Sparta > Spárti Lakonia Greece

Laconia, a strong kingdom ruled by Menelaus, according to Homer, had seen the founding of numerous settlements in the Late Mycenaean period (1400-1100 BCE).

The southwestern Peloponnesus is governed during Mycenaean times, according to Homeric legend, by the family of Neleides, originating in Iolcos, near modern Vólos, in Thessaly.

The Dorian Invasion (about 1100 BCE) brings widespread destruction to the Peloponnesus (and several centuries will pass before Laconia begins to reemerge).

The second invasion of Greece by the Dorians, much larger than the minor influx that occurred after 1400, takes place (according to Greek tradition) about eighty years after the end of the Trojan War, which would place the invasion around 1104.

The Dorians are a major division of the ancient Greek people, distinguished by a well-marked dialect and by their subdivision, within all their communities, into the “tribes” (phylai) of Hylleis, Pamphyloi, and Dymanes. (These three tribes are apparently quite separate in origin from the four tribes found among the Ionian Greeks.)

As Heracles's son Hyllus traditionally ruled the first of these, Greek legend calls this invasion “the return of the Heraclids.” In Greek tradition, the Dorians were thought to have gained their name from Doris, a small district in central Greece.

According to this tradition, Eurystheus of Mycenae drove the sons of Heracles, the Heraclidae, from their homeland in the Peloponnesus.

The Heraclidae took refuge with Aegimius, the king of Doris.

Several generations later, the Heraclid brothers Temenus, Aristodemus, and Cresphontes lead the “Dorians” back in a successful invasion of the Peloponnesus (in the period 1100-1000 BCE) and thus recover their heritage.

The factual origins of the Dorians are necessarily obscure, but it appears they originated in northern and northwestern Greece, i.e., Macedonia and Epirus.

From there, they apparently sweep southward into central Greece and then into the southern Aegean area in successive migrations beginning about 1100 BCE, at the end of the Bronze Age.

The invading Dorians have a relatively low cultural level, and their only major technological innovation is the iron slashing sword.

The Dorians sweep away the last of the declining Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations of southern Greece (although Athens's Acropolis and Thebes's Cadmeia escape destruction) and plunge the region into a dark age out of which the Greek city-states will begin to emerge almost three centuries later.

The Dorian invaders gain control of many areas, acquiring land and enslaved people, then force many surviving inhabitants east to the Aegean islands and Asia Minor.

The Protogeometric style emerges around the mid-eleventh century BCE as the first expression of a reviving civilization after the collapse of the Mycenaean-Minoan Palace culture and the ensuing Greek Dark Ages.

Following on from the development of a faster potter's wheel, vases of this period are markedly more technically accomplished than earlier Dark Age examples.

The decoration of these pots is restricted to purely abstract elements and is best characterized by broad horizontal bands about the neck and belly and concentric circles applied with compass and multiple brushes.

Some of the innovations include some new Mycenaean influenced shapes, such as the belly-handled amphora, the neck handled amphora, the krater, and the lekythos.

Attic artists have redesigned these vessels using the fast wheel to increase the height and therefore the area available for decoration.

The Iron Age civilization that arises in Greece is based on rain-watered agriculture and employs the implements of the new metallurgy.

The Greeks now use metal styli to mark their waxed tablets.

Changes in material culture, such as the introduction of iron, new weapons, and changes in burial practices from Mycenaean group burials in tholos tombs to individual burials and cremation, are associated with the culture of the Dorians.

The recorded history of Sparta begins with the Dorian invasions, when the eastern Peloponnesus is settled by Illyrian tribes coming from Epirus and Macedonia through the northeast region of Greece, submitting or displacing the older Achaean Greek inhabitants.

The Mycenaean Sparta of Menelaus described in Homer's Iliad was an older Greek civilization, whose link to Hellenic or Classical Sparta was only by name and location.

The state and culture widely known today as ancient Sparta refers to that formed in the valley of Lacedaemon by the Dorian Greeks, who establish their capital at Sparta, an evolution of four original villages.

The Dorian Spartans apparently reduce the remaining natives to serfdom, calling them helots.

Tradition describes how, some sixty years after the Trojan War, a Dorian migration from the north took place and eventually led to the rise of classical Sparta, a consolidation of four original villages in the Peloponnesian valley of Lacedaemon.

This tradition is, however, contradictory and was written down at a time long after the events they supposedly describe.

Hence, skeptics like Karl Julius Beloch have denied that any such event occurred.

Chadwick has argued, on the basis of slight regional variations that he detected in Linear B, that the Dorians had previously lived in the Dorian regions as an oppressed majority, speaking the regional dialect, and emerged when they overthrew their masters.

Archaeologically, Sparta itself only begins to show signs of settlement around 1000 BCE, some 200 years after the collapse of Mycenaean civilization.

Of the four villages that make up the Spartan polis, Forrest suggests that the two closest to the Acropolis were the originals and the two more far flung settlements, were of later foundation.

The dual kingship peculiar to Sparta may originate in the fusion of the first two villages.

One of the effects of the Mycenaean collapse had been a sharp drop in population.

Following that there was a significant recovery, and this growth in population is likely to have been more marked in Sparta, as it is situated in the most fertile part of the plain.

Agis, an early Spartan king, is traditionally held to be the son of Eurysthenes (in legend, one of the twins who founded Sparta).

Because the Agiad line of kings is named after him, Agis is perhaps a historical figure.

The fourth-century BCE Greek historian Ephorus attributes to Agis the capture of the city of Helos in Laconia and the reduction of its people to helot (serf) status.

The state of Sparta, historically Lacedaemon, the eventual capital of the Laconia district of the southeastern Peloponnese, is reputedly founded in the ninth century BCE with a rigid oligarchic constitution.

Lycurgus, by tradition the founder of the constitution of Sparta, and the lawgiver who designs this city-state's unique social and military structure, lives (according to fifth century BCE Greek writer Herodotus) about 900, (but later writers, including the biographer Plutarch, date him to the early eighth century BCE.

Scholars have been unable to determine conclusively whether Lycurgus was a historical person and, if he did exist, which institutions should be attributed to him.

Herodotus claimed that the lawgiver belonged to Sparta's Agiad house, one of the two houses (the other being the Eurypontid) that held Sparta's dual kingship.

According to Herodotus, the Spartans of his day claimed that the institutions of Crete inspired Lycurgus' reforms.

The historian Xenophon, writing in the first half of the fourth century BCE, apparently believed that Lycurgus had founded Sparta's institutions soon after the Dorians invaded Laconia around 1000 BCE and reduced the native Achaean population to the status of serfs, or helots.

It was generally accepted by the middle of the fourth century BCE hat Lycurgus had belonged to the Eurypontid house and had been regent for the Eurypontid king Charillus.

On this basis, Hellenistic scholars dated him to the ninth century BCE.

The Greek biographer Plutarch in his Life of Lycurgus will piece together popular accounts of Lycurgus' career.

Plutarch will describe Lycurgus' journey to Egypt and claim that the reformer had introduced the poems of Homer to Sparta.

Sparta has already, in the Dark Age, coerced into semisubject, or “perioikic,” status a number of its immediate neighbors, having gradually conquered Laconia, the southeastern quarter of the Peloponnesus.

Many of the conquered pre-Dorians became helots, or serfs; the Spartans grant members of various neighboring groups in Laconia the semiautonomous status of “perioikoi,” but require them to serve in the army.

It undertakes the wholesale conquest of Messenia in the second half of the eighth century, from about 735 BCE to 715 BCE.

One consequence is the export of an unwanted group, the Partheniai, to Taras in southeastern Italy.

These are sons of Spartan mothers and non-Spartan fathers, procreated during the absence in Messenia of the Spartan warrior elite.

A still more important consequence of the conquest of Messenia, “good to plow and good to hoe” as the seventh-century Spartan poet Tyrtaeus puts it, is the acquisition of a large tract of fertile land and the creation of a permanently servile labor force, the “helots,” as the conquered Messenians are now called.

The helots are state slaves, held down by force and fear, bound to the soil and assigned to individual Spartans to till their holdings; their masters can neither free them nor sell them, and the helots have a limited right to accumulate property, after paying to their masters a fixed proportion of the produce of the holding.

Owing to their own numerical inferiority, the Spartans are always preoccupied with the fear of a helot revolt.

Sparta begins to develop as a militant polis in the eighth century and early seventh century BCE, with a rigid social structure and a government that includes an assembly representing all citizens.

Archidamus, the twelfth king of Sparta of the Eurypontid line, and the son of Anaxidamus, rules shortly after the close of the second Messenian War in about 660 BCE and toward the outset of the long war between Sparta and Tegea (the Tegean War).

The geographer Pausanias describes his reign as quiet and peaceful.

Sparta only begins to show signs of settlement in the archaeological record around 1000 BCE, some two hundred years after the collapse of Mycenaean civilization.

Of the four villages that make up the Spartan polis, the two closest to the Acropolis are the originals; the duel kingship peculiar to Sparta may originate in the fusion of the first two villages.

One of the effects of the of Mycenaean collapse had been a sharp drop in population.

Following that, however, there was a significant recovery and this growth in population is likely to have been more marked in Sparta, situated as it was in the most fertile part of the plain.

It is it at this point in the history of Sparta, to be precise the reign of King Charillos, that most ancient sources place the life of Lycurgus, by tradition the founder of the constitution of Sparta, and the lawgiver who designed that city-state's unique social and military structure.

He lived, according to Herodotus, about 900, but later writers, including the biographer Plutarch, date him to the mid-seventh century BCE.

At a time when Sparta is weakened by internal dissent and lacks the stability of a united and well-organized community, the legislation promulgated by Lycurgus establishes the Gerousia, the Spartan Senate; he is also credited with establishing the Spartan system of training, the agoge.

Sparta shares the plain with Amyklai, which lies to the south and is one of the few places to have survived from Mycenaean times; it is likely to be her most formidable neighbor.

Hence the tradition that Sparta, under her kings Archilaus and Charillos, instead moved north to secure the upper Eurotas valley is plausible.

Under Archilaus’s successor Teleclus, Pharis and Geronthrae are taken and, though the traditions are a little contradictory, also Amykla , which probably falls around 750 BCE.

It is probable that inhabitants of Geronthrae had been driven out while the inhabitants of Amyklai had simply been subjugated to Sparta.

This gives Sparta control of the central Laconian plain and the eastern plateau that lies between the Eurotas and Mount Parnon.

The export of an unwanted group, the Partheniai ("sons of virgins"), is one consequence of Sparta’s wholesale conquest of Messenia.

These are the sons of unmarried Spartan women and Perioeci (free men, but not citizens of Sparta), procreated during the absence in Messenia of the Spartan warrior elite.

These out-of-wedlock unions were permitted extraordinarily by the Spartans to increase the prospective number of soldiers (only the citizens of Sparta could become soldiers) during the bloody Messenian wars, but later they were retroactively nullified, and the sons were then obliged to leave Greece forever.

Phalanthus, the Parthenian leader, goes to Delphi to consult the oracle: the puzzling answer designates the harbor of Taranto in southern Italy as the new home of the exiles.

A still more important consequence of the conquest of Messenia, “good to plow and good to hoe” as the poet Tyrtaeus put it, is the acquisition of a large tract of fertile land and the creation of a permanently servile labor force.

Sparta had begun to develop as a militant polis in the eighth century and early seventh century BCE, with a rigid social structure and a government that includes an assembly representing all citizens.

The Spartans are nearly bankrupt after the long and costly Messenian war.

As the objective of the Spartans had been to increase the number of lots of land for their citizens, many of the conquered Messenians (those who did not manage to leave the area) are reduced to the condition of helots.

The helots are state slaves, held down by force and fear, bound to the soil and assigned to individual Spartans to till their holdings; their masters can neither free them nor sell them, and the helots have a limited right to accumulate property, after paying to their masters a fixed proportion of the produce of the holding.

Owing to their own numerical inferiority, the Spartans will always be preoccupied with the fear of a helot revolt.

The Spartans are painfully aware of the necessity of a trained citizen army.

Led by the semilegendary Lycurgus, they alter their entire social system to conform to the Cretan model.

Henceforth, all Spartan males will be trained to a perfection of physical fitness and skill at arms in a civilization devoted primarily to warfare.

The Greeks quickly adopt from Lydia the concept of coinage.

Measured quantities of gold, silver, or copper, melted and cast into regular shapes, are then stamped with marks representing their value and the name or image of the ruler or state as a guarantee of value.

The Argive recovery that Pheidon had instigated does not endure for long against the alliance of Elis and Sparta, and the northeastern cities are soon independent under their own tyrants.

Prominent among the Greek states that never experience tyranny is Sparta, a fact noted even in antiquity.

It is exceptional in this and in other respects: it sent out few colonies, only to Taras (Tarentum) in the eighth century and—in the prehistoric period—to the Aegean islands of Thera and Melos.

Though unfortified, it succeeds, exceptionally among Greek states, in subduing by force a comparably sized neighbor—Messenia, which had lost its independence to Sparta in the eighth century and will not regain it until the 360s The Messenian factor is the primary determinant of the peculiar development of Sparta, because it has forced Spartans to adjust their institutions to deal with a permanently hostile subject population.

In Sparta and other Dorian Greek states, five ephors, or chief magistrates, are elected annually, the senior one giving his name to the year.

The Spartan ephors levy troops and control the city-state's two kings, or basileis, whom they can prosecute before the Gerousia (council of elders), and try for misconduct of a military campaign.

Additionally, the ephors, who arrive at decisions by majority vote, administer taxes, hear civil suits, supervise education, determine foreign policy, and parcel out the spoils of conquest.

The ephors of each year on entering office declare war on the helots so that they might be murdered at any time without violating religious scruples.

It is the responsibility of the Spartan secret police, the Krypteia, to patrol the Laconian countryside and put to death any supposedly dangerous helots.

Sparta's political institutions and cultural life had been similar to those in other states up to the Second Messenian War.

It had an artistic tradition of its own and produced or gave hospitality to such poets as Alcman, Terpander, and Tyrtaeus.

Now, however, Spartan institutions have received a new, bleak, military orientation.

The relationship of hatred and exploitation (the helots hand over half of their produce to Sparta) is the determining feature in Spartan internal life.

Spartan warrior peers (homoioi) are subjected to a rigorous military training, the agoge, to enable them to deal with the Messenian helots, whose agricultural labors provide the Spartans with the leisure for their military training and life-style—a notoriously vicious circle.

Social sanctions like loss of citizen status are the consequence of cowardice in battle; a system of homosexual pair-bonding maintains the normal hoplite bonds at a level of ferocious intensity; and the economic surplus provided by the lots of land worked by the helots is used to finance the elite institution of the syssitia, with loss of full citizen status for men who cannot meet their “mess bill.”

The agoge, however, transforms Sparta and sets it apart from other states.