Debunking Myths: Sparta's "Exceptional" Oppression of Helots or Finding Freedom in Lacedaemon

Almost as persistent and widespread as the popular beliefs about Spartan brutality, ignorance, homosexuality and lack of culture is the view that the Spartans were exceptionally brutal and oppressive to their slaves, the helots.

Yet in 413 BC, according to Thucydides, an estimated 20,000 Athenian slaves ran away to the Spartans.  For these oppressed and exploited individuals, the Spartans were liberators. 

 

 Helots enjoyed significant privileges that chattel slaves in the rest of the ancient world did not. First and foremost, they lived in family units, could marry at will and raise their own children.  Almost equally significant, they could retain half their earnings.  Such income could be substantial, as is demonstrated by the fact that no less than 6,000 helots were able to raise the significant sum of five attic minae necessary to purchase their freedom in 369 BC, according to Xenophon.

In contrast, chattel slaves had no family life and their children belonged – literally – not to them but their masters.  As to the fruits of their labor, these accrued exclusively to their masters, and even freed slaves (at least in the case of former prostitutes) had to surrender some of their earnings in perpetuity to their former masters after their manumission. In Athens, furthermore, slaves could be tortured for evidence in trials against their masters, because the Athenians believed a slave’s word was worthless unless obtained under torture – a bizarre and chilling attitude to fellow human beings.

I would like to note, further, that Athens’ economy was no less dependent on slaves than Sparta’s was on helots. Slaves worked Athens silver mines -- under appalling and dehumanizing conditions worse than any horror story told of helots even by Sparta’s worst enemies. Slaves also provided essential agricultural labor and manned the workshops that made Athens famous for its handcrafts. Even the statues on the acropolis, the wonder of all the world to this day, were largely the work of slaves, who earned “wages” only for their master’s pockets and had to make do with whatever scraps he deigned to give them.

Defenders of Athens are apt to point out that Athens’ laws prohibited the execution of slaves and no one but the slave’s own master was allowed to flog a slave.  In contrast, war was declared on Spartan slaves annually and an organization, the kryptea, allegedly existed solely for the purpose of eliminating potentially rebellious helots.  These Spartan customs are indeed harsh, but they should also be viewed in perspective.

First, according to Plutarch, both the annual declaration of war and the creation of the kyrptea post-date the helot revolt of 465 and have no place in the Golden Age of Sparta, the archaic period.  Second, even after the helot revolt and the onset of Spartan decline, we know of only a single incident in which helots were in fact executed without cause.  According to Thucydides, in ca. 425/424, 2,000 helots were led to believe they would be freed, were garlanded and paraded through the city, only to then “disappear.” Everyone presumes they were killed.  

If this really happened as described, it was an unprecedented atrocity. If true, it besmirches the record of Sparta for eternity. It would nonetheless also still be only an isolated incident. Beside this atrocity, I would like to place as exhibit B the slaughter of the entire male population of island city-state of Melos by Athens in 416. Melos was a free city. It’s only “crime” was to remain neutral in the Peloponnesian war. Yet Athens subjugated the city, slaughtered the adult males and made all the women and children chattel slaves. I’d call that an atrocity too – and every bit as bad as the disappearance of 2,000 helots.

There is no doubt about what happened to Melos. We have many sources and know the fate of many individuals that further verify and illuminate the brutality of the event.  But the story of the 2,000 helots has only a single – albeit usually reliable – source: Thucydides.  As Nigel Kennell in his book Spartans: A New History notes, Thucydides’ dating of the incident must be off because at exactly the same time (425/4) Brasidas was recruiting helots to fight with him – something he did successfully.  Why would young men have been willing to volunteer to fight with Brasidas (which they most certainly did), if they had just seen 2,000 of their fellows slaughtered? It is so unreasonable to believe helots would have volunteered if the alleged massacre had just taken place, that Kennel concludes that Thucydides was referring to an incident that had occurred at some vague/unknown time in the past.

That is surely one explanation, since after Brasidas’ helots had proved their worth as soldiers, i.e. after they had proved just how dangerous they could be to the Spartiates, no less than 700 of them were liberated by a vote in the Spartan Assembly. This means that, if Thucydides is correct and the Spartans had once been so afraid of strong, healthy helots that they slaughtered 2,000 of them before they were trained to bear arms, by 421 a majority of Spartan citizens had no qualms about freeing 700 helots, who were not only healthy, but trained and experienced fighting men. Why would they free these 700 hundred after killing 2,000 others? It doesn’t add up, and so the story of the murder of the 2000 has to be questioned.

While it is possible Thucydides was describing an earlier event, it is almost certain that the only evidence he had was hearsay. The modern historian should not exclude the possibility that the entire “atrocity” was either a gross exaggeration or outright propaganda.

And who would have a greater interest in spreading rumors of such an atrocity than Athens itself? An Athens, whose slaves were deserting in droves by 413.  One thing is clear: those 20,000 Athenian slaves, who turned themselves over to Spartan mercy, did not expect to be slaughtered. Either they had not heard the “truth” about how the Spartans “really” treated their helots, or they didn’t believe the stories they were told by their Athenian masters.

Thucydides is silent on what happened to those 20,000 former Athenian slaves, either because he doesn’t know – or it wouldn’t fit into his neat polemic against Spartan brutality.  We know, however, that Sparta’s citizen population had already declined dramatically by the end of the 5^th Century BC and yet Sparta kept fighting and winning battles. It did so by relying more and more on non-citizen soldiers, and a fleet manned by non-Spartiates. It is also in this period that the first references to a curious new class of people, the “Neodamodeis,” emerge in literature.  The most common interpretation of this term is that these “New Citizens” were freed helots or the children of Spartiate men by helot women.  There is, however, no reason to assume that some of these new citizens were not freed Athenian slaves as well. If so, then these men surely found freedom in Lacedaemon.

The Making of Sparta - the Messenian War(s)

Arguably, nothing was more important to the evolution of Sparta into a city-state with a radically unique constitution than the Spartan conquest of Messenia. W.G. Forrest argues, for example, that the conquest of its agriculturally rich neighbor reduced the need for distant colonies and so the interest in the wider world, while the agricultural basis of Spartan wealth reduced Sparta’s interest in industry and trade. Others argue that the conquest of such a vast territory and the subjugation of an entire people resulted in permanent fear of revolt that in turn created the need for a militaristic state. Sparta as we know it – with its unique institutions from the agoge to citizens permanently under arms – is a function of its conflict with Messenia.

 

The pass between Lacadaemon and Messenia through the Taygetos Mountains.
 

Modern histories of Sparta tend to brush over the Messenian War(s) in considerable haste and without providing a great deal of detail. The reason is obvious. As Paul Cartledge stresses in Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300 to 362 BC (one of the few general histories of Sparta to focus seriously on the early history), the literary evidence is almost nil and the archeological evidence ambiguous. Indeed, he describes Tyrtaios, a poet whose works have been handed down to us only in fragments, as the “only” reliable literary source, while pointing out that the ancient sources Herodotus and Thucydides refer to only one war.

 

The facts of conquest which are undisputed are quickly summarized: Sparta controlled Messenia completely by the start of the 6th century BC. Sometime in the 7th Century, during the life of the poet Tyrtaios, Sparta was engaged in a bitter struggle with the Messenians, a struggle that Tyrtaios clearly describes as one involving pitched battles between hoplites (though not phalanxes). Tyrtaios furthermore refers in his poems to the great deeds of “our father’s fathers,” which is usually interpreted to mean that the initial conquest of Messenia occurred two generations earlier. Tyrtaios also speaks of a struggle that lasts 20 years. Both the references, however, may be purely poetical; the first may mean little more than “our forefathers,” and the latter be a literary device to stress that it was “a long struggle” by making the fight in Messenia exactly twice as long as the conquest of Troy. Archeologically, we can trace a gradual expansion of Laconian influence into Messenia starting in the late 8th Century.

We also know that in the first quarter of the 7th century BC, Sparta adopted a new constitution attributed to Lycurgus. (There has been scholarly debate about the exact dating of the Spartan constitution, but W.G. Forrest’s arguments dating the Spartan revolution to the period between 700 and 670 are cogent and convincing. See A History of Sparta, 950-192 BC, pp. 55-58.) Furthermore, we know that Sparta’s only colony was established at the turn or very end of the 8th Century BC, traditionally in 706 BC. Both the introduction of a radical, new constitution sanctioned explicitly by Delphi and the establishment of a colony are attributed by ancient sources to internal unrest in Sparta.

Conventionally, these facts are woven together as follows: Sparta invaded and conquered Messenia in the late 8th Century, subjugating the local Messenian population. This conquest was allegedly followed by a period of intense internal unrest that led, first, to the founding of Sparta’s only colony, and second to the Lycurgan reforms. The later, however, are usually dated to the lifetime of Tyrataios and therefore, implemented during a second period of conflict with Messenia, usually described as “the Second” Messenian war. If one presumes that Sparta won the initial conflict with Messenia, this can only be explained by a revolt of some kind. So the allegedly brutally oppressed Messenians were -- within just two generations -- capable of financing hoards of hoplites and fielding entire hoplite armies.

This taxes my imagination. Periods of intense domestic unrest rarely follow victorious wars – particularly not wars of conquest that have greatly increased the wealth of a state. Likewise, slave revolts do not involve pitched battles between hoplite armies and don’t take two decades to defeat.

The history of modern revolutions shows that revolutions most commonly occur during economic crises or after military defeats. Classical revolution theory says that revolutions occur when a period of rising living standards and expectations ends abruptly in a crisis that threatens recent gains. If we apply this to the Spartan revolution we get some interesting hypotheses – that square remarkably well with the (scanty) historical record.

What if, following a period of growing prosperity, productivity and population, Sparta’s kings/leadership decided to conquer neighboring Messenia, invaded – and then got bogged down in a terrible war that they failed to win? What if, to obtain/retain support, Sparta’s kings and aristocratic elite promised the poorer and lower classes land in Messenia? What if they then couldn’t deliver on that promise? What if, as the war dragged on, casualties mounted, and popular support for a lost war waned? What if, the Messenians became increasingly successful and aggressive, bringing the war to Laconia?

Such a situation would have produced all the features of mid-seventh century Sparta that we know existed: the domestic unrest, the calls for a redistribution of land, impetus for the founding of an external colony, and finally readiness to accept a new, revolutionary constitution and lifestyle – as well as the continuing conflict with organized, well-armed Messenian forces.

Furthermore, if Sparta lost the First Messenian War (at least in the sense that it did not obtain its objectives) and it took three generations to subdue the Messenians, then we have a better explanation of why Sparta became a militarized society. Only sustained conflict and perpetual threat could force a society to adapt a system of government that is so singularly focused on ensuring military preparedness at all times.

The paranoid excesses of late classical Sparta (e.g. the krypteia) followed the Helot Revolt of 465, but they probably took the disproportionate form the did because there was still popular memory of the first lost war. A first lost war that traumatized Sparta would explain why Sparta responded with unparalleled harshness toward the rebellious Messenians two hundred years later. We need only consider how memories of past wars still shape, for example, British-Irish, or Russian-Polish relations today. I believe it was more likely the trauma of a lost war than an unbroken series of victories by an invincible army that made Sparta what it was.

 

  Are They Singing in Sparta? (ebook: A Song for Sparta)  is a novel set during the Messenian War:

Buy Now!

 

Sparta Lost and Found

Unlike Athens, that remained inhabited from the archaic period to the present day without interruption, Sparta was not only defeated and humiliated, it was destroyed by earthquakes, flooding and ultimately abandoned. When the Franks and the Ottomans came, there was not even a village to mark the site of Ancient Sparta.

Equally devastating was the lack of a Spartan literary tradition. A society that placed value on silence and brevity did not produce historians or play writes, and while Spartan philosophers were admired throughout the rest of the ancient world, they preferred an oral to a written tradition.

The combination of these factors, a lack of a written record, the dispersal of any inhabitants that might have kept an oral tradition alive and the physical destruction of the city, left subsequent generations with an image of Sparta that derives entirely from the accounts of outsiders. Many commentators on Sparta, even in ancient times, had never been there – or at most visited briefly. Some, like Xenophon, knew Sparta relatively well, but remained fundamentally Athenian. Trying to understand Sparta on the basis of the accounts of Athenians and Romans is like trying to understand Africa from the reports of Victorian explorers.  It won’t get you very far.

Our images of Sparta, the city, are dominated to this day by what we have been told about Sparta and Spartans by these visitors from a different culture. Even someone who has never studied Sparta or read a single book about it has images of Sparta that have been transmitted through our language alone.  “Spartan” is an adjective used to denote “severe,” “plain,” and “austere.” Laconic speech is “terse,” “concise” and “economical.” The most rudimentary and fleeting brush with Sparta in literature will not be without reference to rigid discipline, disdain for luxury, self-sacrifice and endurance of hardship.

The more a novice looks into Spartan society, the quicker he/she is confronted by references to a childhood of deprivation in which one had to steal to get enough to eat and was allowed only one garment per year. The boys, we learn, had to cut down the river reeds with their bare hands or the help of a tool which is dismissed as practically worthless, and then sleep upon these instead of real beds. Worse, they had to live practically in the wild, exposed to the elements without shelter or proper clothes.  Books like Gates of Fire describe horrendous beatings to which Spartan boys were apparently subjected for any tiny infraction of the rigid rules of acceptable behavior.

Nor are youths the only Spartans whom, we are led to believe, suffered deprivation. This was a society, according to most sources, where women were prohibited from wearing jewelry or even taking pride in their weaving. Indeed, all gold and silver was banned, and so could adorn nothing - not even the temples of the Gods.  The houses, we are told, were not painted (as else where in the Ancient world), and if one believes the oft quoted “sayings of Spartan kings” they did not even hew their house beams into regular square posts, but left them raw and untreated – one imagines crude timber as in a log cabin. Meanwhile, the young men lived in barracks (notoriously grim places in any society!) and for their entire lives ate their meals at men’s clubs where the cuisine, we soon learn, was infamous throughout the ancient world for its lack of sophistication and variety.

Such a society is most readily imagined in an austere, plain, indeed barren, landscape.  After all, a society characterized by deprivation of food, clothes, decoration and fine cuisine sounds like a desperately poor society, a society barely surviving in a hostile environment, a society which has made a virtue out of necessity. It is logical to assume that the underlying – if unspoken – root cause of Sparta’s obsession with self-discipline and self-denial for the good of the community, the City, was a fundamental lack of resources that required such a rigid regime.

This assumption is reflected in modern literature about Sparta. In his best-selling novel Gates of Fire Stephen Pressfield calls Sparta “a village” adding: “The whole stinking place would fit, with room to spare, within His Majesty’s [Xerxes of Persia’s] strolling garden at Persepolis. It is … a pile of stones. It contains no temples or treasures of note, no gold; it is a barnyard of leeks and onions, with soil so thin a man may kick through it with one strike of the foot.”[i]

But there is a problem here.

If you drive down the modern road from Tripoli (or Tegea as I prefer to think of it) toward Sparti (Sparta) there is a moment when coming around a bend you catch the first glimpse of Taygetos. I will never forget the first time I encountered that view: it took my breath away.  I could hardly concentrate on the winding road for straining to get another glimpse of those spectacular, snow-capped mountains. And when the valley of the Eurotas was spread out before me it was like revelation. My image of Sparta – Ancient Sparta and all that Sparta implied – was transformed in a single instant.

The valley of the Eurotas is anything but barren! It is quite the reverse. It is green and fertile and stunningly beautiful - like riches cupped in the hands of the gods. From the blooming oleander to the wild iris, the valley is a garden. The orange orchards stretch as far as the eye can see, brazenly advertising not only the abundance of soil and sun but water as well. Most spectacular of all, the Eurotas valley is one of those few places on earth that offers the sensually stimulating sight of palm trees waving against a back-drop of snow-capped mountains.

Has Laconia perhaps changed dramatically in the last 2,500 years? Was it poor when the harsh, economical, self-disciplined Spartan society took root in its – then – sparse and almost barren soil?  Does it bloom now artificially because of modern fertilizers and irrigation?

If we are to believe the ancient historians, no. Herodotus speaks of Sparta’s “good soil”[ii] or Thucydides describes the entire Peloponnese (with the exception of Arcadia) as the “richest part of Hellas.”[iii] It is when speaking of Athens, that Thucydides draws attention to “the poverty of her soil.”[iv]

So the fertility and abundance of the valley has not changed since Ancient times any more than the shape of Taygetos beyond. But if this rich valley was the seat of Sparta, then Spartan austerity and deprivation did not come from necessity! Sparta’s land was rich, fertile and productive enough to enable the highest standard of living available in the ancient world – at least to the always modest number of elite Spartiates. In short, if Sparta was as austere a society as it is depicted in modern times, then that austerity was self-imposed.

But is it reasonable to imagine that a people raised in the midst of wealth and beauty had no appreciation for either? Or is the very austerity of Spartan society as mythical as the thin soil of Pressfield’s Sparta?

Maybe our images of a rigid, harsh and brutally disciplined society is also a distortion? A fractured image? A misunderstanding based on ignorant, or prejudiced foreign reporting? Imagine what American society looks like through the eyes of the Taliban!

It's because I firmly believe that modern images of Sparta a largely based on inadequate, hostile and sometimes purely fanciful source material that I have dedicated this blog and my website “Sparta Reconsidered” to questioning common assumptions and misconceptions about Sparta.

---

[i] Pressfield, p. 188

[ii] Herodotus, Book I.66, p.26.

[iii] Thucydides, Book I.2, p.36.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Nicastro, p. 67

[vi] Pausanias, III.10. p. 37.

Suffering at Symposiums - Or a major difference between Sparta and Athens

In modern usage, the word symposium has come to mean “a conference organized for the discussion of some particular subject,” “a collection of opinions, especially a published group of essays,” or “any meeting or social gathering at which ideas are freely exchanged.”  The ancient Greek roots of the word have misled many into imagining that ancient symposiums resembled modern symposiums and were also primarily intellectual events.

 

Little could be farther from the truth. Ancient symposiums resembled drunken stag parties more than a modern symposium.  As a rule, large quantities of wine were consumed, maybe a few poems were recited (more likely dirty little ditties making fun of one’s elders, opponents or rivals), politics might be discussed (not necessarily at a niveau above that of a modern pub) and then there was a lot of drunken singing, or the participants competed in such “elevated” activities as seeing who could throw their wine farthest, while being entertained and/or serviced by prostitutes and the ancient equivalent of strip-tease dancers, before staggering home too drunk to see straight and requiring (sober) slaves to ensure a safe arrival. 

It was not uncommon for drunken bands of youth from rival symposiums to end up brawling in the streets, and the even a leading statesman such as Alcibiades could be accused of committing large-scale sacrilege with his friends after a symposium.  In short, ideas and politics might have been discussed occasionally at some of symposiums, but a symposium was primarily about male indulgence in excessive drink and sex -- not intellectual exchange.

Anyone familiar with Spartan society will understand why the Spartans disdained such activities and why Spartan authorities instituted laws (like not being allowed to light a torch at night) to prevent their young men from being seduced into such activities. But there is another feature of Athenian symposiums which was equally un-Spartan: the exploitation of women.

As James Davidson makes clear in his seminal work on Athenian society Courtesans and Fishcakes, a good Athenian host boasted about the “beautiful girls” and “babes” he would offer his guests. Since no respectable woman (wife, mother or daughter) was allowed to show her face or set foot in a symposium, all the women present were sexual objects, and almost all were slaves. Yes, there were the occasional so-called “hetaere” that like Japanese geishas were trained to cater to a more sophisticated clientele by having a smattering of education and skills such as playing instruments or singing, but very few of these women were free.  They too had to surrender all or some of their earnings to their owner (pimp). And hetaere were the “privileged” prostitutes, the “admired” prostitutes – what we might call “call girls” today or “courtesans” in the 17^th and 18^th century. But it only went downhill from here – to flute girl, household slave and “sex-worker” in a brothel.

 

As Anton Powell notes in Athens and Sparta: Constructing Greek Political and Social History from 478 BC (London: 1988), prostitution was widespread, taxed, and consorting with prostitutes was considered perfectly normal and in no way reprehensible, even for youth of the upper-classes -- in Athens.  The only social restriction on male intercourse with prostitutes was that it was considered bad taste for a married man to bring a prostitute into the house where his wife lived, or to spend the money he received from his wife’s dowry on expensive prostitutes.  Powell also notes, however, that it was common for men to maintain concubines under the same roof as their legal wives, and that sex with slave girls did not even count as infidelity in the Athenian courts. Clearly, Athens was a paradise for the sexually active male.

The “pleasures” of Athenian society, and especially of symposiums, were restricted – as was democracy, intellectual achievement, and artistic creativity – to that half of Athens’ population that was male. Respectable women were excluded from the symposium, just as they were excluded from drinking wine, eating fish or meat, exercise, education and political rights.  As for the women allowed to participate in symposium, with very few exceptions, they were slaves with no choice in where they went, who they serviced, or what they were asked to do.  They did not even receive compensation for their services, since the high prices paid by the customers went to their male owners, enriching him, not them. For the women of ancient Athens, symposiums were torture chambers. 

 

It is to Sparta's credit that no such abuse -- much less the glorification of the abuse of women and children as these symposiums represented -- was sanctioned or recorded in Spartan society.

The Messenian War(s) Re-examined

Last week I noted that no event shaped Sparta’s early history more dramatically than the conquest of Messenia. Despite all the uncertainties surrounding it, historians agree that Spartan control of Messenia shaped its society and policy for centuries thereafter.  The conventional account of the Messenian war, however, suggests that Sparta fought two wars, and was victorious in both, but nevertheless experienced a period of severe domestic unrest between the two wars that resulted in the founding of Sparta’s only known colony and in the introduction of the Lycurgan constitution. Periods of intense domestic unrest, however, rarely follow victorious wars – particularly not wars of conquest that have greatly increased the wealth of a state. Likewise, slave revolts do not involve pitched battles between hoplite armies and don’t take two decades to defeat.

The history of modern revolutions shows that revolutions most commonly occur during economic crises or after military defeats. Classical revolution theory says that revolutions occur when a period of rising living standards and expectations ends abruptly in a crisis that threatens recent gains.  If we apply this to the Spartan revolution we get some interesting hypotheses – that square remarkably well with the (scanty) historical record.

What if, following a period of growing prosperity, productivity and population, Sparta’s kings/leadership decided to conquer neighboring Messenia – and then got bogged down in a terrible war that they failed to win? What if, to obtain/retain support, Sparta’s kings and aristocratic elite promised the poorer and lower classes land in Messenia? What if they then couldn’t deliver on that promise?  What if, as the war dragged on, casualties mounted, and popular support for a lost war waned? What if, the Messenians became increasingly successful and aggressive, bringing the war to Laconia? (Remember all those legends of Aristomenes raiding Spartan temples and disrupting Spartan festivals?)

Such a situation would have produced all the features of mid-seventh century Sparta that we know existed: the domestic unrest, the calls for a redistribution of land, impetus for the founding of an external colony, and finally readiness to accept a new, revolutionary constitution and lifestyle – as well as the continuing conflict with organized, well-armed Messenian forces. 

Furthermore, if Sparta lost the First Messenian War (at least in the sense that it did not obtain its objectives) and it took three generations to subdue the Messenians, then we have a better explanation of why Sparta became a militarized society. Only sustained conflict and perpetual threat could force a society to adapt a system of government that is so singularly focused on ensuring military preparedness at all times.

The paranoid excesses of late classical Sparta (krypteia, mass executions, etc.) followed the Helot Revolt of 465, but they probably took the disproportionate form they did because there was still popular memory of the first lost war. A first lost war that traumatized Sparta would explain why Sparta responded with unparalleled harshness toward the rebellious Messenians two hundred years later. We need only consider how memories of past wars still shape, for example, British-Irish, or Russian-Polish relations today. It is more likely that the trauma of a lost war rather than an unbroken series of victories by an invincible army made Sparta what it was.

Note: The next two weeks I will be in Lacedaemon and unable to update this blog.

Marathon, Religion and Military Preparedness in Sparta

In 490 BC, the Persians landed a large force on the plain of Marathon.  This military expedition had already crushed the city-state of Eretria, and Athens saw its very existence threatened.  Athens at once sent a runner to Sparta begging for aid. The Spartans notoriously agreed to come only after the full moon. The delay resulted in the Spartans missing the battle of Marathon altogether. 

This Spartan delay in responding to an urgent summons has puzzled historians for almost two thousand years.  Herodotus stated explicitly that "it was the ninth day of the month, and they [the Spartans] could not take the field until the moon was full," which most historians take to mean that Sparta was celebrating the Carneia and out of piety delayed deployment. Plato, however, claimed that the Spartans arrived too late for the Battle of Marathon because they were delayed by a helot revolt, an uncorroborated theory that has become very popular with modern historians. More recently, W. P Wallace in his article, “Kleomenes, Marathon, the Helots, and Arkadia,” (The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 74 (1954), pp. 32-35) suggests that King Cleomenes was creating so much anti-Spartan sentiment among the Arkadian cities that the Spartans could not risk deploying their army until King Cleomenes was back in Sparta. In my essay "The Importance of Marathon for Sparta -- and Leonidas," I argue that since the Spartan army was then always commanded by one of her kings and King Cleomenes was either in Arkadia or mad and King Leotychidas was either still on Aegina or discredited that the Spartans needed to select a non-royal commander which in turn required the approval of the Spartan Assembly -- a procedure that took (a finite and predictable amount of) time. (I.e. "after the full moon.")

Yet the bottom line is that all these theories – helot uprising, Arkadian discontent, or a crisis in command – are essentially the product of dissatisfaction with the explanation provided by Herodotus: a religious festival. Before we reach for alternative explanations, however, we ought to admit to ourselves that we know very little about Spartan religious festivals. Most especially, we do not how they affected the readiness of the Spartan army. The assumption that a religious festival might delay departure of the army simply because of pious scruples may be entirely wrong. 

What if, for example, the Spartan Army was given leave during religious festivals, or reduced to a skeleton of “duty officers” for each unit? It is certainly normal for religious festivals, in all cultures over all times, to be family occasions. Why should Sparta have been any different?  The very fact that there is no mention of how “odd” the Spartans were in this regard suggests that their behavior was conform to other Greeks and elicited no comment.

A family holiday in Sparta might have implied that even the young men were exempt from sleeping in barracks and all men exempt from dining at their messes.  Again, the fact that this is not explicitly mentioned is no evidence that it is not possible. There is no mention of men being exempt from duty and collective dining to participate in the Olympic Games either, but Spartan athletes were very prominent at the Olympics and they had to train in Elis for a month before the events just like all the other competitors. Likewise, Spartan spectators at the Games could not be eating and sleeping in Sparta while they were at Olympia. In short, the rules about living in barracks and eating at the messes where for “ordinary” days.  The Olympics, war, and, arguably, religious festivals would have been “extraordinary” or “exceptional” days.

We know, further, that Spartans all had at least one state kleros, and that wealthier Spartans had more extensive estates.  Without knowing the yield of an acre of land using 5^th Century agricultural methods, I have no way of estimating just how large a kleros had to be to support a man and his family, and without knowing how large a kleros had to be, I cannot estimate how many could have been located within easy walking/riding distance of Sparta’s barracks and messes. However, I think it is fair to say that not all 8,000 – 9,000 kleroi could have been within a couple-hours reach of the heart of Sparta.  It is far more likely, that many kleros were more than a half-day, even a day or two, away from Sparta.  Some may even have been located in Messenia, on the far side of Taygetos, or on Kythera.  Reaching these estates to check up on things, and to collect rents, would have taken Spartans away from Sparta for days on end.

The requirement to be present in Sparta most of the time, meant that most of the time the estates were left in the hands of helots, perioikoi overseers or wives.  Yet the fact that Spartiates were absent from their estates most of the time only reinforces the need to be present some of the time.  Particularly if Spartiate/Helot relations were as bad as most people make them out to be, no Spartan could afford to leave his kleros entirely in the hands of his helots or even perioikoi overseers. It would have been necessary for Spartiate landlords to periodically visit their estates in order to ensure nothing was so mismanaged as to endanger payment of his syssitia and, if he had sons, agoge fees. If a kleros was left to a wife, the desire to visit periodically would have been even greater, particularly if there were young children with her.

In short, Spariates would have periodically travelled to their distant kleros and while doing so they would have been excused both from their military duties and exempted from eating at their syssitia.  Probably, any man could apply for leave to go to his estates whenever it suited him. Possibly, it was traditional for men to go to their estates during holidays, when men were given leave to be with their families in any case.

For the wealthier Spartiates from the so-called “better” families, the 400-500 families that made up Sparta’s elite, the need to visit estates would have been even more acute than for the poorest with only one kleros.  The elite would have had multiple estates to look after, horse-farms, kennels, orchards etc.  They would have needed to be away from Sparta even more often than the poor. And it was this elite that, at least in the later years of the 5^th Century, occupied most of the positions of authority, power and command in the Spartan state and army.

What this means is that Pheidippides may have arrived in Sparta when the entire Spartan army was dispersed and the commanders scattered about Lacedaemon on their distant estates. The ephors would have needed to recall at least the members of the Gerousia and the officers of the army as well as cancel leave for those units they wanted to send to the aid of Athens. The ephors could, I suspect, calculate pretty accurately how long it would take messengers to reach the lochagoi and other senior officers, and how long they would need call up their troops and get them ready to march.  That time frame alone – and nothing so impenetrable as piousness, helot revolts, foreign policy considerations, or even command uncertainties – might have determined the date the Spartan army marched out to Marathon.  

Leonidas Twice

Leonidas! The Hero of Thermopylae. In 480 BC he would defy an army half a million strong. 

But who was he?

The Leonidas Trilogy tells his story in three novels. From his boyhood in the infamous Spartan agoge to the final stand of the 300 at Thermopylae, I have sought to bring Leonidas and his wife Gorgo to life. To explain them. To understand them. To give them substance and spirit.

This is Sparta! As you've never seen it before. The Leonidas Trilogy - A Video Teaser.

Leonidas and the Kings of Sparta: Mightiest Warriors, Fairest Kingdom by Alfred S. Bradford is in contrast about the history of Sparta from its founding to its ignominious end. Here's my commentary:

Leonidas and the Kings of Sparta by Alfred S. Bradford – A Review

It is human nature that reactions are often governed by expectations, so my disappointment with Alfred S. Bradford’s history of Sparta, Leonidas and the Kings of Sparta: Mightiest Warriors, Fairest Kingdom, was largely my own fault.  The title and jacket description, not to mention Bradford’s qualifications as a professor of ancient history at the University of Oklahoma, led me to expect too much. I had hoped for a work that provided insight on the role of Sparta’s kings in Sparta’s long history, perhaps an analysis of evolving constitutional conflict between the kings, the Gerousia, Assembly, and Ephors.  Certainly, I hoped for some new, unfamiliar descriptions and details about the personalities of Sparta’s most famous kings.

Instead, Bradford has done little more than collect the familiar stories told about Sparta from a wide range of sources and line them up in chronological order.  Even this is a tall order, and Bradford is to be commended for having covered nearly a thousand years of history in just 226 pages without for a moment dropping the pace or losing direction. Also to be applauded is Bradford’s care to mention Sparta’s literary and artistic achievements, and his even-handed treatment of the Peloponnesian War.  Altogether, his commentary improved in quality with the quality of his (later) sources.

Equally important, Bradford appears to pride himself on his accessibility, and this book is written in an easy modern style that will certainly make it just that to readers looking for an easy introduction to Spartan history. In fact, I suspect that Bradford’s intended audience was not fellow scholars, but rather young people coming to the topic of Sparta for the first time.  If this is correct, then his book is a valuable contribution to Spartan history as a transition from comic books and fantasy to serious scholarly works on Sparta.

In this context, I found Bradford’s occasional personal comments perfectly appropriate and engaging. Throughout the book, I sensed his genuine interest in his topic and respect for his subjects. That in itself is very refreshing, and I came away feeling like I’d like to meet Bradford one day and spend an afternoon talking in an outdoor café on the main street of modern Sparti – exchanging views, arguing, laughing – and toasting the memory of the dead.

If am correct and Bradford was writing for an audience without previous knowledge and only superficial interest in Sparta, I image he did not want to “bore” his reader with conflicting theories. Nevertheless, I must admit I was put off by Bradford’s blithe disregard for differing opinions and his failure to admit any uncertainty about interpretation of evidence.  Although much of the information Bradford presents is highly controversial, Bradford rarely even mentions alternative theories, much less conflicting opinions.  

Equally disturbing, Bradford boldly states his opinions as if they are indisputable fact.  For example, he states on page 70 that “Ariston was extremely popular….” Interesting.  I’d like to know how he knows that as I’ve never read this in any other source. It might be true, of course, I don’t claim to have seen every source on Sparta, and, if true, it would be very significant. Unfortunately, Bradford tells me neither his ancient source for this information, nor does he explain his assessment by describing things Ariston did to win the love of his subjects. In fact, what he does tell us about Ariston is that he tricked his best friend into giving up his wife. That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would endear Ariston to his subjects. (Herodotus, who is the source for this tale, by the way, makes it clear that it was against the will of both the husband – and erstwhile friend of Ariston – and his wife.) In short, Bradford makes statements that are not supported either sources or by his own argumentation.  

I was also disappointed by the near absence of analysis, at least in the early parts of the book. Again, let me take a couple of examples.  On page 46, when describing the krypteia, he claims members “killed any helots they found.” Now, finding helots was not very difficult since by all accounts they vastly outnumbered the Spartiates, and they provided all menial labor to the Spartan state.  All the krypteia had to do to “find” helots was sit down in the middle of any square or on the side of any country road and wait for the helots to come by. Since, according to Bradford’s account, they killed all the helots they “found,” the kypteia must have slaughtered endlessly, year in and year out, generation for generation.  So how did any helots survive to be the servants and agricultural workers that Sparta needed? And who was left to work the estates of the Spartiates dependent on their labor in order to be professional soldiers? Or, turning to another example, on page 47 Bradford writes: “The Spartans were magnificent specimens, men and women both, the most handsome people in Greece, with the best-behaved children.” Really?  All of them? That’s hard to believe, but I suppose it is theoretically possible.  But then Bradford continues: “They knew right from wrong and they practiced honor without compromise.” That is little short of amazing, but OK -- except that nine pages later Bradford writes that “Chilon’s world was a world of injustice.” Hm.  So suddenly, within a hundred years or so, by Bradford’s own account, the Spartans have gone from being men who without exception practiced honor without compromise and all knew right from wrong, to a society full of injustice. How did that happen? Why? Again, I’m not saying this is impossible, but I expect a historian who makes assertions such as these to marshal his arguments and set them out coherently so the reader can follow his logic and come to the same conclusion.

Finally, I found it disconcerting that sources were not readily or consistently identified, even when direct quotes were made. With all due understanding for the desire to avoid cluttering a popular history with a lot of footnotes, I find the use of quotation marks or italics to indicate direct speech without providing a reference on the source improper.  Just to give one random example, in Chapter 16, Bradford uses quotation marks to indicate verbatim citation of a speaker in no less than eight places, but provides sources for only two quotes in his “Notes.” What about the others? Where did they come from and why didn’t they rate a proper citation? 


For all my complaints, I confess I liked the book, particularly the conclusion, and for young adults it may be a good introduction to Sparta. However, I would recommend W. G. Forrest's classic work "A History of Sparta: 950 - 192 BC" or Nigel Kennel's "Spartans: A New History" before Bradford to anyone with a serious interest in Spartan history.

New Review of "The Olympic Charioteer"

“JPS” (not otherwise identified) published the following review of The Olympic Charioteer on April 16 of this year:

After "Are they singing in Sparta", this is Helena Schraeder's second novel on Sparta. This one takes place around 550 BC, during the time of one of the great-grandsons of Agesandros (the hero of the first novel). This great-grandson is the Olympic Charioteer. After having won once for Sparta, he is captured and enslaved by Tegea following a Spartan defeat (which is historical) and, contrary to the other captives, he is believed to be dead and not ransomed. I'll stop there, to avoid any spoilers.

The book has a lot going for it.

One strong point is to depict the live of slaves in Greek cities and contrast their status with that of the Spartan helots. This is part of the author's thesis to show that, at the time, Sparta had the most advanced political regime and society in Greece whereas other cities were ruled by either aristocracies or tyrants, including Athens.

Another point is to show the political life and internal conflicts that could lead to civil war (stasis) within the various cities. Despite its regime, Sparta could also be subject to this, especially if the two kings chose opposite camps.

A third point is to avoid presenting Sparta as the invincible city, which it was not, and to show the dilemma that Spartan Kings, Ephors and members of the Gerousia (the Council of 28 elders plus the two kings) had to face, and the choice that Sparta made. The alternative was to attack and conquer Tegea and its territory, and perhaps even Argos afterwards, just as Sparta had done with Messenia about a century earlier, or to seek alliance through treaties with its neighbors. Even if victorious, Sparta would have had to spread its limited armed forces (only 6000 full citizen hoplites although its lands, according to Aristotle, were sufficient to have a force five times larger than that) thinly, making it even more vulnerable to attacks and rebellions. Sparta chose to ally itself with Tegea, its northern neighbor. This pact of non-agression was the beginning of the Peloponnesian League of free city-states that Sparta dominated and lead, and which excluded Argos, which remained its arch-enemy.

There are a few little issues, however. Despite the author's research and knowledge of the subject, she sometimes get a bit carried away as when she has one character mentioning Alexandria as a possible destination for slaves to be sold. Alexandria, of course, did not exist in 550 BC and was founded by Alexander the Great more than two centuries later. Another little problem, at times, is that the story, which, of course, has a happy ending, seems a little bit too good to be true and some of the characters feel a little bit caricatured: the hero is very, very nice and the villains are, of course, perfectly awful, whether those in Tegea or the Corinthian chariot owner.

Nevertheless, this was a superb read which I thoroughly enjoyed, started and finished over the week-end. It is well worth four stars, although perhaps not five, given the little issues mentioned above.

Go Tell the Spartans....

Herodotus refers to three separate monuments erected before his time to commemorate the men who fought at Thermopylae. There was a collective monument which read: Four thousand here from Pelops’ land, Against a million once did stand. There was “a stone lion in memory of Leonidas,” and a special monument erected by the Spartans with a dedication that in one common translation ran: “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, in obedience to the laws, we lie.”

This simple epitaph has, I believe, been the source of much confusion about Sparta down the ages. It is widely interpreted to mean that the 300 Spartans who died at Thermopylae had no option of retreating. Allegedly, these men lay buried in the Pass at Thermopylae, so far from home, because Sparta’s “laws” forbade retreat regardless of the odds or the certainty of death.

But as I have pointed out elsewhere, Spartan forces both surrendered and retreated in a variety of other engagements over the centuries. The Spartans didn’t seem to think there was a “law” against retreat even under far less threatening and less hopeless situations than that presented to Leonidas at Thermopylae. Are we to believe Leonidas and his 300 were the only Spartans who lived and died by Sparta’s laws? Or could there be another explanation of the epitaph?

 The answer, I believe, can be found in the fact that there were, in fact, two Spartan monuments: the one to Leonidas and the one to the other Spartiates. If we separate the two, then we see the glimmer of an answer because it suggests that the “law” that the 300 obeyed may not have applied to Leonidas at all.

Leonidas had an option. Leonidas could have decided to pull-out of the Pass as soon as it became indefensible. Leonidas would not have broken any “law” if he had done so, because there was no law that required Spartans to “fight until death rather than retreat one step.”

But there was a law that required obedience to Sparta’s kings as long as they were beyond the borders of Lacedaemon in command of Sparta’s armies. This law is documented and was widely respected.  Sparta’s kings could be charged, tried and exiled once they were at home, but not during war, not abroad. As long as they were abroad on campaign, their troops were bound to obey them, and for the most part did. 

What this means is that once Leonidas decided to stay and die – as he no doubt believed was his destiny based on the oracle from Delphi – his body guard had no option but to stay with him. There is anecdotal evidence recorded by Plutarch that Leonidas tried to save some of his companions by asking them to deliver dispatches, but the “older men” saw through him and refused. This is consistent with a king determined to face his destiny, but distressed by the knowledge that his decision will drag three hundred of Sparta’s finest with him.

The erection of two separate monuments and the epitaph makes sense in this context as well. Leonidas was the lion, who decided to go down fighting defiantly rather than live to fight a second day. After he had made that courageous decision, however, his bodyguard had no choice and for them, therefore, they lay buried in a foreign pass not as particular heroes but simply “in obedience to the laws.” 

Sparta's Self Confident Citizens

The Spartan Assembly is often portrayed as a body of dumb, possibly illiterate, automatons, a rubber stamp for the decisions of the Kings, Gerousia and ephors.  This view of the Spartan Assembly is based on constitutional provisions that appear to have restricted debate, the absence of secret ballots, and the assumption that Sparta’s notoriously obedient soldiers would “take orders” in the Assembly just as they did on the battlefield. 

However, as any officer can tell you, the best soldiers are not automatons who wait for orders, but thinking, self-confident men who take the initiative and act without – or even against – orders if necessary.  Furthermore, the famous case of Amompharetus refusing to obey Pausanias’ orders on the eve of the Battle of Plataea is a dramatic case in point demonstrating that Spartans didn’t always obey orders – not even on the battlefield.  It further highlights the fact that commanders in the Spartan army did not command obedience:  Amompharetus was not, after all, summarily executed or even relieved of his command. Instead, Pausanias tried to reason with him and finally ordered the rest of the army to move out. Last but not least, Sparta had sufficient confidence in the judgment of its individual commanders to repeatedly send men of “ordinary” status out act as advisors to foreign powers, such as Gylippus in Syracus.

Second, the Assembly had real powers, officially more than the kings.  The Assembly elected the ephors every year and members of the Gerousia whenever vacancies occurred due to death. Hence men with political ambitions had to lobby and ensure a majority of votes against rivals. Also, according to most interpretations of the Great Rhetra, the Assembly had “the final say” on legislation.  The Assembly forced more than one king into exile (e.g. Cleomenes I, Leotychidas, Pleistoanax) and could condemn commanders who exceeded instructions such as Pausanius and Phoebidas.  Thus, despite the inability to introduce legislation and the public nature of the vote, the Spartan Assembly did exercise real power.

Most important, however, the Spartan Assembly was made up of her soldiers and her soldiers knew that they represented the might and power of Sparta. A body in which a large minority was composed of virile young men, in peak physical condition, who have been raised to think of themselves as the elite is unlikely to have been docile. The men who were to be officers and admirals, magistrates, governors, ambassadors and military advisors around the world rose through the ranks of the army – and all had a voice (and probably a following) in the Assembly. Even if some citizens were indifferent to politics and willing to do what others advised, in every generation there would have been ambitious young men willing to challenge existing authority.  Certainly the Assembly as a whole could be quite rowdy as the example of the Assembly (“the Spartans” – not the ephors or Gerousia) throwing the Persian emissaries of Darius down a well demonstrates.

What the above suggests is that Spartan citizens were anything but mindless automatons manipulated by their officers and political leaders, but self-confident citizens with a highly developed sense of their own power and confidence in their own capabilities and judgment.  Sparta’s citizens were not docile or mindless pawns, but thinking and responsible citizens – every bit as confident that their voice in politics mattered as were the citizens of Athens.  The differences between Athenian and Spartan democracy were many, and both were imperfect from the modern standpoint, but the Spartan citizen’s individual status within his polity should not be denigrated. 

Leonidas the Diplomat

Fans of “300” may find it hard to think of Leonidas as a diplomat.  In the Hollywood cartoon, Leonidas is portrayed as the brutal antithesis of a diplomat: he personally throws a Persian ambassador down a well.  But there is no more historical evidence that Leonidas committed this crime than that Xerxes was a monster. The historical record, foggy and imprecise as it is, suggests that far from being a tactless brut, Leonidas was probably a very savvy diplomat. 

The evidence for Leonidas’ diplomatic talent is indirect rather than explicit. It is evident in what he did, rather than what is said about him.  Quite simply: During his brief reign, Leonidas managed to forge a coalition of Greek states willing to oppose the Persian invasion and to convince this loose coalition of independent and proud city-states to agree to a unified command and a joint strategy.  The significance of such an achievement can be measured by the fact that ten years earlier Athens didn’t place her army under the unified command of even a single Athenian; no less than ten generals shared command of the Athenian army at Marathon.  Equally notable, while Leonidas’ brother Cleomenes alienated Lacedaemon’s Peloponnesian allies to the point of provoking revolt, Leonidas won over new Allies such as Mycenae and Tiryns.  

As for the incident with the Persian ambassadors, Herodotus tells us that the Spartans shared the guilt for the murder of the ambassadors.  According to Herodotus, the entire city was threatened by ill-omens and the Spartan Assembly met repeatedly in order to find volunteers from among the citizens willing to appease the Gods by dying in atonement for the murdered Persian ambassadors.  If, as when Cleomenes’ burned the Sacred Wood near Argos, the crime had been committed by either of the Spartan kings, the Spartans would have expected/demanded that the king bear responsibility.  Whoever killed the Persian ambassadors, the entire Spartiate population felt collectively guilty about it – something that suggests the Persian emissaries had not been the victims of a spontaneous act of violence but rather condemned by the Spartan Assembly.  (Something which in turn suggests that Spartan Assemblies could be quite rowdy affairs, but that is a subject for another day….)