sparta

1. sparta By Michael Taddeo

2. beginning/foundation of empire Sparta was a founded by the Dorian’s. The land of Sparta was taken by the Dorian’s after the Mycenaean War. The Messenians were the original inhabitants of the land, but the Spartans took over after the war. The Messenians did not submit to the Spartans rule easily, they revolted against them. This massive revolt almost defeated the Spartans, but they held their reign over the Messenian region. The Spartans were ridiculously outnumbered by the Messenians, so they put into effect a military oligarchy. This oligarchy was the reason that the Spartans were so successful. The Spartans took the Messenians as slaves, or helots. They were the lower class people of the Spartan race, followed by the perioeci. The perioeci were the middle class of Sparta, they were the traders, or merchants of the society.

3. Historical figures • Lacedaemon, the son of Zeus and Taygete, who married Sparta, the daughter ofEurotas. • Leonidas was a 5th century B.C. Spartan military king who bravely led a small force of Greeks -- mostly Spartan (the famous 300), but also Thespians and Thebans -- against the much larger Persian army of Xerxes, at the pass of Thermopylae, in 480 B.C. during the Persian wars.

4. Persian war • The Greco-Persian Wars (also often called the Persian Wars) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and city-states of the Hellenic world that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to rule the independent-minded cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them. This would prove to be the source of much trouble for the Greeks and Persians alike.

5. Peloponnesian War • The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. In the first phase, the Archidamian War, Sparta launched repeated invasions of Attica, while Athens took advantage of its naval supremacy to raid the coast of the Peloponnese attempting to suppress signs of unrest in its empire. This period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was soon undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched a massive expeditionary force to attack Syracuse in Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with the destruction of the entire force, in 413 BC. This ushered in the final phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this phase, Sparta, now receiving support from Persia, supported rebellions in Athens' subject states in the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining Athens' empire, and, eventually, depriving the city of naval supremacy. The destruction of Athens' fleet at Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year.

6. Height (Golden Age) • At the height of its power (400 BC) the Greek city of Sparta had 500,000 slaves and only 25,000 citizens. The two major powers in the eastern Mediterranean in the 5th century BC had been Athens and Sparta. The defeat of Athens by Sparta resulted in Spartan hegemony in the early 4th century BC.

7. Decline • The Spartans warred with several of the Greek city-states that had aided the Persians. After the war Athens sent her navy to Ionia to help free the Ionian Greeks from Persian rule. They gained independence over several decades, gaining wealth in war booty. • Athens continued to get stronger through the navy’s efforts in Ionia. They continued to get more arrogant and aggressive. Athens offered the city-states a choice: either alliance with Athens, or to be conquered by Athens. To stand against Athens meant to stand with the other strong Greek city-state, Sparta. By 431 BC Sparta and Athens were at war. The Peloponnesian Wars lasted from 431-404 BC with Sparta the eventual winner. • The war booty from the war increased the corruption within Sparta. People started to covet wealth and lost their discipline. Worse, with a declining birth rate their numbers were decreasing. They only allowed children of a Spartiate to become a citizen. They had about 9000 Spartiates when they reformed in 640 BC. By 371 they only had 1000. In 371 Sparta met Thebes at the Battle of Leucra. They lost not only the war, but Messena was freed as well. Many Spartiates had turned and fled, but Sparta did not have enough warriors left so the ephors did not impose the death penalty on them. Sparta’s dominance of the battlefield had ended. • Macedonia became the next major power. Under Alexander the Great they had displaced the Persians, but they never invaded Sparta. It was not until the Romans in 206 BC that Sparta was invaded.

8. Religions • Spartans believed in polytheism, which is the belief of many gods. Thirteen of the gods and goddesses were Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos the goddesses of destiny and fate, Atlas the god of burdens who was punished by Zeus for threatening the gods. His punishment was to hold up the sky on his shoulders forever. Zeus was the god of the earth, Adonis the god of desire, Heracles, the son of Zeus and Hera, born a human and turned into a god by Athena, Athena was the goddess of the city and war, Cronus was the father of the gods, Ares was the god of war, Hades the god of the underworld.

9. economy • Sparta's economy depended on conquering other people and farming. Sparta's land was not enough to feed all of it's people. Because most of the Spartan men spent their lives as warriors, Sparta used slaves to produce it's goods. Sparta conquered other neighboring regions. The people living in it's neighboring regions became Sparta's slaves. They were called helots. The helots were allowed to live where they originally belonged but they had to give a majority of the food that they produced to Sparta. Sparta's non-citizens were called perioikoi. The perioikoi were free men that would serve in the army when needed. They would make several goods for soldiers to use, such as, pottery, shoes, red cloaks, knives and spears. Sparta did not encourage trade. Sparta was scared that contact with other city-states would lead to new ideas and weaken it's government. Sparta did not have any coins. Instead they used heavy iron bars as money. Legend says that an ancient Spartan leader used iron as money as it would be difficult to steal. Other city-states were not excited about receiving iron as payment from Sparta

10. culture • Spartans were completely focused on their military.  It was their entire way of life.  The training of a Spartan started at birth.  The newly born Spartans were inspected by the committee of elders.  If considered weak, the baby was left to die by exposure to the slope of Mount Taygetos.  The babies that survived this were brought up in a special way.  At the age of seven, a boy Spartan was brought under the direct control of the city.  This remained for the rest of that Spartan's life.  The Spartan boys were taught reading and writing for their basic needs, but the rest of their knowledge was dedicated entirely to training to fight. Although Spartan girls did not go through military training, they were educated. This education was not academic, but it was physical.  Their education also involved being taught that they should dedicate their lives to the state.  In a way, the Spartan women were lucky.  Spartan women were free to move around where they wanted.  However, in most Greek states, women were required to stay indoors all of the time.