Question Hi, im a year 12 student studying sparta in ancient history, and im just wondering if you would be able to tell my why the military way of life was so important to the spartans. Im curious and we havent covered the military in class yet.
thanks
Answer Hi Georgia,
the military way of life was so important to the Spartans simply because Sparta was a military city-state (Greek, “polis”), where a rigid system of rules in military training was a distinctive feature of Sparta's government headed by two hereditary kings who were leaders in battle and in religion.
So at Sparta military training of the Spartiates, that is the elite class of the rigidly hierarchical Spartan society, began at the age of seven, when the child was removed from his family, moved into barracks, at age 20 could marry, but lived in the military barracks for another 10 years.
In short the young Spartiates were educated by the state according to a rigorous discipline so that Spartan boys were excellent warriors as they were trained for battle and put through difficult challenges. Therefore they became fearless warriors and had the reputation of being the best soldiers in Greece. Instruction consisted in fact for the most part in inculcating habits of obedience, bodily fitness, and courage to conquer in battle.
Such a Spartan militarism is proved for example by an ancient Spartan sentence we read in Plutarch’s Apophthegmata Laconica (Sayings of the Ancient Spartans) which in English sounds like this: “Come back with your shield, or on it".
By these words uttered by the Spartan mothers when they gave the shield to their sons going on military service, the mothers wished them to return from war either with the shield or on it (that is 'dead' on the shield), since if a soldier returned home alive without his shield, it meant that he had lost it, while running for his life and then he had been a coward.
Anyway in spite of such a rigid militarism, the city-state of Sparta was always a local power in Peloponnese, i.e. in the southernmost part of mainland Greece, but not in the rest of Greece, where Athens (whose art, intellectual concepts and cultural achievements prevailed over a rigid system of military rules) was the master of the sea, the leading commercial power, the centre of culture and civilization, in short the dominant power.
Finally I have to tell you that in Sparta there were three social classes:
1)the 'Spartiates' who were the elite warrior class;
2) the ‘Perioikoi’, literally "dwellers around," inhabitants of outlying towns who carried out most of the trade and commerce of the city;
3) the ‘helots’, enslaved populations tied to the land and owned by the Spartan state.
