Athens and Sparta, rivals for leadership of the other Greek city-states[1]. In fact, they were not merely rival cities; they were rival ways of life.
Sparta lay on the southeastern Peloponnese, in a region once called Laconica (luh-KAHN-i-kuh). To this day, the word laconic describes someone with a clipped, abrupt way of speaking. Likewise the word Spartan, meaning “without luxury or comfort,” is part of the English language as well.
Established by the Dorians [2] in the 800s B.C., Sparta was also called Lacedaemon (lah-seh-DEE-muhn) after its mystical founder. The city was ruled by two kings, descendants of an early monarch; the real power, however, lay in the hands of an oligarchy, a small ruling group. Sparta’s oligarchy consisted of some thirty men, all over sixty years in age.
Below the oligarchy were the citizens, a term that does not have the same meaning in modern America. Whereas anyone born in the United States is an American citizen, with all the rights and privileges that come with citizenship, in ancient Greece only a select few enjoyed the benefits of citizenship. A better comparison would be America at the time of its founding, when only white men could become citizens. In Sparta, the rules were even more strict: a man had to be a direct descendant of the original Dorian founders of the city. Thus there were never more than 7,000 Spartan citizens at one time.
Besides the tiny group of citizens, there were their families, who enjoyed a relatively high status. Below them was a much larger group of foreigners and other noncitizens. At the bottom was by far the largest class in Spartan society, many times larger than all the others combined: slaves, or helots (HEH-luhtz).
Not even citizens of Sparta enjoyed an easy life. Noncitizens ran businesses and held other positions because Spartan citizens had one job only, the central focus of their lives from birth to the age of thirty: war. From 735 to 715 B.C., they fought a long conflict with the neighboring polis of Messenia (meh-SEE-nee-uh). Spartans took so many slaves they were afraid of being overthrown. Such fears on the part of the Indo- Europeans spawned the caste system in India; in Sparta such fears they led to the creation of a militaristic society.
Like the Assyrians, the Spartans were geniuses at the art of war. During the conflict with Messenia, they developed the concept of the hoplite (HAHP-light), a heavily armed foot solider, which became the standard for Greek warfare. Hoplites formed a phalanx (FAY-lankz), a column of soldiers usually 8 men deep and as many as 200 men wide. Armed with spears, they surged against an enemy. When the first rank fell, the next group moved in. Warfare in any age is awful, but prior to the twentieth century—when at least decent medical care was available to troops on the field—it was truly horrible. Yet the Spartans were fabled for their bravery, in part because they had spent their whole lives preparing for war.
If a boy were born with any physical problems, he was simply left to die. The ones who survived went to live in barracks at age seven. For the next five years they underwent rigorous physical training. Even the Spartans were Greeks, however, and as such a civilized people: thus from ages twelve to eighteen, boys studied poetry and music. But at eighteen, they submitted to a year of endurance and survival training, much as a member of a modern special operations team such as the Navy SEALS must do.
At the end of this training, the boy had become a hoplite and received a year off. During this time, he married and spent time with his wife, but at the age of twenty, he went off to serve in the army for ten years. Assuming he survived battle, he was free of all obligations at age thirty, when he received a plot of land that would be farmed by helots. At that point, he might become a citizen; then again, he might not, in which case he would not be allowed to participate in political life until he reached the age of sixty.
Few modern people would find the life of a Spartan male attractive. It should be noted, however, that contrary to what one might expect, the life of a woman in Sparta was in some ways better than that of her Athenian counterpart. Spartan girls received physical training along with boys, in order that they might produce stronger babies. Though this might seem like another hardship, it also implies a higher status than that of women in Athens, who lived their lives in shadow, far from the world of men. Also, during the years when their men were away, Spartan women ran the home and all business affairs, assuming a degree of control far beyond that of Athenian women.
[1]The formation of city-states
The many factors unifying Greece were significant, since there were plenty of other forces pulling it apart. Except for rare periods, Greece would never be a single nation, but rather a collection of city-states, or cities that also functioned as separate nations. The Greeks called a city-state a polis (PAHluhs), from which the English language takes words such as police and politics. The plural of polis was poleis (pah-LAYZ).
At one time there were as many as seven hundred poleis in Greece, though only a few assumed real significance. One of these was Thebes (pronounced like “thieves,” but with a b) in Boeotia, a city much older than most on the Greek mainland. Founded as early as 1500 B.C., Thebes had the same name as an Egyptian city established some five centuries earlier.
On the northeastern corner of the Peloponnese was another important city, Corinth. Founded by the Dorians, it had emerged as an important trading center. Much later, Corinth would figure in the early history of Christianity, with the inclusion of Paul’s two letters to the Corinthians among the books of the New Testament.
Then there were two other cities that stood above the rest in importance. These two were Athens and Sparta, rivals for leadership of the other Greek city-states. In fact, they were not merely rival cities; they were rival ways of life.
[2]Dorians
From the north, in Macedon, came a group of barbarians who moved into Epirus and Thessaly. The Macedonians would later have an enormous impact on Greek history, but at this early stage, their primary effect was to scatter the Dorians (DOHR-ee-uhnz), another barbarian group, from their homeland in about 1140 B.C. The Dorians in turn swarmed southward, over the strongholds at Mycenae and elsewhere. The Mycenaeans were not the same strong nation that had once taken over from the Minoans. The Dorians, though they may have been uncivilized, had a technological advantage. They had developed iron smelting, and the Mycenaeans, with their Bronze Age weapons, were no match for them. Armed with their superior iron swords, the Dorians swept into the Mycenaean cities, sacking and burning as they went.
The Dorians, a tribal society, settled primarily in the southern and eastern Peloponnese. Their rulers took over what was left of the Mycenaeans’ fortresses and palaces. Whenever there was a dispute between individuals or families, as there often was, the parties involved would go to their king, who served as a judge.
There was no real sense of justice, however, as there might have been in a society governed by formal laws such as those set forth by Hammurabi or Justinian. Life in Greece under Dorian rule was more like Israel during the time of the judges, when “everyone did as he sought fit.” Men walked around armed, just in case there was trouble. The Dorians spoke a dialect (DIE-uh-lekt; a regional variation of a language), of Greek. Dorian was distinct from Aeolian (ay-OHL-ee-uhn), spoken in an area running from Thessaly to the edge of the Peloponnese, and from Ionian, spoken by the Mycenaeans and others on the Peloponnese itself. The Dorians did not, however, have a written language. Linear B script died out in the Dark Ages.
Other aspects of life declined as well. The arts, most notably pottery—examples of which have been found by archaeologists in the region—clearly suffered under Dorian rule. Having destroyed the Mycenaeans’ cities, the Dorians no longer had access to their trade routes. The once-rich land of Greece became poor as a result. In contrast to the gold of the Mycenaean tombs, Dorian burial sites have yielded little in the way of precious metals and gems. The Dorians buried their dead with offerings of bone, stone, and clay. It is not surprising, then, to discover that the population of the area also dropped rapidly during the Dark Ages, no doubt as a consequence of poverty.
