome.

Whatever the reason, in 457 BC, Sparta again became involved outside the Peloponesus, this time in Doris, north of Boeotia. An army of 1500 Spartiates and 10,000 allied troops (Thuc. I.107) restored control of a Dorian village to Doris after the Phocaeans had captured it. The Spartans then proceeded to form the ‘Boeotian Confederacy’ with Thebes as it’s leader, to place a check on Athenian expansion into central Greece (Bury and Meiggs, ibid p220). This was absolutely unrelated to the helots and is one of a few events which might dispute the Thucydidean view cited in the title of this essay, though it is possible that even at this stage, before Athens had attacked any ally of the Peloponnesian League, that Sparta saw a danger to her own confederacy and was acting to curb that threat and therefore indirectly the threat which might subsequently emerge to her own stability. The battle at Tanagra between the homeward-bound Peloponnesians and the 14,000 Hoplites and other assorted troops that Athens sent out to meet them was simply a by-product of the untenable position the Spartans had placed the Peloponnesian forces in during the intervention in Doris (i.e. the Athenian navy guarded the Gulf of Corinth and the Athenians held the Megarid (Thuc. I.107)).

It is here, at the first instance of a major engagement between the two hegemonic states that I wish to make an assessment of a second continuous policy of Sparta especially with regard to her military; secrecy. Not much is known about Sparta during the period 478-404 BC, not least because Sparta herself has left little or no literary record (a sentiment echoed in A. Powell’s ‘Athens and Sparta’ pp214-212). Powell, on the basis of comments by Thucydides (V.86.2) and Herodotus (III.46) that ‘Sparta’s enemies might be demoralised by the thought that her military ascendancy was due to sheer discipline and hardness’ (Powell, ibid, pp96-97). These thoughts may have precluded the exposition of Sparta’s fatal weakness and the realisation of that weakness such as in 371 BC, following the Battle of Leuktra (where Epaminondas of Thebes defeated Sparta in a disastrous battle), which secured the Messenian helots their freedom and ended the military predominance of Sparta. Such secrecy therefore was influenced by the helots and if actually a Spartan policy, must rank as one of the greatest examples of ‘maskirovka’ of all time.

Returning to 457 BC, Athens, having suffered defeat at the hands of the Peloponnesians, revenged herself upon their new ally - Thebes - by the conquest of Boeotia by the Battle of Oenophyta. Here followed two years of action against Sparta and her allies (Thuc. I.108-113) without Spartan reply. Thucydides makes no comment on the reason for Spartan recalcitrance and no source tells us of trouble with Sparta or her league that might preclude retaliation. It can only be assumed that Athens, then at the height of her imperial glory, deterred thoughts of reprisal rather than some helot related problem holding Sparta’s attention.