Spartan Soldier From Birth: Growing Up In A City of Warriors 30 Apr 2023. Unlike other Greek city-states, Sparta "was exceptional. Hostilities resumed between Athens and Sparta with an assault launched by the Athenians at Sicily. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. It resulted in the emergence of Sparta as the most powerful state in Greece. Sparta, Ancient Greek City-State for Kids and Teachers - Ancient Greece Corrections? Going into battle, a Spartan soldier, or hoplite, wore a large bronze helmet, breastplate and ankle guards, and carried a round shield made of bronze and wood, a long spear and sword. The agreement was made official with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. One of Spartas allies, Corinth, had directly engaged the Athenian army. The Greek polis (article) | Classical Greece | Khan Academy Reduced by constant wars in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, the Spartan hoplites (homoioi) became dangerously small in number (8,000 in 490 BCE to 700 in 371 BCE), so much so, that non-Spartiate soldiers had to be enlisted and their loyalty and interest in Sparta's ambitions was questionable. Sparta decided to retaliate. This is Sparta: Fierce warriors of the ancient world - Craig Zimmer, Art and Craft in Archaic Sparta | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter! Indoctrination into this lifestyle began early. Like all Greeks, they would identify themselves as being from their city-state, in this case Sparta. Soldiers were trained as hoplites, or heavily armed foot soldiers. No man was allowed to live as he pleased, but in their city, as in a military encampment, they always had a prescribed regimen and employment in public service, considering that they belonged entirely to their country and not to themselves, watching over the boys, if no other duty was laid upon them, and either teaching them some useful thing, or learning it themselves from their elders. Because it was so hard for Ancient Greeks to communicate with each other due to mountainous terrain and isolated islands, they created.. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Watch 300. Continued Spartan ambitions in central and northern Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily once again dragged the city into another protracted conflict, the Corinthian Wars with Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Persia from 396 to 387 BCE. City-States of Ancient Greece - Exploros Even after gaining reinforcements in 413, the Athenian army was defeated again. 1996 - 2023 National Geographic Society. Plutarch equates the relationship of the young lovers with the classical model of other Greek city-states in which an older male (the erastes, lover) encourages and nurtures a younger man (the eromenos, beloved). Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter! Learning from its past experiences with the Athenian navy, they established a fleet of warships. This instability was the context for the emergence of Greek city-states. Sparta's position as the number one city-state in Greece, though, was to be short-lived. Bibliography After briefly challenging Macedonian control in the 3rd century BCE and being besieged by Pyrrhus in 272 BCE, Sparta never regained her former glory and she was compelled to join the Achaean Confederacy in 195 BCE. Which battle established Sparta as the most powerful state in Greece? Once married, they could start a family but still were expected to eat with their mess. (17.1). World History Encyclopedia. License. Among his reforms was the creation of formal education and military training that became the agoge. The Spartans constant military drilling and discipline made them skilled at the ancient Greek style of fighting in a phalanx formation. (2.13-14). Known as the Agoge, the system emphasized duty, discipline and endurance. The word means "raising" in the sense of raising livestock from youth toward a specific purpose. 1996 - 2023 National Geographic Society. And they steal what they fetch, some of them entering the gardens, and others creeping right slyly and cautiously into the public messes of the men; but if a boy is caught stealing, he is soundly flogged as a careless and unskillful thief. According to some accounts, one test was to drop the baby into a vat of wine and, if it cried, it was considered too weak, but this may be apocryphal. Off the battlefield, the rigid acceptance of the status quo that the Spartan educational system enforced made it difficult for the Spartans to deal with social problems in their society, such as inequality in land ownership and a declining population. Initially, the term polis referred to a fortified area or citadel which offered protection during times of war. The ancient Sparta city was one of the most powerful city-states in Ancient Greece. All of these freedoms would have been unacceptable in other Greek poleis. The Spartan hoplite army, however, showed the rest of Greece the way forward towards a greater military professionalism and considering the iconic image of fearless and disciplined hoplites with red cloaks and lambda-emblazoned shields, for the Greeks, admiring Romans and even 21st century film-goers, this is Sparta. Spartan boys started their military training at age 7, when they left home and entered the Agoge. Cite This Work (16.6), Young Spartans Exercising by DegasNational Gallery (Public Domain). Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. Sparta believed that a good citizen was someone who could protect the city-state, so education focused on military training. Fighting ensued, and the Athenians then took steps that explicitly violated the Thirty Years Treaty. Sparta, under Cleomenes (c. 520-490 BCE), overthrew the tyrants of Athens but the resulting democracy put a stop to any Spartan ambitions in the city. Its real focus was to prepare Spartan males to be compliant members of society, who were ready to sacrifice their all for Sparta. The agoge gradually declined in support from the 4th century BCE, though some form of it existed during the early years of the Roman Empire. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Reputedly founded in the 9th century bce with a rigid oligarchic constitution, the state of Sparta for centuries retained as lifetime corulers two kings who arbitrated in time of war. Spartan society was separated into social classes, and conquered people were not given political rights or citizenship. Agoge, the Spartan Education Program - World History Encyclopedia Spartan initiatives during the plague years were all unsuccessful except for the capture of the strategic city Plataea in 427. The precise date of the end of the agoge is unknown, but it did not survive the 396 CE sack of Sparta by Alaric I (r. 394-410 CE) of the Visigoths. For the first five years in the agoge, between the age of 7-12, boys were taught to read and write, but the programs emphasis was on endurance events, athletic competitions, military prowess, and teaching them to survive and outwit others. Stealing was considered an important survival skill and so it was not the act of theft that was punished, it was the carelessness exhibited in getting caught. Pre- and post-battle sacrifices were a common feature of Greek warfare in general but the Spartan army took things one step further and sacrificed before crossing rivers, for example, and even withheld from mobilising the army if an important religious festival was ongoing. Although an Athenian, Xenophon was a friend of Sparta and, in fact, served the state as a mercenary. localized power A key characteristic of ancient Greek city-state was a political (government) system based on independent city-states where everyone could be left alone to do their own thing. Some Rights Reserved (2009-2023) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted. Sparta was a city in Greece in which the form of the kingdom in the form of joint authority was preserved. Peloponnesian War, (431-404 bce), war fought between the two leading city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta. "Sparta." Thus, the Athenians had the stronger navy and the Spartans the stronger army. In the former battle, the Spartan soldiers arrived too late to assist the other Greek cities and in the latter mobilised only a token force as they felt compelled to first celebrate the Karneia festival in honour of Apollo. Athens vs Sparta Differences and Similarities: A complete list