Spartan army
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The Spartan Army was the military force of Sparta, one of the leading city-states of ancient Greece. Sparta created one of the toughest and most disciplined armies in world history[1] . Their soldiers were trained from infancy to be tough and obedient to their laws.
Sparta enjoyed a period of supremacy after the Peloponnesian War until they met their first decisive land defeats against Iphicrates of Athens and Epaminondas of Thebes.[2] The troops were citizens known as the Spartiates, the superior social class of Sparta called in Greek Homoioi and granted land or kleros for their military service; the others were the Helots (who were slaves used to farm the kleros) and the Perioeci or upper-slave-class, generally merchants, craftsmen and sailors[3]. Spanning the late archaic period and classical Greece, the Spartan army fought in phalanx formation with very little auxiliary support[2] from peltasts or, until 404 BC, cavalry (hippeis) when they were formed into a cavalry corps.
The first reference to the Spartans at war is in the Iliad. While this is undoubtedly fictional, archeology has shown many important areas of it to be true or near-truth. It shows the Spartans as chariot warriors, and infantry who fought for personal glory. Later the army was issued aspis shields which made the new phalanx formation possible. The army adopted this, probably in response to the Argives. In 550 the entire state dedicated itself to fuelling the Spartan war machine, and using helots to farm the land owned by spartiates, and Perioeci as sailors, tradesmen and light infantry. By the end of the Corinthian War, however, dissent was brewing and the city of Thebes revolted and in a short campaign led by Epiminondas won the Theban War, annexing Sparta to the assembly of Thebes.
When the Theban-Athenian alliance was defeated by Macedon at the Battle of Chaeronea, Sparta was taken over. The Spartans refused, however, to attack the Persians with Alexander. Fortunately, Alexander died in Babylon before he could settle them. This triggered yet another Greek civil war which Sparta used to break from Thebes. The Romans then saw Sparta as a good conquest, and brought the Achaean League against the Spartans. The war was a Roman victory, but Sparta was allowed to remain a ‘free’ city.
The army in the Mycenaean age
At this time the army was composed of fully armoured men with short spears, swords, and figure-of-eight shields. This was an age of heroic warfare, and as such tactics were simple, often no more than a general charge and a lot of killing - it was not rare for entire armies to be chased down and killed after a rout. Some men were charioteers, although Spartans looked down on the chariot as well as the bow as unmanly, testified by the quote:
It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair.
— Homer, The Iliad
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Charioteers were, however, useful as the same poem says that Achilles and other heroes fought from a chariot. Homeric legend and archaeological evidence have portrayed the early soldier as a chariot-mounted warrior who found an enemy army and charged it with his lance or threw a spear, then dismounted and fought on foot[2] The best soldiers were made into officers and were expected to be heroes and lead from the front.Cite error: A <ref>
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(see the help page). It was also a Spartan princess who lifted the crown in Olympia when her horse team won. Wrestling was accompanied by pankration, where only biting and eye-gouging were prohibited.
Training
At first, in the archaic period of 700-600BC, education, for both sexes, was based on the arts. Additionally for boys, there was military education, providing additional survivability in their career as citizen-warriors. The arts were prominent because of the many religious festivals that were celebrated throughout the year, such as the one which kept the Spartans from intervening at Marathon.[4] Military education became dominant almost to the point of being exclusive in 550BC when Sparta became a militaristic state.[5]
Children of both sexes were brought up by the city women until age seven, afterwards the girls would be trained to oversee the young boys. They would need to be fit, and were trained with running, wrestling, and throwing quoits and javelins. They would be trained in "Feminine Virtues" such as learning not to show off in nice clothes, which was introduced by forcing them to strip for sports, processions, dances and temple services.[5] They were however, mostly taught that their role was to serve Sparta through militaristic supremacy.[5] Boys were organized into mess halls by age, with the toughest boy set as the leader.[5] The elders who ran the halls would set them upon each other to find out who was the best fighter.[5] The children would be poorly fed, and told to steal to supplement their rations.[5] They were bedded on the bare ground, and would only take a few baths a year.[5] They would be given lessons in the handling of arms and armor. They would be kept under the strict discipline necessary to fight in close formation, and the krypteia or terrorizing and killing the helots to keep them in order and by murdering talented or dissenting slaves, breed a perfect serf class, as well as to build guile and ambush skill.
The training gave boys the three most vital traits of a Spartan:
- Toughness
- In Sparta, a weak child would be thrown into a pit as a symbolic rooting out of weakness.[6] Until age twelve, they would often not be allowed any clothes and then, only a cloak was provided.[5] Even as soldiers, they only wore a tunic and cloak, and to stay warm they would rub themselves with thistles.[5] A fictional testament to the toughness of the regime is the tale of the boy and the fox cub, in which a boy steals a fox cub, but is caught by the owner. The owner interrogates the boy, but the boy suddenly drops dead. The owner finds that the fox has eaten the boy's insides. After the age of 18 they would be liable for compulsory military service. Perhaps the greatest example of Spartan toughness/fitness in this regard is the march to Athens in 490; a distance of 140 miles accomplished in less than three days.[7]
- Obedience
- Since birth, a Spartan's entire training curriculum was centered around order and discipline.[5] Preparation for war was their primary subject, with all subjects of education working to that end.Overall, a Spartan's loyalty was to Sparta, first and foremost.
- Fearlessness
- After birth and until the age of 7, when they would be put into the groups and were told to never fear anything. As well, it was taught the greatest honor to be bestowed upon you was a death in the heats of battle. To this, one Spartan mother sent their son off to battle with the wish of ταν ή επί τας (bearing your shield or on it), in other words, "either return victorious or return dead".
Ω ξειν’, αγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ότι τηδε κείμεθα, τοίς κείνων ρήμασι πειθόμενοι Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
— Simonides of Ceos, Epitaph on the burial mound of the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae[7]
Tactics
The Spartans were a well trained Phalanx army, using the expert tactics of the phalanx which used small numbers as efficiently as possible. The discipline, martial bravery (or stubbornness) and physical strength of the Spartan warriors enabled this idea as well as allowing them to fight to the death. They would simply march at the enemy or hold their ground, and upon impact fought fiercely , often to the last man. Their style of combat influenced the Thebans and Macedonians.
Spartan Tactics: The Spartans made full use of the phalanx, a formation composed of many soldiers in close formation with interlocking shields and outstretched spears, in a straight line. This formation was only perfected by Sparta, other cities had difficulty in maintaining the line for long.[2] This provided an almost impenetrable wall of spears as if one man fell the next soldier in his file would come forward to take his place. The phalanx was almost immobile, however, and the general method of turning was for the front rank, to form a battle-line and raise their pikes to 90 degrees and turn in unison, when the rest of the army would follow suit. Despite this, for hundreds of years wars in Greece were decided by these formations pushing at each other.[5] Casualties were often in the realms of 5% as the army would often flee when its leader was impaled on an enemy spear.[5]
Theban Tactics vs. Sparta: Epaminondas was the first general in Greece to appreciate the supporting value of cavalry.[5] His army was also heavily reliant on phalanx, but he was capable of winning a battle with his cavalry-intensive oblong advance, which he used to great effect to defeat the Spartans at Leuctra, when he used a line slanted towards the Spartan right with three units in a straight line on the left wing, and cavalry in the left vanguard. The tiny and weak Spartan Cavalry was destroyed in the opening clash and the shock of the charge coupled with the assault of the Phalanx caused the flank to fall back onto the centre, breaking the files and causing the army to degenerate into a useless mob.
Macedonian Tactics under Phillip II and Later: During a Theban war against Macedon, the Theban generals captured the young prince Phillip[8]. He was a student of Epaminondas' methods in reference to the combination of cavalry, which had been previously almost ignored in Greece due to the relief, and the Phalanx[8]. Upon his return to Macedon and his ascension to the throne, he set about revolutionising the country's military. He already had in place the Hetaroi or Companion Cavalry élite units, and a light infantry division. He added to these phalangist heavy phalanx infantry with a two-handed pike of 13-21 feet, the Sarissa[8].
Arms and Armour
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The Spartans were the only army in Greece to buy the arms and armour for their men. The main arm for the Spartan hoplite was the aspis, often mistakenly referred to as the "hoplon". Sometime during the mid 5th century BC, the Spartans replaced family or contingent based shield designs with the letter lambda (Λ) standing for Laconia, or Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων). In popular culture, the lambda is generally used anachronistically when representing earlier battles such as Thermopylae, or as in the film 300 a Sigma (Σ, σ, or ς at the end of a word) for Σπάρτα Greek for Sparta (Spártā) (actually never used) is erroneously replaced by a Latin S.
In the Archaic period, Spartans were armoured with flanged bronze breast and back plates, leg greaves, a helmet most often of corinthian or Illyrian style, and sometimes additional armour for the shins, arms and groin. It is often disputed which torso armour the Spartans wore during the Persian Wars, if any, though it seems likely they either continued to wear bronze cuirasses of a more sculptured type, or instead adapted to the composite linothorax style. After this period, Spartiates would often only be lightly armoured with a pylos helmet, and a red tunic. Along with the spear, the Spartiate was always armed with a xiphos as a secondary weapon. During the Peloponnesian War, the sword was shortened to a dagger-like length.[2]
Composition
The army was divided into files. Each file (enomotia) was commanded by a file leader or enomotarch. Files were joined to form "fifties" or pentekostyes with their own commander, which joined to make Lochi, the smallest tactical units. Next was the mora. It was made up of four lochi led by lochagi. A mora was commanded by a Polemarch and made up a sixth of the army[2] at about 600 men. On campaign the kings, or only one shortly before the Persian Wars, were the overall commanders of the army.[9]
The army was also divided into 300 of Spartiates - the hippeis or knights and standard hoplites. The knights were a band of 300 elite soldiers that served as a royal guard, with 150 to each king. They fought on foot, as a cavalry elite would have contradicted the all-spartiates-are-equal policy, until 404, when the knights were formed into a cavalry unit. They were selected at age twenty, when they left education. They took part in a contest in 546BC against the Argive knights which they had been set up to balance, and proved themselves to be one of the best forces in Greece, when they took part in the famous last stand at Thermopylae when the other Greeks retreated under orders, killing many times their number. Each year, the five oldest hippeis were made into benefactors. Unlike in the other states benefactors were not financial supporters but policemen, whose job it was to oversee the people in the surrounding areas and deal with any troublemakers, supported by the ephors who declared war on the helots every year to make killing them legal. The army was then subdivided into age groups. The youngest at 20 were counted as weaker due to lack of experience, and the oldest, up to 60 or in a crisis 65, were only called up in an emergency, to defend the baggage train. It was customary for a man in his mid-twenties to marry, and have children. The marriage custom was for the man to pretend to carry off his bride by violence. She would then wear men's clothes and cut her hair short. The man would re-join the army and would have to sneak off to visit his new wife. Over time the number of Spartiates decreased from 6000 in 640 to 1000 in 330BC.[3]
The Navy
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The Spartan Navy was composed of biremes, with two rows of oars and triremes with three; and were very much a secondary part of the forces, crewed by upper-class helots known as Perioeci in the absence of a lower class citizenry, and not budgeted highly enough to maintain first-class vessels.[3] They seem to have been a group of transports for the men-of-the-sea Spartans to get from Sparta to war zones as distant as Illium (Troy) in present day Troad, Ionia. During the Peloponnesian and Corinthian wars, the Spartans hardened their rams to ensure that their inferior seamanship, later copied by the Corinthians,[3] was compensated for.[2]
The fleet is believed to have grown rapidly during the Peloponnesian War when the Ionians paid the Spartans in wood, gold, iron and ships to leave their islands. This meant that Sparta could now threaten Pericles' strategy of naval harassment.
Rise to power
The Spartans were very powerful in the days when the only power in Greece was the hoplite. They conquered Messenia and in doing so established a strong foothold in Greece. They gained prestige for their heroic effort at Thermopylae, however the Athenians took more from the victories at Salamis and Marathon, marking the two states out as rivals. The Peloponnesian War was the clash of arms which saw Sparta supreme. Owing to the military power of the state they dominated Greece with their many allies including Corinth and Thebes.[5]
In the 540s, the Oracle of Delphi urged Croesus of Lydia to seek out the most powerful of the Greeks to aid him in defeating the Persians. He had little hesitation in coming to Lacedaemon, a tribute to the Spartans and a snub to their rival Argos.[8] Around 546, when Lydia was crumbling, the Spartans marched. Not against Persia, as their ally had asked, but against Argos. This strange move can be attributed to two factors, the famous Spartan conservativism, and the Argive challenge to 300 Spartans to meet the same number of Argives on the field of war.[8] The hippeis were dispatched, and by the end of the day three warriors stood- two Argives and a solitary Spartan. The Argives claimed victory and returned in triumph, whilst their rival, very much alive, accused them of abandoning the field.[8] Within a week the entire army of Sparta had arrived to back up their champion, and they took and enslaved Argos. This may have strengthened the state in the short term, but Lydia fell and Cyrus looked covetously over the sea. Cyrus however, recognised that he could not take Greece.[8]
In 500, the situation changed as Aristagoras, the Persian tyrant of Miletos in Ionia, raised the support of his uncle Artaphernes, to attack Naxos.[8] The ships came from Sardis and Aristagoras had contacts in the Naxian Aristocracy, who were enduring a civil war.[8] All went well until Aristagoras fell out with the commander of the expedition, who was a Satrap. News of this reached Sardis and the Satrap there resolved publicly to depose Aristagoras.[8] At the same time, his Father-in-law Histiaeus in Greece, a supporter of democracy, encouraged Aristagoras to rebel.[10] He heeded this, and resigned his post and traveled to the Spartan city of Gytheion to ask for aid.[8] The monarchist Spartans refused, and Aristagoras instead went to Athens and her ally, Eretria, who sent an army to aid the democratic revolt.[8] Aristagoras gained enough support that he could utilise his army to burn Sardis itself. Unfortunately, he failed to prevent the temples, famous for testicle-hacking rituals, from burning and so fled into the mountains, where as ill fate would have it there was waiting as Persian relief force.[8] The rebels were defeated, with casualties including the Eretrian commander.[8] The allies withdrew and Aristagoras traveled to his Father-in-law's land in Thrace. Unfortunately, he was not well received as he tried to conquer the surrounding area to make an empire, and was killed in battle ending the Ionian Revolt.[8]
The revolt may have been over, but the war was not. In 490 Darius I sent a Persian force which crossed to Greece and was promptly defeated by an Athenian-Plataean alliance at Marathon. This showed how deadly Greek troops were, as the 10,000 allies only took 192 casualties,[7] owing to their heavy armour and weapons, which the lighter eastern warriors could not defeat. His son Xerxes tried again in 480, sending an army of 300,000 across the Hellespont. He timed the invasion to coincide with the festival of Apollo in Sparta and the Olympic Games.[8] This meant that the allied Greeks only numbered 10,000 with 4000 in the pass of Thermopylae, including 400 unwilling Thebans and the famous Spartan hippeis of 300, along with 1000 Thespians.[8] The army was commanded by Leonidas I and Demophilius of Thespiae. The allies knew of a goat path only traversable by infantry such as the Persians', but owing to lack of manpower only 400 inexperienced Tegeans were dispatched, without a Spartan officer. The allies disdained surrender and fought for a week, when a local traitor told Xerxes of the goat path, which most of the army used.[8] All of the army except the hippeis, 100 Thespians and 400 Thebans were ordered to retreat, and the aforementioned rearguard was slaughtered.[8]
Xerxes proceeded to take his army to the very heart of Greece burning Athens, including the sacred Acropolis. At this time, General Themistocles consulted the oracle to get the response Put your faith in a wooden wall. Some Athenians proceeded to fortify the acropolis with timber, while Themistocles put his trust in the allied navy and the 300 ships of Athens. He was proved right and the fleet won decisively at Salamis. The Spartans led the force that drove the Persians back to Ionia, culminating in the battle of Plataea in which the Spartans had 45,000 men under the command of Pausanias, 10,000 Spartans (including Spartiates, Perioikoi and helots), and 35,000 Athenians and other Greek allies; this was the largest single Spartan fighting force ever to appear in battle.[8] Pausanius gave a famous speech before the battle, which ended
If The Mede feared 300 of us Spartans at the Gates of Thermopylae imagine what he thinks of 10,000 of us here!
The battle was won, and Greece was saved from the Persian threat, though the war continued in Ionia. Sparta and Athens headed the alliance (known as the Delian League) that later forced Xerxes to retreat from all of the Greek territories. Because of this, a rivalry developed between the two states of Sparta and Athens.
The Athenians decided to preserve the alliance, and wanted to lead it. The Spartans had the same ambition.[8] This led to the Peloponnesian war between Alcibiades of Athens, and Lysander the Spartan. Alcibiades had powerful enemies before the war, and during it they plotted his death. At the end of his Sicilian Expedition he was accused of sacrilege. Rather than go to trial, the general went to Sparta and betrayed the Athenian army's secrets. When the Spartans won battles with his advice they assassinated him to prevent his return to Athens. Sparta had and retained the upper hand for over 20 years of otherwise one-sided war, and claimed victory in 404.
Decline
In 404, after 27 years of war, the Peloponnesian War ended and Sparta was the centre of a more divided Greece than ever. Would Sparta, victorious but weakened, succeed where Athens had failed? Sparta had lacked the imagination and peacetime capability of the democratic Athenians, but Athens had never been able to stick to a long term strategy.[5] Fortunately for the city, they were devoted to a Spartan alliance, whereas the Spartans had split into two factions lead by the general Lysander and the king Pausanias, perhaps jealous of his rival but aware that Lysander's wish of the destruction of Athens would create a dangerous imbalance of power in Greece. Sparta's allies, Corinth and Thebes, sided with Lysander. The Spartans did not go so far, but the terms were nevertheless severe. Athens kept Attica and Salamis but had to surrender its fleet and demolish the fortifications of Piraeus, its port. Further, the city was to raze the long walls that defended it, abandon all foreign possessions and recall the exiles. It also concluded a defensive and offensive alliance with Sparta, by joining the Peloponnesian League.
The first signs of Sparta beginning to crumble showed in 390 when an Athenian general, Iphicrates, used an elite group of peltasts to destroy a mora. This was significant as the Spartans had always considered peltasts to be inferior to the Phalanx but Iphicrates had shown the Greeks that Sparta could be defeated.
Despite Sparta's penalties to Athens, Thebes was not satisfied. This coupled with anger at the Corinthian War led to it beginning secret plottings with Sparta's enemies to exploit the state's one weakness- during the war Sparta had failed to move with the times and absorb Iphicrates' methods. In one battle, at Leuctra in 371, they defeated Sparta.
Sparta did break away from the Thebans, and once again took up their position as defenders of Greece, and Greek wit. When Phillip II came into Greece he sent a message to the Spartans: εάν εισάγω Λακεδαεμον επίπεδο Σπάρτα στο έδαφος! ("If I enter Lacedaemon I will level Sparta to the ground!") to which the Spartans replied εάν (If).[11] When Alexander the Great of Macedon asked for aid against Persia, predictably Sparta refused, to which Alexander responded by sending back 300 curaisses, the number synonymous with Sparta, and the message:
Alexander son of Philip, and the Greeks - except the Spartans - from the barbarians living in Asia[12]
— Alexander the Great, Battle at Granicus, 355 BC
When Alexander's empire fell the Greeks, although nominally Macedonian, became independent. Sparta continued to be independent and under Cleomenes III, the army revived and gained control of most of the Peloponnese for Sparta. However, the Spartans were in turn defeated by the Macedonians with help from the Achean League in 222 BC at the Battle of Sellasia. The Spartan army and navy once again was reformed under Nabis but following Sparta's defeated during the War against Nabis it fell into disrepair.
In 189 BC, Sparta was incorporated into the Achean League which now controlled most of the Peloponnese. How, Sparta broke off from the Achean League in 147 BC and this move triggered the war which ended with Rome defeating and destroying the Achean League as well as conquering the Peloponnese. The Romans however, allowed Sparta to remain a "free".
Famous Battles Fought
Note the Spartan convention of naming wars: They were named after the enemy, so Persian Wars means the war against the Persians. Actually, however, in Sparta the Persian Wars were named "The Median Events" as the Greeks named this war as a series of happenings.
Persian Wars
Athenian War
- Sybota
- Potidaea
- Chalcis
- Rhium
- Naupactus
- Mytilene
- Tanagra
- Olpae
- Pylos
- Sphacteria
- Delium
- Amphipolis
- Mantinea
- Sicilian Expedition
- Syme
- Cynossema
- Abydos
- Cyzicus
- Notium
- Arginusae
- Aegospotami
Corinthian War
Theban War
In Popular Culture
- Adolf Hitler considered Sparta to be the first National Socialist state, and praised its early eugenics treatment of deformed children.[13][14][15]
- 300, a movie and comic devoted to Thermopylae
- Spartan, a PC game developed by Slitherine
- In the Halo video game series, genetically-enhanced super-soldiers are named Spartan-IIs, named after the Spartan Army.
Notes and References
- ^ Connoly, Peter. The Greek Armies. MacDonald Educational Ltd. ISBN 0356055809.
It was accepted that each Spartan was worth ten of any other state
- ^ a b c d e f g Connoly, Peter. The Greek Armies. MacDonald Educational Ltd. ISBN 0356055809.
- ^ a b c d Lane Fox, Robin. The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. Basic Books. ISBN 0465024963.
- ^ Black, Jeremy. "1 (Marathon)". The Seventy Greatest Battles of All Time. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0500251258.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Encyclopædia Britannica 15th Edition
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
cartledge
was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b c Herodotus. The Histories.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Holland, Tom. Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West. Anchor. ISBN 0307279480.
- ^ Xenophon
- ^ Singh, Simon. The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography. Anchor. ISBN 0385495323.
- ^ Europe: a History - Norman Davies
- ^ "The Genius of Alexander the Great", Nicholas G. Hammond, p. 69
- ^ Hitler, Adolf (1961). "Hitler's Secret Book" (HTML). New York: Grove Press. p. 18.
Sparta must be regarded as the first völkisch state. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more human than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject.
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See also
- The 70 Great Battles of All Time
- Encyclopædia Britannica
- The Spartans by Paul Cartledge
- The Groovy Greeks by Terry Deary
- The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox
- The Code Book by Simon Singh
- Spartiates
- History of Sparta
- Military history of Ancient Greece