Sparta is a city in the province of Laconia in the Peloponnese region of Greece. In ancient times, it had a well-known military and war heritage. It reached its peak in 404 BC after the victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Sparta in its beginnings did not have walls A city, as was the custom in the big cities of the time, where its people preferred to defend their city with men rather than cement, however, and in the next few decades, after a defeat against the Thebans at Leuctra, the city found itself reduced to a second-rate force.
The bravery and daring of the Knights of Sparta has inspired the Western world for thousands of years, even into the 21st century as their stories blended into Hollywood movies like the 300 and the futuristic video game series Halo. Myths is very difficult, since most ancient accounts were written by non-Spartans, and similar reports usually contain some exaggeration.
The beginnings of Sparta:
Although the city was not built until the first millennium BC; However, some new studies confirmed that the site of Sparta was important for at least 3,500 years. In the world of 2015, a 10-room palace was discovered in which there was writing in a handwriting that archaeologists call (linear B) 7.5 miles (12 km) from the construction site. Walls and a cup bearing a bull’s head and bronze swords were discovered. This palace was burnt in the fourteenth century BC, and it is assumed that there is an ancient city somewhere near it, but in a location different from the site of Sparta, which was built in the first millennium BC, and future excavations may reveal the The location of this city.
It is not clear how many people continued to live in the area after the burning of the palace, as some new studies have suggested that a three-century drought afflicted Greece around the same period as the burning of the temple, and archaeologists know that as early as during the Iron Age, around 1000 B.C. Found four villages (Limenai, Petana, Misua and Senusur) that united to form the new Sparta.
Historian Nigel Kennell wrote in his book “Spartans: A New History” that the city’s location in the fertile valley of Eurotas gave its inhabitants access to an abundance of food, which is exactly what the local competitors did not like so that the name Sparta came from a verb ( sow) or (I sow).
Although the Spartans made an effort to consolidate their territories in Laconia, the townspeople were also known to be proud of their artistic skills; It was famous for its poetry and pottery, and its industries reached as far as the city of Sirin in Libya and the island of Samos (an island not far from the coast of present-day Turkey). The researcher Konstantinos Kopanias noted in an article published in 2009 that until the sixth century BC, Sparta had established an ivory workshop, ivory The rest of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta depicts birds, male and female figures, and (the tree of life or sacred tree).
Poetry was another major achievement of the Spartans during early times, says historian Chester Starr in a chapter of his book “Sparta” (Edinburgh University Press, 2002): “Indeed we have more evidence of poetic activity in Sparta than in any other Greek state including in that of Athena.” While much of this poetry has remained fragmentary, as in the case of Tyrtaeus, it reflects the warlike value for which Sparta was famous, and there are also some works that reflect a society concerned with art and not only war.
The war with Messinia:
The conquest of Messenia, west of Sparta, was the main event in the city's path to becoming a warlike community, especially after the Spartans made its subjects slaves. Kennell points out that this conquest apparently began in the eighth century BC, supported by archaeological evidence from the Messine city showing that another Settlement cases were in the eighth and seventh century B.C., just before immigration cases began to escape conscription.
The incorporation of the people of Messinia into the slave community of Sparta was significant because, as Kennell writes, "it provided Spartans a means of maintaining the closest thing to a standing army in Greece, because he freed the adult men of Sparta from manual labour," and the maintenance of this population of slaves was problematic for the Spartans. For centuries depending on the harsh conditions of employment or servitude, the writer Plutarch claims A.D. 46-120 that the Spartans used what we today consider death squads: “Rulers generally sent the youngest warriors from time to time, equipped only with daggers and necessary supplies, to spread out into obscure places where they hid. And they remained quiet until night came, to go out and kill any slave they caught.”
Spartan training system:
The presence of a large number of slaves allowed Spartans to be freed from manual labor and to build a civil training system that prepared boys in the city for the rigors of war. Professor J.E. Lendon of the University of Virginia writes in his book Soldiers and Ghosts, A History of Battles in Antiquity: The seven-year-old Spartan boy went to the training barracks to grow up under the watchful eye of the older boys, where they were scolded and flogged in order to instill respect and acquiescence in them. Theft, but they will be punished if they are caught.”
The training steps are strictly followed until they are 20 years old, after which they are allowed to integrate into society as a full citizen, and each one must provide a certain amount of food and must also continue training, and those who cannot are laughed at, as Walter Penrose wrote. He is a professor of history at San Diego State University in a 2015 paper published in the Journal of the Classical World: "According to their extreme standards of masculinity, they rewarded those who could fight in spite of their moral inferiority." Obstruction.
Plutarch wrote: "The father had no right to raise his offspring but was to take them to a place called Lesche, where the chiefs of the tribe would sit as a judging panel and examine the children, if the boy was strong and of sound, they commanded that he could be brought up and given a number of lands as compensation, and if he was sick or The mutilated one is thrown into a pit in a place called Apothetae under Mount Taygetus, because it is better for him and for the city that he should not remain alive.”
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January 22, 2022