Quote Originally Posted by VandalCarthage
Is that not indeed what you're doing? There are copious amounts of social and martial trends and precedants that could lead one towards a number of conclusions; you take the outdated specifics of their appearance in battle, while we designed ours along the lines of an evolving population, as well as numerous actual archeaological examples of Spartan equipment. To quote another historian, "the Spartans did use archers," and were likewise not too steeped in their own traditions to shun everything the same traditions didn't necessarilly applaud.
Didn't they just start to use archers more because of the embarassing defeat at Sphacteria? Anyway, I don't think the Spartans of that age were too steeped in their tradition. That was the classical age, when they were still in their utopia. I'd think that the freeing of helots changed the Spartans a lot, and they'd need to adapt to survive, so changing by then isn't surprising.