Spartan Society to the Battle of Leuctra 371 BC

Spartan society to the Battle of Leuctra 371 BC is one of the Ancient Societies options in Section II (25 marks). You answer one question on your option, with three or four parts; one part is worth 10–15 marks and the others are short answers, often based on a source. The syllabus asks you to study Spartan society through the archaeological and written evidence:

• Geographical setting: Laconia and Messenia, natural features and resources, and significant sites.
• Social structure and political organisation: Spartiates, perioikoi and helots; the kings, gerousia, ephors and assembly; the role of Lycurgus.
• The economy: land ownership, the role of the helots and perioikoi, technology, trade and the use of iron currency.
• The Spartan army and military organisation.
• Religion, death and burial: gods, festivals, sanctuaries, burial customs.
• Cultural life: art and architecture, writing and literature (Alcman, Tyrtaeus).
• Everyday life: the agoge, the syssitia, the role and status of women, marriage.
• Change and decline to 371 BC.

Dates are BC throughout.

Setting

Sparta lay in the Eurotas valley in Laconia, in the south-eastern Peloponnese, between the Taygetus range (west) and Parnon (east). The city was a group of villages (Pitana, Mesoa, Limnai, Kynosoura, with Amyklai a little to the south) and had no city walls in this period: its army and its mountains were its defences. Across Taygetus lay Messenia, a fertile plain conquered in the Messenian Wars (late 8th and 7th centuries). The port was Gytheion.

Significant sites

• Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia on the banks of the Eurotas: votive offerings (about 100,000 lead figurines, ivories, masks) and the setting for agoge rituals.
• The Menelaion: a shrine to Menelaus and Helen.
• The Amyklaion: sanctuary of Apollo and Hyakinthos, home of the Hyakinthia festival.
• The acropolis with the temple of Athena Chalkioikos (‘of the Bronze House’).

Sources and the ‘Spartan mirage’

The ‘Spartan mirage’ (a term coined by François Ollier in 1933) describes how outsiders, especially Athenians and later writers, idealised or criticised Sparta, so that the image of Sparta often reflects their own agendas. Plutarch's Sparta may also be influenced by the ‘revived’ Spartan customs of the Roman period (Nigel Kennell). Always ask who wrote a source, when and why.

• Spartiates (homoioi, ‘equals’): full citizens. A man had to complete the agoge, belong to a mess (syssition) and pay his contributions. Numbers fell from about 8,000 in 480 (Herodotus) to perhaps 1,000–1,500 by 371 (only about 700 were at Leuctra) and, according to Aristotle, fewer than 1,000 later in the 4th century.
• Perioikoi (‘dwellers around’): free inhabitants of towns around Laconia and Messenia. They ran local affairs, did crafts, manufacturing and trade, and served as hoplites, but had no say in Spartan policy.
• Helots: state-owned serfs, tied to the land, working the allotments (kleroi) of the Spartiates and handing over produce (the apophora). Tyrtaeus says ‘half’ of the produce; Plutarch gives fixed amounts. They far outnumbered the citizens.
• Other groups: hypomeiones (‘inferiors’, ex-citizens who could not pay mess dues), neodamodeis (freed helots who served as hoplites, from the late 5th century), mothakes (non-citizens raised with Spartiate boys), tresantes (‘tremblers’, men disgraced for cowardice).

Controlling the helots

Each year the ephors declared war on the helots, so killing one did not bring religious pollution. In the krypteia, young Spartiates were sent into the countryside and could kill helots. After the earthquake of about 464 the Messenian helots revolted and held out on Mount Ithome for years. Thucydides reports that about 2,000 helots who had been offered freedom later disappeared (in the 420s). Fear of helot revolt shaped Spartan policy and made Sparta reluctant to send armies far from home.

Ancient writers saw Sparta as a mixed constitution. The Great Rhetra, which Plutarch quotes and attributes to Lycurgus, set out the main institutions.

Example: in 432, the ephor Sthenelaidas called a vote by division, and the assembly voted for war with Athens against the advice of King Archidamus (Thucydides).

• Land: Spartiates held allotments (kleroi) farmed by helots. Plutarch's story of equal lots created by Lycurgus is doubted by historians such as Stephen Hodkinson, who argues that private property and inequality existed early. Land increasingly became concentrated in fewer hands, and Aristotle says nearly two-fifths belonged to women.
• Ban on trades: Spartiates were not supposed to farm, trade or practise crafts. Perioikoi carried out manufacturing and trade.
• Iron currency: Plutarch says Sparta used heavy iron bars (obeloi) instead of gold and silver coins, discouraging wealth; Xenophon describes the ban on citizens owning gold and silver and money too bulky to hide. In practice, foreign silver flowed in, especially after 404.
• Technology and crafts: in the 7th–6th centuries Laconian bronze-work, black-figure pottery and ivories were of high quality and exported.

• Hoplites: large round shield, thrusting spear, short sword, bronze helmet, red cloak; long hair. They fought in the phalanx, a disciplined close formation.
• Organisation: small units (the enomotia, about 30–40 men) grouped into larger units with a clear chain of command; the 300 hippeis were the king's guard.
• Discipline: they advanced to the music of the aulos (Thucydides) and were expected never to retreat.
• Other troops: perioikoi hoplites; helots as attendants and light troops (Herodotus says seven per Spartiate at Plataea, 479); later neodamodeis.
• The Peloponnesian League: from the 6th century, alliances with most Peloponnesian states, led by Sparta.
• Key battles: Thermopylae (480, Leonidas), Plataea (479, Pausanias), Sphacteria (425, the surrender of Spartiates shocked Greece), Mantinea (418), Aegospotami (405, Lysander), Leuctra (371).

• Gods and sanctuaries: Artemis Orthia, Apollo (Amyklai), Athena Chalkioikos, the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux, Spartan heroes), Menelaus and Helen.
• Festivals: the Karneia (Apollo; Spartans would not fight during it, a reason for sending only a small force to Thermopylae); the Hyakinthia at Amyklai (mourning then celebration); the Gymnopaidiai (choral dancing by naked youths, honouring Apollo and those killed in war).
• Piety: the kings sacrificed before campaigns and battles, and Sparta consulted the Delphic oracle through officials called Pythioi.
• Burial: Plutarch says burials were simple and could be inside the city, near sanctuaries; only men who died in war (and, in the usual reading, women who died in childbirth) had their names inscribed. Kings received elaborate public mourning (Herodotus).

Archaic Sparta was not culturally barren. Alcman wrote choral songs (partheneia) for choirs of girls; Tyrtaeus wrote elegies urging citizens to fight bravely in the front line during the Second Messenian War. Music and dance were central to festivals. Laconian pottery, bronze vessels, figurines and ivories show skilled crafts. Architecture was modest: Thucydides predicted that if Sparta were deserted, later visitors would underestimate its power. From the 6th century the image of austerity became stronger, but even then poetry and choral performance mattered.

The agoge

According to Plutarch, newborn babies were examined by elders, and those judged weak were left at a place near Taygetus. From about 7, boys were taken from their families and educated by the state in age groups (agelai), supervised by the paidonomos and led by older youths (eirens). They went barefoot, received one cloak a year and little food, slept on reeds and were encouraged to steal food (and punished if caught). At the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, boys tried to steal cheeses from the altar while being whipped. The aim was obedience, endurance and loyalty to the state. Completing the agoge was required for citizenship.

The syssitia

Every citizen belonged to a mess of about 15 men and contributed monthly barley, wine, cheese and figs. Men ate there every evening (the famous ‘black broth’). Messes built comradeship among men who fought side by side. A man who failed to pay lost full citizen status. Men lived in barracks until 30.

Women and marriage

• Girls exercised (running, wrestling) to produce strong children.
• Women could inherit and own property: Aristotle says they held nearly two-fifths of the land. Cynisca, a king's daughter, won the Olympic chariot race in 396 (and again in 392).
• With men often absent, women managed households and helots and were known for outspokenness (Gorgo; ‘with your shield or on it’).
• Marriage customs reported by Plutarch included the ‘capture’ of the bride and the bride's head being shaved; husbands under 30 visited secretly. Xenophon mentions arrangements that allowed childless men to have children by another man's wife.
• Women had no political rights, and nearly all our evidence comes from non-Spartan men.

• Oliganthropia (shortage of citizens): earthquake losses (about 464), concentration of land (Aristotle; the possibly legendary ‘rhetra of Epitadeus’ in Plutarch), loss of status for failing to pay mess dues, and no regular way to admit new citizens.
• Strains of empire after 404: Lysander's harmosts and narrow oligarchies made Sparta hated; foreign wealth undermined austerity.
• Wars: the Corinthian War (395–387) and the King's Peace (387/6), which Sparta used to dominate Greece; the seizure of the Theban Cadmea (382) made Thebes an enemy.
• Leuctra (371): the Theban Epaminondas massed his left wing about 50 shields deep, with the Sacred Band, against the Spartan right. King Cleombrotus and about 400 of the 700 Spartiates present were killed.
• Aftermath: Epaminondas invaded Laconia (370–369) and freed Messenia, founding Messene. Without the Messenian helots, Sparta never recovered its power.

• Confusing the ephors (five, annual) with the gerousia (28 elders plus two kings, for life).
• Calling helots ‘slaves’ owned by individuals: they were state-owned and tied to the land.
• Calling perioikoi citizens or slaves: they were free non-citizens.
• Treating Plutarch as a contemporary source; he wrote roughly 800 years or more after Lycurgus' supposed lifetime.
• Saying Spartan women were ‘equal’. They had property and freedom but no political rights.
• Describing institutions without showing how they connect (for example, how the helot system made the agoge and messes possible).

• Short-answer parts (about 3–6 marks) often use a source: identify what the source shows, and add specific own knowledge.
• For the 10–15 mark part, write a short thesis, organise by argument, use specific evidence (names, numbers, sources), and finish with a judgement.
• Show awareness of the evidence: say where information comes from (‘According to Plutarch…’, ‘Aristotle, a critic, claims…’).
• Historians such as Paul Cartledge, Stephen Hodkinson and Anton Powell are credited when used well, but you do not need to name historians to reach the top band.

• Cities of Vesuvius: the same source skills (provenance, usefulness, archaeology versus written sources) apply.
• The Augustan Age: in the Roman period Sparta became a ‘heritage’ city whose revived customs attracted visitors, which influenced Plutarch's picture.
• Historical concepts: continuity and change (decline), causation (Leuctra), perspectives (the mirage).