Sparta

Sparte, or Lacedaemon

A city of Laconia (Peloponnese, southern Greece), at the northern end of the fertile Eurotas valley, protected by spectacular mountain barriers (Taygetus and Parnon) on either side. Prehistoric remains are few, although in the late Bronze (Mycenaean) Age there were habitation centers at Amyclae, three miles to the south of the later Sparta, and Therapne two miles to the southeast of the city. The Therapne settlement stood beside a sanctuary dedicated to a nature goddess and her helpers, later identified with Helen, her brothers the Dioscuri (Castor and Polydeuces [Pollux]) and her husband Menelaus; he and Helen were believed to have been buried there, and the shrine was known as the Menelaion. According to Homer's Iliad, Menelaus was the King of Sparta or Lacedaemon (a name used also, as Strabo points out, for the whole of Laconia and Messenia), whose wife's abduction by Paris supposedly caused the Trojan War.

During the tenth century BC Dorian invaders or immigrants settled in four or five villages around the acropolis, and these later coalesced into a town. Early Spartan history is a deeply obscure and profoundly disputed subject, owing to the propagandist efforts of later writers keenly interested in the city's constitution, of which certain details were preserved by Plutarch in a document known as the Great Rhetra, dating back to the eighth or (perhaps most probably) mid-seventh century. By this time there were two royal families of Sparta, the Agiads and Eurypontids—both claiming descent from Heracles—whose autocracy was modified by annual appointed officials (ephors), eventually five in number, and by a Council of Elders (gerousia) which prepared business for an assembly (apella), of which all Spartiates (free-born Spartans) over thirty years of age were members. The First Messenian War (c 740/720?) partially achieved the conquest of Messenia—adjoining Laconia to the west—and grouped the Messenians with the other Dorian or pre-Dorian serfs (helots) who were subjected to the Spartiates. Another section of the population, better off although not enjoying full rights, consisted of the perioeci, `dwellers round about.’ A group of Spartans founded Taras (Tarentum) in south Italy c 706. Although Sparta was badly defeated by Argos at Hysiae c 669, a prolonged Messenian rebellion (the Second Messenian War (c 650–620?) was successfully crushed; it prompted or encouraged the development at Sparta of a `new model’ army of heavy infantry (hoplites) manned by Spartiates, supplemented by perioeci.

During this century Sparta excelled in the arts of bronze work and ivory carving, and was also the principal home of Greek choral lyric poetry, composed by Tyrtaeus—military commander in the Second Messenian War—and Alcman and Thaletas, who immigrated from Lydia (?) and Gortyna (Crete) respectively (unless Alcman was a native Spartan). During the sixth century Stesichorus of Himera and Theognis of Megara resided at Sparta, and potters and painters produced wares of excellent quality. A great bronze mixing bowl of c 550 found at Vix in the interior of France is believed by some to be of Spartan origin.

But those of the craftsmen and artists who were natives must have been not Spartiates but perioeci. For by the late seventh or sixth century BC the rigorously austere, communal and totalitarian Spartiate socio-military institutions associated with the name of the semi-legendary Lycurgus had been introduced, with the aim of holding down the subject populations. This comprehensive reform was accompanied by a gradual elimination of exports and imports (in a society which was self-sufficient in essential food-stuffs), and eventually put an end to most cultural life.

By the end of the sixth century the Spartans presided over a League comprising most of the Peloponnese, and extending beyond its borders. Their success was partly due to their most famous ephor, Chilon, one of the Seven Sages. They suffered one serious defeat in c 550 when their troops failed to reduce Tegea in Arcadia to subject status, but even Tegea became a member of their League shortly afterward; and according to Herodotus their other wars of the period proved successful. Sparta was not acknowledged as the leading power in Greece. It became the ally of King Croesus of Lydia, and gained a name for action against autocratic governments in other city-states. Thus a Spartan force helped to attack Polycrates of Samos, and Cleomenes I overthrew Hippias at Athens (510). His two subsequent interventions there were unsuccessful, but he won a complete victory over Argos at Sepeia (c 494).

In the Persian War of 480–479 Sparta fought at Thermopylae (where King Leonidas I conducted his heroic defence), at Salamis (where another Spartan Eurybiades was, at least nominally, the allied commander), and at Plataea (under the regent Pausanias). After the wars, however, the Spartans were obliged to acquiesce in the naval hegemony of Athens, especially when weakened by a Third Messenian War (c 469 or c 464) and an earthquake (464). But then came the first outbreak of hostilities against the Athenians (460–446), terminated by the Thirty Years' Peace which implicitly recognized the Athenians' right to their empire. Despite many vicissitudes the Peloponnesian War against Athens (431–404), fought in alliance with Corinth and Thebes, resulted in the total victory of the Spartans, after the final naval victory of Lysander at Aegospotami (405). The active Spartan imperialism that followed, including a war conducted against the Persians by Agesilaus II (396/5), at first received encouragement from the King's Peace (or Peace of Antalcidas) imposed by the Persians in 387, but was then abruptly brought to an end by defeat at the hands of the reorganized Boeotian (Theban) League at Leuctra (371).

By this time there were only 2,000 Spartiates, in contrast to 8,000 in 480, and a period of isolation and decline followed. Agis III led a movement against Alexander the Great while the latter was in Asia, but was defeated and killed by Antipater at Megalopolis (331). Until this time, it was said, Sparta had used bars of iron as money; its first coinage, depicting the archaic statue of Apollo of Amyclae, belonged to the reign of King Areus (c 312–265). Remarkable moves by Agis IV (244–241) and Cleomenes III (235–222) to restore Spartan power, by means of a new heady blend of traditionalism and social revolution, ended in Cleomenes' overthrow by the Macedonians and Achaeans at Sellasia. A further attempted revolutionary revival by Nabis (207–192) terminated in his defeat by the Roman general Flamininus, once again joined by the Achaeans, whose League Sparta was thereupon compelled to join.

After the abolition of the Achaean League by the Romans, Sparta was loosely attached to their province of Macedonia-Achaea (146). The Spartan Lachares was executed by Antony for piracy, but his son Eurycles fought against Antony at Actium (31), on the side of Octavian (the future Augustus), who rewarded him with Roman citizenship and with an enlargement of Spartan territory. Eurycles displayed on his coinage a bust of Sparte, the mythical daughter of Eurotas and wife of Lacedaemon. He was succeeded (before 2 BC) by his son Gaius Julius Lacon—who was demoted by Tiberius, restored by Gaius (Caligula), and still in power under Claudius (AD 41–54). Thereafter Sparta reverted to the position of a free city associated with the province of Achaea, enjoying a remarkable revival in the second century and issuing coinage until the reign of Gallienus (253–68). During his reign, however, it was subjected to a destructive raid by the German Heruli (267), and following reconstruction (according to a new town plan) suffered further severe damage from the Visigoth Alaric (395).

Thucydides remarked of Sparta that one cannot judge the importance of a city by its architecture. Our principal evidence for the early settlement comes from excavations of the Sanctuary of Orthia (later assimilated to Artemis) in the village of Limnae on the west bank of the Eurotas. An earthen altar was replaced c 725 BC by a simple stone temple within a walled precinct, and in c 570 the entire sanctuary was redesigned, perhaps as a result of the flooding of the Eurotas. Numerous small bronze figures (especially of animals) and more then 10,000 lead figurines have been found on the site. It was here that the `Contest of the Whips’ was held, in which Spartan youths were flogged in an initiation rite to prove their virility; this ordeal was revived in Roman times as an advertisement of Sparta's historic past and in order to attract tourists, for whose benefit seating accommodation was constructed.

The site of the temple of Athena Poliouchus on the acropolis, also known as the Bronze House (Chalcioecus) from the bronze sheeting with which it was decorated, has yielded material from the early first millennium BC, and was rebuilt in the sixth century. An inscription of c 403/400 (?) records a racing stable owned by a certain Damonon. A theater of Hellenistic date, built into the western slope of the acropolis, is well preserved, and at the citadel's southeastern end are traces of an agora and portico (stoa). Below the hill was a small temple, popularly known as the `Tomb of Leonidas,’ though this structure, too, is not to be dated earlier than the third century BC. South of the modern bridge over the Eurotas a building complex of no less than six phases has come to light. Substantial remains of late Roman fortifications have survived, and traces of porphyry quarries can be seen on Spartan territory (at Krokeai). The first stone shrine in the neighborhood dating from c 700, was the Menelaion at Therapne (see above), and Pausanias writes of a number of other temples on the roads leading out of the city.

See map ofGreece.