The walls of ancient Sparta were said not to be made of brick, but of men!
And like many things said about the Spartans this is almost as cool as it is misleading.
By the classical period Sparta had earned a reputation for its brutal training program
and singular focus on producing the best warriors possible.
So women exercised rigorously to bear the strongest Spartans, and those boys began their training at age seven.
The military machismo is palpable. Then in 480 came their crowning achievement
of defending Thermopylae [Θερμοπύλαι] to the death against Persia and ousting them for good the following year,
and so the myth of Spartan excellence was set forever. Sparta’s actual battle record is less impressive,
but the badass “fear no death”-vibe was enough to convince most of mainland Greece to join the winner’s circle
and ally with Sparta's Peloponnesian League. For a century and a half Sparta was the dominant polis in Greece,
defeating even the Athenian empire in a 30-year war. But all this power and influence translated into shockingly little.
By now, Spartans had long tired of artistry or literature and never cared for outside trade or shiny architecture.
Sparta was and would remain four humble villages in a valley between the mountains of Laconia
whose primary exports were pithy quotes and violence. So maybe they had no use for walls
because of their buff hoplites and naturally defensive terrain, but perhaps Sparta's best armour was its glory.
Now if the Spartans spent all their time exercising, training and flexing their muscles for the bros in the barracks,
who was doing all of the farming to support their society? Ancient Greek sexism was a hell of a drug,
but even Spartan women enjoyed many of the same privileges and leisures as male citizens.
Instead, the Spartans handled the task of agriculture with slavery.
Like, holy Hell, so much slavery! See, just to the west of Laconia [Λακωνία] is the region of Messenia,
and sometime in the late 700s Sparta waged a multi-generational war to conquer Messenia
and subjugate the entire population as helots, a whole class of people enslaved
and owned communally by the Spartan state. Labouring in the fields for centuries
so the boys back home had more time to run laps and wrestle. From its earliest identifiable history,
Spartan society was built to preserve this core dynamic of citizen leisure and helot servitude,
and they remained utterly terrified that it might break. Unfortunately Sparta's enemies were aware of this,
so the city of Argos [arɣos] supported a helot uprising in the mid 600s to try and topple Sparta.
It failed, but the lingering paranoia might have been the spark
for Sparta's subsequent transformation into a military aristocracy,
complete with a secret police designed to spy on and terrorise the helots.
However frightening it must have been to go up against a classical era Spartan phalanx,
it had nothing on how scared they were about the Messenians they'd enslaved.
For all the scholarly debate about Sparta's actual strength in battle,
two clear weaknesses are how they had no cavalry and they could barely sail to save their lives.
But this is where the Peloponnesian League proved useful,
as it allied Sparta to the second strongest naval power in Greece: the city of Corinth [korinθos].
Situated right at the isthmus connecting the Peloponnese to the mainland
and smack in between two seas, Corinth was a maritime heavyweight in trade, naval power and colonisation,
with settlements spanning from Potideia [Ποτείδαια] to Korkyra [Κέρκυρα] to Syrakousai [Συρακοῦσαι].
Throw in how Corinth was an actual city, renowned across Greece for its beauty,
and it was easily Sparta’s crown jewel of the league. If they cared about that kind of thing.
Naturally Sparta really just wanted Corinth for their ships,
because that was their only shot at standing up to the fleet of the Athenian empire.
Unfortunately for Sparta, two Corinthian colonies got into trouble with the mother city by allying with Athens,
setting off the diplomatic views that would draw Sparta and Athens into their giant, awful war.
Even worse, Corinth's second best navy in Greece couldn't cut it against Athens,
as they got clowned on at the battle of Naupactus in 429.
Sparta’s only relief came in 407 when they got a massive pot of gold to fund a fleet and finally kick Athens’ ass,
courtesy of the Persians.
A little scandalous, but Sparta was too pragmatic to let cultural sympathy override a good strategy.
Some Greek cities seemed destined to not exist. See, when war finally broke out between Athens and Sparta in 431 BC
the Spartans’ plan for a quick and easy win was to besiege the city, burn the countryside
and either starve them out or bait them into a losing battle. But Athens had the naval convoys to keep the city well fed
and the restraints to not run outside their walls and get immediately flattened by a Spartan phalanx,
or so they feared. So in 429 Sparta instead set out for nearby Plataea [Πλάταια].
It was the site of the final battle of the Persian wars, and after its destruction the Greeks rebuilt it
and made it into a neutral sacred space in thanks for their role in the victory.
However, Plataea was always being menaced by its bigger neighbour Thebes [Θῆβαι],
so ever since 519 the Plataeans had a defence agreement with Athens. Now when the big war got going a century after,
Thebes took the occasion to live its truth and attack Plataea,
sending in saboteurs and building giant ramps to scale the walls,
but failing to breach the city before Sparta arrived in 429.
The Plataeans tried to convince Sparta with appeals to their sacrifice and valour in the Persian war,
but those wily Lakedaimonians insisted Plataea had broken its sacred oath by being too cosy with Athens.
So Sparta joined the siege, blockaded the city and starved them out by 427. Easier to do when they didn't have a navy.
While most Plataeans had escaped to the safety of Athens, Sparta smashed the city into pebbles,
just as viciously as another invader had done some 50 years earlier.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to understanding Sparta is how little they ever explained themselves.
So we're left with Athenian and later Roman accounts of the Spartans
that exoticize and praise them to Thermopylae and back.
But looking through their history we see a pragmatic cruelty pervading their choices.
Kill the Plataeans, they’re too friendly with Athens; ally with archenemy Persia to defeat Athens -
any boat money is good boat money; enslave an entire population of helots to make them farm -
it gives us more time to exercise; beat your kids and leave them to starve - it'll train them into tougher soldiers!
Sparta's cruelty was deliberate and calculated, not just against its enemies but imposed on itself!
Spartans loved their leisure, yet also chose to make their lives harsher for the sake of their army and state.
What strikes me about Sparta are these contrasts, like how individual Spartans have a blase attitude towards death -
be it in battle or childbirth - yet Sparta as a polis was ruled by fear; of change, of foreigners and their ideas,
of not being stronger than their enemies and of the helots they enslaved!
Sparta and Athens aren't mirror opposites and they both caught a villainous figure in the Peloponnesian war,
but more than any other civilization in the classical world,
people’s perceptions and praises of Sparta says a lot more about them and their values
than it says about the boys in red.
Thank you for watching. My favourite part of researching these Greek history videos is how the research process
always spills over by multiple pages of notes, and those get filed away for future videos.
So there will be more talk of Greek warfare and Spartan geopolitics in a later History Summarized.
Look at me demonstrating restraint and keeping the video on topic!
Stay tuned for plenty more Greece, and I'll see you in the next one.