Spartan warriors: Their agility and strength

^{contributing sites: wikipedia,historysites}

Spartan Warriors

The spartans were a group of elite warriors from ancient greece, located on the island province of Sparta.

Sparta, the city state occupying the central finger of Peloponnese, was the greatest military power of Greece and played a catalytic role in her history.

The later Sparta did not produce art or philosophy, neither left us any written work, but its people were admired for their valor and for keeping alive the Greek values.

Spartan warriors are trained from infancy to be nothing but soldiers. They are to be perfect in every respect and aspect of war, and nothing else. Weaklings perish soon after birth; youth are taught to thieve and terrorize the slave class to harden them; young men are taught to nothing unless it has something to do with the arts of war - Even music and dance are tehre only to help keep step when marching and obeying orders. The result is a man who thinks nothing of danger, expects to win, and creates a sense of dread in his opponents.

Spartans fight in the traditional fashion of the hoplites, carrying a long thrusting spear and a large round hoplon shield. They, like the hoplites, were known to form a formation called a phalanx (A close packed mass of men moving as one to crush their enemies)

Training of Youth

As soon as a child was born in Sparta, the mother would wash it with wine, in order to make sure that it was strong. If the child was weak, it would die soon. Later it was brought by his father to the elders, who inspected carefully the newborn infant. If they found that the child was deformed or weakly, they threw it into Kaiada, the so called Apothetae, a chiasm at a cliff, of the mount Taygetos.

Until the age of seven the child was reared by his mother, who did not use the special cloths for children (phaskia) in order not to deform the body or make the child nervous or stubborn. They also made sure to remove everything around him, that it will make the child feel fear, disgust or cry.

Spartan women were so famous for the rearing of children, that they were hired by rich families, as for example the Spartan woman Amelia, who nursed the Athenian Alkibiades.

When the child completed the age of seven, it was taken from his mother and given to the state. A rigorous discipline and mainly military type education, the so-called Agoge, commenced, lasting twelve years.

The boys enrolled in one of the many troops (the Ageles), which was under the supervision of a senior Spartan and at thirteen under the leadership of a prudent and brave youth, called Eirena ,supervised by an official (Paidonomos) and were drilled in gymnastics, running, jumping, throwing of spear and discus, and also taught to endure pain and hardship, hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue and lack of sleep. They were walking without shoes, bathed at the cold waters of the river Eurotas and were dressed winter and summer, with the same piece of cloth, which the state gave them once a year. They were not using blankets and were sleeping on top of straws and reeds, which they were cutting without knives from the banks of the river Eurotas.

Their main meal was a broth (melanas zomos), but they were encouraged to steal food, to compensate for the meager portion they were given, but if they were caught, they were punished. They were eating also a lot of honey. For one whole month, before they finished their training, they were exercising and feeding themselves exclusively with honey (month of honey).

As for proper education, they were taught only the basics of how to read and write and to waste no words speaking to the point (Laconizein). They also learned military poems, war songs, how to dance and recited Homer.

The main purpose of Agoge was to discipline the youth. Once a year, they tested them for their endurance in front of the altar of Orthia Artemis, in the game of stealing cheeses whipping them severely. The ones who withstood this event, in which not a few died, without moans and cries, they crowned with wreathes.

As for the girls, they were also educated in classes under a similar system, but without much rigor and also took part at public competitions as the boys. Their education was ended when they married.

At the age of twenty, when the Agoge ended, the military service of the Spartan begun. He would join compulsory one of the dining messes or clubs (pheiditia, syssitia), which were composed from about fifteen members (one of Lykourgos laws) and he will eat and sleep at public barracks, until the age of sixty. At twenty, most of the men and women will also get married.

At the age of thirty, the Spartan will become citizen with full rights and duties and he would be able to take part in the assembly of the people (the Apella) and hold public office.

Battle of Thermopylae

480 BC

On the arrival of Xerxes at Thermopylae, he found that the place was defended by a body of three hundred Spartans and about seven thousand hoplites from other states, commanded by the Spartan king Leonidas.

Xerxes learning about the small number of Greek forces and that several Spartans outside the walls were exercising and combing their hairs, in his perplexity, immediately called Demaratos to explain him the meaning of all these. Demaratos told him that the Spartans will defend the place to the death and it was custom to wash and dress their hairs with special care when they intended to put their lives in great danger. Xerxes who did not believe Demaratos, delayed his attack for four days, thinking that the Greeks as soon as they would realize his great forces will disperse.

He sent also heralds asking to deliver up their arms. The answer from Leonidas was "come and take them" (Μολών λαβέ).

A Spartan, who was told about the great number of Persian soldiers, who with their arrows will conceal the sun, he answered: "so much the better, we will fight in the shade".

At the fifth day Xerxes attacked but without any results and with heavy losses, though the Medes fought bravely. He then ordered his personal guard the "Immortals" under Hyrdanes, a body of ten thousand consisting from the best Persian soldiers, to advance. They also failed and Xerxes was observed to jump from his throne three times in anger and agony. The following day they attacked, but again made no progress. Xerxes was desperate but his luck changed when a Malian named Ephialtes told him about a secret path across the mountain. Immediately a strong Persian force was sent with Hyrdanes, guided by the traitor. At day's break they reached the summit, where the Phokian army was stationed and who upon seeing the Persians fled.

When Leonidas learned all these incidents, he ordered the council of war to be summoned. Many were of the opinion that they should retire and find a better defendable place, but Leonidas, who was bound by the laws of Sparta and from an oracle, which had declared that either Sparta or a Spartan king must perish, refused. Three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians took the decision to stay and fight. The rest were permitted to leave, with the exception of four hundred Boeotians, which were retained as hostages.

Leonidas did not wait the Persian attack, which had being delayed by Xerxes and advanced in the path, he fell upon the Persians. Thousands of them were slain, the rest were driven near the sea, but when the Spartan spears broke, they started having losses and one of the first that fell was king Leonidas. Around his body one of the fiercest battles took place. Four times the Persians attacked to obtain it and four times they were repulsed. At the end, the Spartans exhausted and wounded, carrying the body of Leonidas, retired behind the wall, but they were surrounded by the enemy, who killed them with arrows.

On the spot, a marble lion was set by the Greeks in honor of Leonidas and his men, together with two other monuments near by. On one of them, the memorable words were written:

"Ω ξείν αγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις, ότι τήδε κείμεθα,

τοις κείνων ρήμασι πειθόμενοι".

"Oh stranger tell the Lacedaemonians, that we lie here,

obedient to their laws".

Leonidas I of Sparta

eonidas I was a king of Sparta, the seventeenth of the Agiad line. He was one of the sons of King Anaxandridas II of Sparta. He succeeded, probably in 489 or 488 BC, his half-brother Cleomenes I, whose daughter Gorgo he married.

In 480 he was sent with about 7000 men to hold the pass of Thermopylae against the army of Xerxes of Persia. (see Battle of Thermopylae). The small size of the force was, according to a contemporary story, due to the fact that he was deliberately going to his doom, an oracle having foretold that Sparta could be saved only by the death of one of its kings: in reality it seems rather that the ephors supported the scheme half-heartedly, their policy being to concentrate the Greek forces at the Isthmus.

Several anecdotes demonstrate the laconic matter-of-fact bravery that Leonidas and the Spartans were famed for even in the ancient world. On the first day of the siege, when Xerxes demanded the Greeks surrender their arms, Leonidas is said to have replied Molon Labe ("Come and get them"). And on the third day, the king is reputed to have exhorted his men to eat a hearty breakfast, because that night they would dine in Hades.

Leonidas' men repulsed the frontal attacks of the Persians for the first two days, but when the Malian Ephialtes led the Persian general Hydarnes by a mountain track to the rear of the Greeks, Leonidas divided his army, himself remaining in the pass with 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans.

Perhaps he hoped to surround Hydarnes' force: if so, the movement failed, and the little Greek army, attacked from both sides, was cut down to a man save the Thebans, who are said to have surrendered. Another theory was that Leonidas sent the remainder of the army home in an effort to preserve troops for the main battles of the war. The soldiers who stayed behind were to cover their escape so the Persian cavalry would not overrun the rear of the escaping troops.

Leonidas fell in the thickest of the fight; the Spartans attempted to retrieve his body, but given the numbers they faced, the body did fall into Persian hands. It was said (by contemporary Greeks) that Leonidas' head was afterwards cut off by Xerxes' order and his body crucified.

He was buried with full honors, including a very un-Spartan display of wailing and mourning (Spartans normally accepted death in battle as a matter of course and disapproved of outward grieving), and a carved lion was dedicated at his death site.

Our knowledge of the circumstances are too slight to enable us to judge Leonidas' strategy, but his heroism and devotion secured him an almost unique place in the imagination not only of his own time but also of succeeding times.

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.