What became of the Spartans 338 B.C. - 1834 A.D

[EdwardL]

Research comfirming the date and existence of the reinstatment of the lykugian regime, and how it affected the spartan soldier including throughout EB timeframe.


The end of Sparta

After the battle of Chaeronea (338 BC) Phillip of Macedon marched through the Peloponnese, welcomed by all the cities but when he reached Sparta they refused him to enter. Phillip did not try to take by force the city and left. Sparta was the only Greek city that did not take part in the League of Corinth, which was formed in 337 BC, under Macedonian control.
In 331 BC, king Agis, the grandson of Agesilaos, raised a revolt against Macedonia, but he was defeated and killed.
In the end of the 4th century BC, Sparta build a wall for the first time in her history, which was enclosing its four central villages and Acropolis.
When in 280 BC, the Celts invaded from the north overrunning Macedon, king Areus of Sparta, who had tried to unite the cities of Peloponnese, led an army into central Greece. During his reign the first coins of Sparta was issued, three hundred years later from the rest of Greece.
In 272 BC, king Pyrros of Epeiros could easily have taken the city after defeating the Spartans. Sparta became a dependency of Macedon, regained independence under the tyrants Machanidas (207 BC) and Nabis (195 - 192 BC).
In 265 BC again, having formed an alliance with Athens, Achaea and Elis and some Arcadian cities, gave battle against Macedon but lost it and in his retreat was killed (Chremonidean war).
The son of Areus, Akrotatos, in 260 BC leading the Spartan army against Megalopolitans, he was defeated and himself killed.
In 244 BC, Agis IV came to the throne and starting a series of changes. He proposed all debts to be cancelled, and to redistribute all land, in parts of 4500 citizens and 15000 Perioikoi. He also insisted on strict Lykurgian training in the citizens for the remained 700 equals (omioi) and 2000 hypomeiones and selected perioikoi. He found in his proposals strong resistance and Agis was put in trial and executed in 241 BC.
The next king of Sparta Kleomenes III, began to reign in 236 BC. He married the widow of king Agis and also tried to impose his ideas. In 227 BC, in a revolt he killed four ephors and exiled eighty of his opponents. That it was the first time the ephorate was abolished in Sparta. He then redistributed the land into 4000 lots and perioikoi as well as hypomeiones occupied them. He also started to enforce the Lykurgos training and habits, under the guidance of his friend philosopher Sphairos. All these changes brought results and Kleomenes had many military successes. Argos and most of Argolid and eastern Arcadia was conquered.
The Achaean league under Aratos of Sikyon, with the promise of giving him back Corinth, allied with king Antigonos of Macedon and recovered Argos and several Arcadian cities. In his turn Kleomenes captured and destroyed Megalopolis (223 BC).
In 222 BC, at Sellacia, between Sparta and Tegea, a battle took place. The Spartan army was numbering 10,000 and that of Antigonos and his allies 30,000. At this long and horrid battle, Spartans fought bravely. The whole Spartan army fell, except 200 men. King Kleomenes fled to Egypt.
The following years, a series of revolts started at Sparta, king's ephors were killed or exiled.
In 206 BC, the tyrant Nabis, a descendant of Demaratos, who had fled in Persia in 490 BC, took the throne. An able but ruthless man, he confiscated the properties of the wealthy and gave them to the poor. By setting free slaves, he managed to acquire an army of 10,000 men and he also extended his social reforms to Argos. It was Nabis who foreseeing the incoming dangers fortified Sparta for the first time in her history.
When the Roman commander Flamininus invaded Laconia and laid siege to Sparta, after a few days of fighting a non honorable truce was accepted by Sparta, in which was loosing all the Perioikic cities on the coasts and her fleet.
Later with the pretence of helping Sparta, the Aitolians sent a thousand soldiers to kill Nabis and secure Sparta. They managed to kill him but they all were massacred from the Spartans. After Nabis assassination, Sparta was forced by Philopoemen to become a member of the Achaean league. Her walls were razed and the laws of Lykurgos repealed.
Under the Romans in the 2nd century AD, Laconia as a province of Achaea was allowed to revert to a Lykurgian regime.
In 396 AD, the city was destroyed by Alaric.
In the 9th century AD, the Slavs invaded and the population was forced to migrate to Mani.
The Byzantines refound a town and named her Lacedaemonia but her importance had been lost by 1248 AD and disappeared from history totally, by 1834 AD.
Today the city of modern Sparta occupies the very same territory of the ancient city.

Perhaps the Spartans in EB should go through reforms much as the romans do.

Also, wikipidia lists the following;

Spartans continued their way of life even after the Roman conquest of Greece. The city became a tourist exhibit for the Roman elite who came to observe the "unusual" Spartan customs. Purportedly, following the disaster that befell the Roman Imperial Army at the Battle of Adrianople (378 AD), a Spartan phalanx met and defeated a force of raiding Visigoths in battle. There is, however, no genuine evidence of this occurring.

When the romans reinstated the Lykugian regime in 2nd Cent A.D., it is possible perhaps probable that the previous mentioned info might well be fact.




Thanks, EL

[Kampfduck]

isnt this a sort of double posting?
there is already a discussion going on about sparta,
see topic: the spartans.

[Dayve]

Good read none the less... Thanks edward. :2thumbsup:

The city of Sparta was destroyed though? Why? That's a crime to history... Dirty smelly slavic hordes. :furious3:

[Sarcasm]

The city of Megalopolis was destroyed though? Why? That's a crime to history... Dirty smelly Spartan hordes...







jk:laugh4:

[QwertyMIDX]

It's not like there was much at Sparta anyway. :laugh4:

[Dayve]

Not much at Rome either, few crumbled buildings, that's about it... Not much in Egypt... Few triangle shaped structures... That's about it... Lets destroy them... Thousands of years of fascinating history but... There's not much there anyway. :laugh4:

Anyway... Why did they destroy megalopolis? Was there any good reason or just because they enjoyed slaughtering people and burning houses like the barbarian hordes did?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Keep in mind that Megalopolis was just built to piss the spartans off. The Thebans finally defeat the spartans and then free the Messenians and synoicize some of the area around there to form Megalopolis itself as a barrier to spartan expansion northwest and a counter to any one group in the Peloponnese getting too much stronger than the other (after all they can't keep a force there all the time to hold down one people like the spartans had done to the messenians for all those years before).

[Dayve]

If you play with fire you get burned... Simple as that.

[QwertyMIDX]

I think I detect a bit of bais here. ~;)

Anyway, I meant there was never much at Sparta in terms of urban infrastructure.

[Simmons]

Lots of sharp pointy things not many poems.

[Shigawire]

And lots of cruel and opressive fascism. ~:mecry:

You know, Polybius was a powerful figure in Megalopolis. :bow:

[Teleklos Archelaou]

You know, Polybius was a powerful figure in Megalopolis. :bow:It's a very pretty and isolated place today. You can sit in the slope of their theater - one of the largest in all of greece, but there's little left of it. A river went right through the middle of town, and has eaten away at parts of it, but you can easily see their bouleterion at the foot of the theater, and some of the stoas have columns reerected. Nice wheat fields cover most of the rest of the site (when I was last there). Very calm and quiet beautiful place.

[Kralizec]

Not much at Rome either, few crumbled buildings, that's about it... Not much in Egypt... Few triangle shaped structures... That's about it... Lets destroy them... Thousands of years of fascinating history but... There's not much there anyway. :laugh4:

I think what QWERTY meant was that the Spartans didn't have many buildings that would have survived to this day anyway. Sparta was a group of villages on the Spartan plain. They weren't a builder civilisation, and besides a few temples very little archeological evidence remains of their glory.
Thucydides:
Suppose the city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame.

[Dayve]

Really...? My image of Sparta has just been shattered... :no: I imagined a large city full of concrete buildings like many the Romans had and like other cities in Greece... What a disappointment... I wish i hadn't found that out... Curse you! :2thumbsup:

[Geoffrey S]

When the Spartans couldn't rely on their Helots they couldn't focus purely on their martial skills any longer. Bad for them, since their ability to fully focus on warfare whilst leaving the rest of the duties to their slaves is what allowed them to become such a unique power.

[paullus]

It wasn't so much that they could trust/rely on their helots before; heck, most of their constant military training (aaarrrggh!!!) was aimed at keeping the helot down. The labor of the helots allowed the Spartans to focus on their military abilities, and those abilities ensured the subservience of the helots...so sad...

Anyway, it would be very cool if the KH could institute a Lykurgan system in Sparte as some sort of reform. Maybe start Sparte off as a colony as well, and then its up to the player whether to upgrade to a type 1 Lykurgan system in Sparte, and that could lead to unique Spartan units unavailable in non-Type 1 governments? There might be a better way to do that I suppose, but its an idea, and would be really risky for the player to do, but would (with good Spartan units at least) pay nice dividends.

[EdwardL]

yes its a good idea..matter of fact its the same idea i had in the first post :P great minds think alike w00t. Also if its not too much to ask for a color change to KH.. orange seems a little timid, although the RTW cream was just as bad, heh

[O'ETAIPOS]

It wasn't so much that they could trust/rely on their helots before; heck, most of their constant military training (aaarrrggh!!!) was aimed at keeping the helot down. The labor of the helots allowed the Spartans to focus on their military abilities, and those abilities ensured the subservience of the helots...so sad...


I cant imagine how people tend to ignore facts they dont like. Sparte was no a cruel fascist rule! Fascists wanted to be seen as Spartans to grab some of theire glory.

Helots werent treated worse than tousends of slaves in other city states. Athenians also lived from the slave workforce, but that were Athenians who wrote history... sad but true.

Sparta didnt let outsiders to get its citizen status, also you had to be very rich to be homoios - how the true spartans were called. Many wars especialy Peloponesian and later against Thebes made Sparte to lose a lot of true citizens, so the lands consolidated in few families.

[QwertyMIDX]

The way the Spartans treated the Messenians actually seems to have been somewhat harsher than the way other Greeks treated their slaves. The point is that the system is different though not that one is worse than the other. It demanded different adaptations on the part of the Spartans than what most other greeks went through.

[paullus]

While slavery is slavery, that doesn't change the fact that the Spartan relationship with the Messinians was often a form of state oppression in addition to individual owner-property oppression. Helots may have, in some ways, and aside from the times when things were bad, had a better life than the transplanted, bought and sold slaves in other places, what with the pastoral life and all...

Oh, and I'm not sure what brought on the whole fascism comment, though perhaps I shouldn't be getting my ancient history from David Irving?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Yeah, there's not anything else that we have extant that shows anything like the extreme treatment the spartans gave the messenians. Granted it was mostly recorded by biased folks anyway, but still you can tell they thought it was extreme (though they probably hadn't seen what hell was really like for those poor chaps in Laurion either). It's the only time I know of that greek slavery got close to that american south slavery too - in the way that it's a whole group (a division of an ethnicity) that was treated this way, not just folks who had a bad day and had their city sacked or got nabbed on the beachside somewhere.

[Mr Jones]

i'm surprised about how many people seem to look at the spartans as some kind of ultimate greek people when they know nothing about them actually other then they were good warriors. the spartan treatment of the messenians was possibly the harshest in greece, as said before sparta was not really a city, just a bunch of buildings on a plain. the only significant thing about sparta really is their military training and prowess. they were not uber greeks.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, it is interesting any time a culture or a people decide to throw away much of their past and start from scratch (sometimes all at once, or a little more slowly too)...forgetting what things were really like before then for some newly idealized version of their society and history. To be honest it always turns out pretty scary in my opinion. But then I'm a historian for the most part and it would mean folks like me wouldn't be very necessary if it became a going trend. :grin:

[O'ETAIPOS]

I may be wrong, if yes, I'm sorry.
I based my view on the words of prof. S. Hodkinson who visited our university last year. He tried to convince us that how we see Sparte is the effect of English historians vievs. From the Napoleonic period English historians liked to see athens as a symbol of England (trade and seapower) while Sparte as its continent enemies - first Napoleon, and then Germany. And when nazists started portraying themselves as the modern Spartans, it baceme even worse. Later in the Cold War Americans portrayed USSR as Spartan like, and there are some documents showing terrorist groups as Spartan like. When you see somebody as a symbol of your enemy then you can't give it any positive values.
He also stated that Messenians were governind themselves to some (small) extent, and the reason that writers say they were threated so bad is that writers believed that you can't do with once free nation same thing you do with slaves.
I remind you also that Attike was united with fire and sword, also all those Athenian so called allies that were destroyed by "good democracy" sometimes because they just wanted to be neutral.
I just imagine what Athenians would do to Syracusans, if they had captured the city.

[conon394]

I remind you also that Attike was united with fire and sword, also all those Athenian so called allies that were destroyed by "good democracy" sometimes because they just wanted to be neutral.

Attica was united by force what evidence is there for that? Even if it was the case, it would not change the fact that everyone in Attica became Athenians equally, while at Sparta, only Spartans were citizens, while the vast majority of Laconians were reduced to non-citizens or helots. On the destruction of allies I suppose you must be referring to the (mostly) the Peloponnesian war. It seems something less than fair to use Athenian actions in a long drawn out total war as an indication off their general policies. Many allies did not revolt, and they did largely ask Athens to lead the Delian league unlike Sparta’s allies and in her harshest actions Athens was usually only following the trail blazed by Sparta.

By the remaining neutral comment I assume you to refer to the Melian Dialogue. But let’s just step back a bit: Athens had in fact allowed Melos to be neutral from decades, presumably out of respect for Sparta and a desire to maintain the peace agreed after the first Peloponnesian war. Consider what that means, Melos paid no monies to Athens, sent no ships or soldiers to the League, but gained absolute security from invasion and pirates for free. Yet when war did come Melos could neither actively maintain her neutrality (the Spartans used Melos as a stop on their way to Lesbos), and in fact appears to have actively proved money to the Spartans. In other words Melos had been allowed to be neutral but demonstrated neither the ability to be neutral in fact, nor show a desire to remain neutral. Given the logic of total war, the comparatively weak position of the post plague Athens, and Sparta’s repeated demonstration that it would only adhere to agreements when it was easy and convenient, I think the Melian affair while still a black eye for Athens is still not really the black and white incident is largely portrayed as. During World War 2 both Britain and Nazi Germany to use mass/indiscriminant aerial fire bombing, but I don’t think any rational judge would argue Nazi-Germany and Great Britain were morally equivalent.

Athenians may have written a lot of history, but I would not be too quick to suggest some kind of pro-democratic bias. Most of the ancient historians, antiquarians and philosophers tended to have a substantial bias against democracy and the hoi-polloi, and as such Sparta often benefits from something of a whitewash. Consider Thycidides for example, we get a long drawn out discussion of Melos or Lesbos, but do we see a similar expansive discussion of the debate at Sparta in the very first year of the War when Sparta summarily executed all the crews of merchant vessels traveling to or from Athens as pirates?


Helots werent treated worse than tousends of slaves in other city states. Athenians also lived from the slave workforce, but that were Athenians who wrote history... sad but true.

I think the evidence is against you here. Athens unlike Sparta never faced a slave revolt nor appears to have even feared one (like Chios). Under the democracy Athens was able to repeatedly depend on it slaves in times of crisis (Marathon, Persian wars, Aginusae, during the civil war against the Thirty, Chaeronea…). Slaves at Athens may have been property in one household, but were not perpetual legal classes of state reconzied or owned property as were the helots. Slaves at Athens did enjoy some legal protections, and even the ability to force a sale to a new owner, in public they were effectively equal to Metrics, and could access the commercial courts, nor did they owe any subservience to any citizen aside from those from the oikos that owned then.

I would also dispute the ideal that Athens lived on its slave workforce. Did Athens have slaves, sure, but that pretty much sums up most of world history. Did the democracy depend on them, no more than it did on the Delian League (that is to say the radical democracy both pre-dated and outlived the league although it is often suggested it required the revenue from it to survive). Here I think people tend to all to easily be swayed by the aristocratic and idealized nature of much of the literary evidence, and ignore the tid-bits of evidence for, lacking a better term ‘working-class’ Athens.

[antiochus epiphanes]

where are the spartan orgins?
just asking cause there are alot of greek historians in here

[Teleklos Archelaou]

They were Dorian Greeks (Indo-European stock), like a lot of other poleis were. They came into Lakonia at the end of the bronze age and settled there. Here's a great summary by Cartledge:

"The three Dorian tribes of the Hylleis, Dymanes and Pamphyloi, whose existence in Sparta is directly attested for the first and only time by Tyrtaios (fr. 19.8), almost certainly joined forces before the long march south. Their most likely point of immediate origin is the Illyrian-Epirote region of northwest Greece, which had been for the most part untouched by Mycenaean civilization; some have seen an etymological link between the names Hylleis and Illyria. But the Dorians may have been impelled and even joined by peoples from still further north. The etymology of 'Dorians' is unclear, but their alleged connection with Doris in central Greece was probably invented or at least enhanced by later propaganda from as early as the seventh century." ...They crossed through Aitolia, over the Corinthian Gulf from Antirhion to Rhion on rafts, then continued down the western Peloponnese to the Alpheios valley, across to the headwaters of the Eurotas and finally along the Eurotas furrow to Sparta. The date of the settlement in Sparta is open, but archaeology indicates a terminus post quem of c. 950. They conquered nearby Amyklai in the early 8th century then. The remnant of the Mycenaean population is most plausibly the origin of the Lakonian Helots (the Messenian ones came a little later).

[O'ETAIPOS]

Thanks for lots of info!
I have to assume that the lecturer I mentioned in the last post have to be biased towards Sparte :) (or even very biased)

This is the main problem with history - you just can't check anyting and people tends to interpret the same facts differently. And this is one of the things that make history so interesting :2thumbsup:

[Ace Cataphract]

In the defense of the Spartans' treatment of the Messenians, it's not as if they treated themselves much better. They were harsh people. They were the ultimate survival society. Spartan babies had to be born strong just to be allowed to live, Spartan children soon had to endure hard training of their own, Spartan teens were expected almost to be adults, Spartan adults were expected to be almost demi-gods, and they were very much a survival of the fittest society. For the Helots, at least their babies weren't exposed to the wilderness if they were considered too weak, but in truth, their masters didn't have a much easier life at all than they did.

[EdwardL]

yes, the spartans themselves were as much a slave as the helots they enslaved.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

There's a bit of a difference in matters of choice here though. A pretty big difference actually.

[EdwardL]

no not really hehe.. if you were weak when born it wasnt your choice to live. military service was going to be your way of life.. you were going to fight and possibly die for the state of sparta. You were to compete in unusual ceremonies and events, sometimes getting abused in the process.. oh, training lots of physical training. Some spartans viewed war as a break from training.. lets see.. heh, ill keep it short.

of course if you were a female spartan, after your rigors of training, you got the best benefits of greko society a female could possibly get.

if you ran from battle or chose not to fight, you were an outcast of spartan society. As a result you would have to shave half of your face to show that you were a deserter so you can be humiliated in public and give up many priviledges.

of course you can always chose to run away from the spartan society and try to make a life in another greek city, but you prolly wouldnt have much in the way of "money" or personal belongings as these werent idealised in spartan society. More than likely you would have the same few things a helot making the same decision to flee to another city state would have.. the shirt on your back and grasp understanding that you dont know as much about the outside world as you would like to know. Foreigners were not allowed into sparta unless for diplomatic reasons or special permissions as not to "taint" the spartan society of talk of the "outside world". now you would make one hell of a thief in another city state if you completed your childhood training or partially completed it. A helot could make a living in another city state as a farmer or whatever it is they specialised in im sure. now if you made it to 60 as a spartan, you then started to enjoy the kickbacks of whatever it is spartan society had to offer. Of course men prior to 40 did have some voting rights, but that could be overturned by the heirarchy if deemed necessary.


makes you wonder if sparta was not the true slave here. Sparta was enslaved to suppressing those it had to rely on to exist as a military state, the helots.

"What would happen if the helots successfully revolted? if they revolt they can survive as city states as they have argicultural capacity, and some form of local government. Our men would be forced to work the lands as farmers. they will have to learn a life of growing, fishing, hunting, and trading rather than a life of warfare. How many effective fighting soldiers then would that leave our stagnate population with? and how long then will we be an independant state before those bastards that sit in athens swope down upon us" ... Things the spartan government probably thought about on a regular basis.

[Orb]

My own dislike of the Athenian democrats is the similar to my low opinion of human rights workers trying to prevent use of landmines.

The Athenian people, very few of them generals, are voting over military tactics.

Because they are not themselves tacticians the people cannot tell what is and what is not a good plan and so rely on the most convincing orator.

Not a great system in my opinion.

Sparte always seemed equally fair to Athens from my viewpoint because the Athenians forced many states to remain in the Delian league while these states called on Spartan help.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

So the spartans (except for the first generations that conquered the Messenians) bear no responsibility for their (in modern eyes) vile treatment of the helots?

I understand what you're trying to argue, but step back away from it for a second - saying that the spartans weren't to blame for keeping the Messenians under permanent slavery for centuries because that's the way their fathers did it before them can't possibly be an acceptable argument of a critical thinker. It's the argument of old men sitting in council and trying to keep a tight grip on what they say belongs to them. It's not a legitimate argument.

[paullus]

Kinda funny: wasnt Teleklos a Spartan king early on in the wars against the Messenians? I could be way off there, but I think I remember that from somewhere. And here Teleklos the son of Archelaos censures the Spartans for their treatment of the Messenians...

Actually, I agree with TA completely. That's like saying slaveholders in the American south bore no responsibility for maintaining possession of and maltreating their slave populations because they were born into that system and exiting the system would likely hurt their economy.

[conon394]

My own dislike of the Athenian democrats is the similar to my low opinion of human rights workers trying to prevent use of landmines.

The Athenian people, very few of them generals, are voting over military tactics.

Because they are not themselves tacticians the people cannot tell what is and what is not a good plan and so rely on the most convincing orator.

Not a great system in my opinion.

But opinions aside it did work. Athens was one of the most (if the most) constantly successful, powerful and wealthiest of Greek polis over the Classical Era.
Nor is it correct to the assembly was somehow full of the military ignorant, almost every man in the assembly would certainly have served as either hoplites, rowers, sailors, archers, or cavalry (quite often no doubt given the often Athens was at war).

To really damn the Athenians on this score it seems to me you need to really demonstrate that some other government was consistently superior to democracy at making military decisions.


Sparte always seemed equally fair to Athens from my viewpoint because the Athenians forced many states to remain in the Delian league while these states called on Spartan help.

Umm, perhaps those states should have considered a bit more before they voluntarily joined the Delian league, an alliance that was defined as lasting forever…
In any case I believe the only state that you could nominally call a member of the league asking for Spartan intervention was Aigena.

In the final analysis however, I think Sparta does deserve to be judged more harshly, especially for its hypocritical settlement of the Peloponnesian war. After all at least Athens was honest about how the Delian league had change, Sparta after launching a war ‘to free the Greeks’ (umm except for the helots that is), simply sold off the Asia Greeks to Persia and imposed her own far harsher rule on the remainder of Athens’s empire…

[jedispongee]

But opinions aside it did work. Athens was one of the most (if the most) constantly successful, powerful and wealthiest of Greek polis over the Classical Era.
Nor is it correct to the assembly was somehow full of the military ignorant, almost every man in the assembly would certainly have served as either hoplites, rowers, sailors, archers, or cavalry (quite often no doubt given the often Athens was at war).

To really damn the Athenians on this score it seems to me you need to really demonstrate that some other government was consistently superior to democracy at making military decisions.



Umm, perhaps those states should have considered a bit more before they voluntarily joined the Delian league, an alliance that was defined as lasting forever…
In any case I believe the only state that you could nominally call a member of the league asking for Spartan intervention was Aigena.

In the final analysis however, I think Sparta does deserve to be judged more harshly, especially for its hypocritical settlement of the Peloponnesian war. After all at least Athens was honest about how the Delian league had change, Sparta after launching a war ‘to free the Greeks’ (umm except for the helots that is), simply sold off the Asia Greeks to Persia and imposed her own far harsher rule on the remainder of Athens’s empire…
Hypocritical arguement. To say it's ok for Athens to use force in keeping other states in a situation they want out of, and saying that Sparta "sold off Ionians to Persia" is an example of their damnation, is a bit odd. Using the thought of "well they should've thought harder about joining the Delian league" is basis for a very weak arguement.

Anyway, we're looking at their situations from our positions in the 21st century, where our understanding of what's right and wrong is very different from the 5th-3rd century BC. I'm sure this has been said ad naseum, but it's something people should take into consideration when making these judgements, especially as personal opinion gets in the way of figuring things out as they really were.

[EPA]

Good read none the less... Thanks edward. :2thumbsup:

Dirty smelly slavic hordes. :furious3:

Alaric was a Goth, and the Goths came from Gotaland (an island in The Baltic Sea)

[Dayve]

They're still dirty and they still stink... Well maybe not today but then they did... What's all the fuss?

[EdwardL]

In light of the recent outbreak of buzz concerning the spartans, ive resurrected the thread and updated the entry post with more info. Please refer to the first post should you be interested in subject pertaining to thread title

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Um, this is wrong: "In 272 BC, king Pyrros of Epeiros could easily have taken the city after defeating the Spartans. Sparta became a dependency of Macedon, regained independence under the tyrants Machanidas (207 BC) and Nabis (195 - 192 BC)."

Pyrrhos tried to take the city for two days with his rather large army but couldn't do it. He didn't just sneak attack it and keep attacking it for two days and then not actually take it, just for kicks.

[Tanit]

Possibly one of the reasons that everyone on the EB site, and many more besides, are so seemingly obsessed with the Spartans and wanting to impose good morals on them while ignoring their faults is the general love that we have for true warriors. Moral, never backing down, honourable, and skilled warriors capture our hearts and minds deep down for some reason. Just like with Samurai and other warrior cultures, we see the ultimate warriors and we want them to be good and just and honourable and moral too so that we can idolize them without having a guilty conscience in that respect.

However, as historians, we must put aside our adoration of the warriors to examine who they really were in every aspect. As Polybius himself said,

"In other relations of life we should not perhaps exclude all such favouritism; for a good man should love his friends and his country, he should share the hatreds and attachments of his friends; but he who assumes the character of a historian must ignore everything of the sort, and often, if their actions demand this, speak good of his enemies and honour them with the highest praises while criticizing and even reproaching roundly his closest friends, should the errors of their conduct impose this duty on him. For just as a living creature which has lost its eyesight is wholly incapacitated, so if History is stripped of her truth all that is left is but an idle tale. We should therefore not shrink from accusing our friends or praising our enemies; nor need we be shy of sometimes praising and sometimes blaming the same people, since it is neither possible that men in the actual business of life should always be in the right, nor is it probable that they should be always mistaken. We must therefore disregard the actors in our narrative and apply to the actions such terms and such criticism as they deserve."

[Atreidis]

Since the thread is about what happened to Spartans, we could presume that there are no people remaining today to claim their ancestors were the ancient Spartans we know. However their heritage remains, the people that live in Mani, the area near Sparti are still quite warlike, they still had bloody vendetas some decades ago and they were never enslaved to the Ottomans. And note that Mani and Crete are the only places in Greece were weapons are still widespread (and I am not talking about pistols, in a Cretan wedding I was, the father of the bride was shooting at the air with a AK-47!!!)

[Tanit]

In light of the recent outbreak of buzz concerning the spartans, ive resurrected the thread and updated the entry post with more info. Please refer to the first post should you be interested in subject pertaining to thread title


Ed has a good point here. The purpose of the thread was not to discuss the morality of Sparta and Athens, but to take a look at the historical representation of Sparta in EB and what we can do to represent their individual reforms and ideals. I liked the earlier point about a KH government building that makes you able to train Spartan units later on. I think this would be a great idea as the military changes in Sparta discussed are less 'reforms' so to speak than changes in the opinion and manner of the government.

[Avicenna]

i'm surprised about how many people seem to look at the spartans as some kind of ultimate greek people when they know nothing about them actually other then they were good warriors. the spartan treatment of the messenians was possibly the harshest in greece, as said before sparta was not really a city, just a bunch of buildings on a plain. the only significant thing about sparta really is their military training and prowess. they were not uber greeks.
They are uber greeks to those who visit the EB section: after all, EB is a game with model soldiers. Naturally, the city that produces the best soldiers in this game are the uber Greeks to the EBers.


think what QWERTY meant was that the Spartans didn't have many buildings that would have survived to this day anyway. Sparta was a group of villages on the Spartan plain.
Five, to be exact.


Helots werent treated worse than tousends of slaves in other city states. Athenians also lived from the slave workforce, but that were Athenians who wrote history... sad but true.
You see, a Greek is above other people in the Athenian point of view. Only Spartans enslaved Greeks.


I think the evidence is against you here. Athens unlike Sparta never faced a slave revolt nor appears to have even feared one (like Chios). Under the democracy Athens was able to repeatedly depend on it slaves in times of crisis (Marathon, Persian wars, Aginusae, during the civil war against the Thirty, Chaeronea…). Slaves at Athens may have been property in one household, but were not perpetual legal classes of state reconzied or owned property as were the helots. Slaves at Athens did enjoy some legal protections, and even the ability to force a sale to a new owner, in public they were effectively equal to Metrics, and could access the commercial courts, nor did they owe any subservience to any citizen aside from those from the oikos that owned then.

The Spartan helots could have been freed and were used in battles. At Plataea, the Helots on the field outnumbered their Spartiate masters by 7:1.

[Imperator]

Well, both cities used slaves, and both were imperial regional powers which surpressed and dominated their neighbors. The Spartan treatment of their conquered or slaves could be brutal- but so could the Athenian. In my opinion, both cities ought to be, as Polybios says, praised and blamed. However, (here starts the less politcally correct editorial) I prefer Athens over Sparta simply because Athenian society was, in general, more advanced. Sparta was able to expand its military power thanks to its incredibly militant lifestyle and culture, one that was entirely dependant on slave labor. Athens also grew powerful, but not at the expense of other parts of society. There were still Athenian traders and orators and sailors and farmers, but Sparta had only soldiers. Athenian culture was more sophisticated than Sparta in lots of ways.

but we should get back on topic. I have a couple historical suggestions to make:

1) SPARTANS WERE NOT SUPERMEN!!! Their military superiority came from DISCIPLINE AND ADVANCED TACTICS. They had a professional army, unlike the other Greeks, and were therefore able to execute better formations and movements and were simply better trained than their opponents. In Herodotus, there is a passage (I'd find it but I haven't got my copy with me) where an exiled king of Sparta is explaining to Xerxes why the Spartans are so dangerous. He claims the Spartans will claim twice or even thrice (is that a word?) their number in causalties if fought; Xerxes laughs and asks him if he could fight 3 men at once and still win but the Spartan says no, and niether could your average Spartan. BUT, when together, Spartans became the strongest soldiers in the world. SPARTANS WERE NO 'TOUGHER' THAN OTHER GREEKS, BUT BETTER DRILLED. please don't make them super-tough elite 2 hp mega-men. They were strong, no doubt about it, but it was their superior training and experience that made them so scary.

2) Sparta fought against the Achaien League and other Greek cities, not just Macedon. I don't know how you could include this, but I'm convinced that if Sparta should be made able to train Spartiates, the city should be more likely to riot or revolt (perhaps a retinue or trait? Spartan Reformist-can train Spartans but -60 Public Order?) so if you want to train Spartans, you'd better have a plan for keeping Sparta in your "alliance" so to speak

I don't think either one of those suggestions will be very popular, but I think they should be done for history's sake. Anyone agree? :sweatdrop:

[NeoSpartan]

....
but we should get back on topic. I have a couple historical suggestions to make:

1) SPARTANS WERE NOT SUPERMEN!!! ......

2) Sparta fought against the Achaien League and other Greek cities, not just Macedon. I don't know how you could include this, but I'm convinced that if Sparta should be made able to train Spartiates, the city should be more likely to riot or revolt (perhaps a retinue or trait? Spartan Reformist-can train Spartans but -60 Public Order?) so if you want to train Spartans, you'd better have a plan for keeping Sparta in your "alliance" so to speak

I don't think either one of those suggestions will be very popular, but I think they should be done for history's sake. Anyone agree? :sweatdrop:

Nahh, I don't think that would be a smart Idea. In EB the "Free Greeks" are KH, an alliance. And Historically this alliance wasn't succesful.

BUT in EB, KH is being used because it was the alliance of free Greek-City states that existed in 272BC. And the implementation of the Spartan hoplites in the game would reflect NOT historical accuracy but instead a historical "WHAT IF" KH was succesful, and expanded.

Now, if you want historical accuracy in the game, then the Greek City states should each be an "Indepented Faction", who are allied. BUT due to the AI being so dumb and since u only have control of 1 city, a small army, and small income, that alliance would not be able to hold off the Makedoians or Epirotes.

Because of these 2 points you can't have Sparta, or Athens, or Corinth, etc rebelling.

Now on to Spartan Hoplites:
-Yes they are NOT Supermen. But they were exelent fighters.
In the 6th and 5th century they were almost gods because all other cities fielded militia-like armies (citizens called to fight as hoplites). In the later years, many other nations had "Profesional Soldiers", men trained to fight, and men who fight year-round NOT in between harvests.
-So I say Spartans should be one of the strongest units, and IF Spartan Royal Gaurds where to be implemented, those should be almost the best infantry.

(I don't know about u guys, but I think there should be no 1-best-infantry units, because Makedon, Seleukia (sp), Rome, Potelemoi (sp), Backtria, Aedui, etc. All fielded elite, battle-hardened veterans. Not all factions had Top-Notch infantry units though)

[paullus]

Couple of points:

1) The Spartiates are not counter-factual: the agoge was active in 272 (if we are to believe Polybios), and fell in and out of Spartan practice over the next century.

2) The Spartiates were superior for far more than just discipline. The Spartan culture of warfare was unparalleled in most of the Greek world (you might could make comparisons to the Kretans and a few others); their culture of warfare (where war is a natural part of life, rather than an anomaly, as it is in most modern cultures) made them better soldiers. Add in excellent training, and a mythical reputation, and you have a powerful battlefield presence.

3) the Spartiates for EB are, for the most part, experienced mercenary veterans as well as participants in the agoge training. Spartans are attested in documents from most of the Hellenistic kingdoms (in Egypt, for instance, Spartan mercs fought in their own unit "The Lakonians" when most Hellenes fought in composite units), and would have returned from their service well ahead of the curve in both training and equipment.

[Trithemius]

I really don't care about the Spartans at all, I have to say. I am kinda interested in their odd system of government but I find the Roman Imperial legion a much more stirring martial display.

Maybe I am in the minority here? :)

[NeoSpartan]

Well.... I LIKE BOTH!!!

But the fact that Spartans were not in 7.4 make u want them in .8 even more.

[Censor]

The spartans are a quite a bit overblown. Just because they tried to hold off the inevitable at Thermopylae and decided to dedicate their lives to deathbringing doesn't make them invincible. Spartans should be just as good, but no better than any other elite infantry unit. No doubt Roman discipline, tactics, and arms could be more than a challenge for Sparta. Spartans vs. Alexander's hammer and anvil? Spartans vs. the mobility of horse archers? Please don't make them anything resembling Gaesatae at least.

[NeoSpartan]

Ok here is something I don't get::help:

-We we either have: People that Overblow Spartans and people who put them down????? WTF???:dizzy2:

I mean, those Spartans where some tough MFers. YES THEY WERE, THEY WERE NOT AVERAGE! But here is what happens, by 272BC Spartans were not the only Tough MFers around.

Spartans were trained from childhood to fight, and endure pain. (U can also add to that battle field expiriece for the Royal Guard):boxing:

BUT also: Triarii were Battle Harden Vets.:boxing:
Gaesatae Battle harden, but also Numb (a.k.a High):boxing:
Hypaspistai also battle harden:boxing:
Thorakitai Argyraspidai, these guys were the best of the Hypaspastai:boxing:
Cohors Evocata, battle harden vets. :boxing:
etc....:boxing:

What does this all mean?
-They were all MFers, Spartans were trained for years, the others had some trainning + lots of expiriece. Because of this, Spartans cannot be gods, but also they cannot be denied being tought MFers.

Should they be Hard to Kill: YES!
Should they be better than all Infantry units on a melee fight: NO!

p.s: Oh and obviesly, no infantry is going to penetrate an organized makedonian phalanx head on, on a flat terrain.

[Musopticon?]

Don't forget Kleruchoi Agemata and the various Basilikon units.

[Discoskull]

Ok here is something I don't get::help:

-We we either have: People that Overblow Spartans and people who put them down????? WTF???:dizzy2:

I mean, those Spartans where some tough MFers. YES THEY WERE, THEY WERE NOT AVERAGE! But here is what happens, by 272BC Spartans were not the only Tough MFers around.

Spartans were trained from childhood to fight, and endure pain. (U can also add to that battle field expiriece for the Royal Guard):boxing:

BUT also: Triarii were Battle Harden Vets.:boxing:
Gaesatae Battle harden, but also Numb (a.k.a High):boxing:
Hypaspistai also battle harden:boxing:
Thorakitai Argyraspidai, these guys were the best of the Hypaspastai:boxing:
Cohors Evocata, battle harden vets. :boxing:
etc....:boxing:

What does this all mean?
-They were all MFers, Spartans were trained for years, the others had some trainning + lots of expiriece. Because of this, Spartans cannot be gods, but also they cannot be denied being tought MFers.

Should they be Hard to Kill: YES!
Should they be better than all Infantry units on a melee fight: NO!

p.s: Oh and obviesly, no infantry is going to penetrate an organized makedonian phalanx head on, on a flat terrain.


Agreed, with a big stick.
:balloon2:

[QwertyMIDX]

The real issue is that in the 5th century the Spartans were the only professional soliders around. In the 3rd century there are a lot more professional soliders.

[Musopticon?]

Didn't Persia have standing army?

I'm not saying you are wrong, it's just what I've thought.

[NeoSpartan]

Didn't Persia have standing army?

I'm not saying you are wrong, it's just what I've thought.

Well, several units of the Persian army where not only profecional, but also elite. Like the Immortals. But thier equipment for a melee was very bad compared to the greeks.

Thats one of the reasons why the Persians were beat by the Greeks (Marathon, Platea, immense casualties at Thermopoly), and later Alexander.

[QwertyMIDX]

Didn't Persia have standing army?

I'm not saying you are wrong, it's just what I've thought.


Sort of, but more in the way Medieval noblity was a standing army. They were nobles who were expected to be fairly professional soliders, but they had a number of other jobs.

[Trithemius]

Sort of, but more in the way Medieval noblity was a standing army. They were nobles who were expected to be fairly professional soliders, but they had a number of other jobs.

Feudal armies are standing armies now? :inquisitive:

[QwertyMIDX]

That was kind of my point, the Persian army wasn't professional in the way the spartans were, even their elites.

[Trithemius]

That was kind of my point, the Persian army wasn't professional in the way the spartans were, even their elites.

Right-o!
The Persians seem to have had some "standing" forces (the royal guard), which would imply a certain degree of professionality. I don't know much about the Spartans in peacetime, but did they remain "under arms" at all times? I'm not sure about the definition of professional (a particularly fraught term, I have to say) you are using, but the Spartans seem to be a confusing blend of what we might consider "professional" and "militia" forces.

[Trithemius]

Looks like I killed this thread good. :sweatdrop:

[paullus]

I think people stopped caring: everyone was saying basically the same thing: "we're (moderately to insanely) eager to see the Spartans, but hope they won't be ubermenschen" yet arguing about it.

[QwertyMIDX]

Right-o!
The Persians seem to have had some "standing" forces (the royal guard), which would imply a certain degree of professionality. I don't know much about the Spartans in peacetime, but did they remain "under arms" at all times? I'm not sure about the definition of professional (a particularly fraught term, I have to say) you are using, but the Spartans seem to be a confusing blend of what we might consider "professional" and "militia" forces.

Basically from my point of view it boils down to the fact that the Spartans main, and pretty much only, job was to be soldiers. Their estates were tended by their wives and helot slaves so they would have time to continually practice the art of war. Even the Persian immortals seem to have been expect to care for their properties, which could be fairly large as the tended to be made up of fairly high ranking nobility. In fact they seem to have been quite a bit like the Makedonian companions in this regard, and it is even argued that Herodotus confused the Persian word for companion (Anûšiya) with the word for immortal (Anauša).

[Trithemius]

Basically from my point of view it boils down to the fact that the Spartans main, and pretty much only, job was to be soldiers. Their estates were tended by their wives and helot slaves so they would have time to continually practice the art of war.

How long did this "pure military" system persist? Was it operating in the EB time period or had it started to deterioate? Presumably the ratio of spartiates to perioikoi in military service must have started to become skewed in favour of the perioikoi as campaigns continued and the number of people able (or willing) to maintain spartiate status diminished steadily.


Even the Persian immortals seem to have been expect to care for their properties, which could be fairly large as the tended to be made up of fairly high ranking nobility. In fact they seem to have been quite a bit like the Makedonian companions in this regard, and it is even argued that Herodotus confused the Persian word for companion (Anûšiya) with the word for immortal (Anauša).

Presumably the immortals were maintained on some kind of feudal system in much the same way as the spartiates theoretically were. True military professionalism, to me, requires independence from economic concerns (except perhaps the debasement of currency...) which requires a monetary economy or direct state patronage (ala the court horse and foot of the Ottomans). Spartiates, on some level, were required to support themselves through the use of their lands and helots (and, correspondingly, lost their status when they were unable to do so); even though they were traditionally required to use their helots as their proxies for such things I do not think it is possible to say that the spartiate had no economic responsibilities. I would class them exceedingly well-practiced feudal troops, which arguably is as close as we get to genuine professionalism in this period; certainly they compared extreme well to other citizen forces.

Nitpicking perhaps, but it seems to me if you consider the immortals to be not entirely professional then you probably have to consider the spartiates the same way.

[Trithemius]

I think people stopped caring: everyone was saying basically the same thing: "we're (moderately to insanely) eager to see the Spartans, but hope they won't be ubermenschen" yet arguing about it.

Well, they certainly weren't the top soldiers by the time EB starts, surely? Their heyday was long gone!

[NeoSpartan]

Lets wait for the Spartans fellas....

I believe there will be PLENTY of talking (even arguing) when .8v comes out. :book:

[Trithemius]

Do we have to wait? I'm interested if I have *completely* the wrong end of the stick about the decline of the spartiate class. I am also interested in this curious idea of pre-modern "professionalism".