SOURCE: Whitby, Michael. Introduction to Sparta, edited by Michael Whitby, pp. 1-17. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2002.

[In the following excerpt, Whitby encapsulates the geographical and historical contexts of ancient Sparta and surveys the primary sources of ancient and contemporary scholarship on the subject.]

BACKGROUND, MOUNTAINS, SEA AND LAND

‘Mountains and sea’ is a traditional opening to discussions of Greek history and its geographical background,¹ and can provide an introduction to the distinctiveness of Sparta. The four villages of Pitana, Mesoa, Limnae and Cynosoura, which, together with nearby Amyclae, constituted the unwalled political centre for the polis² of the Lacedaemonians, known for convenience as Sparta, were located about 40 kilometres from the sea in the fertile valley of the Eurotas which formed the core of Laconia, the territory of Sparta. On the coast Gytheion offered a reasonable anchorage and facilities, but, though access was not difficult, a low ridge near Geronthrae, about half-way to the sea, perhaps created a mental barrier and turned the Spartans inland.³ Sparta could usually deploy a small squadron of ships, and in the exceptional circumstances at the end of the fifth century a navy under Spartan control even dominated the Greek world, but the sea and maritime communications were not central to Spartan existence as they were for Athens and the poleis of the Aegean. The Eurotas valley is flanked to east and west by the mighty ranges of Parnon and Taygetus, which occupy much of the surface area of Laconia, but Sparta was better provided with good agricultural land than most Greek poleis, especially after the late eighth century when it annexed the broader valley of the Pamisos to the west of Taygetus, the heartland of Messenia. Mountains determined the lines of movement within the expanded Spartan state, and how it communicated with the central and northern Peloponnese.⁴ They tended to isolate Sparta, protecting it from invasion from Arcadia or Argos, and so are more relevant to Spartan history than the sea, but, overall, agricultural land was the crucial geographical ingredient.⁵ Sparta had access to sufficient farming land to support a prosperous state down to the loss of Messenia in 369, and even thereafter, given proper organisation; issues of the exploitation and ownership of this land are of crucial importance to the understanding of the state.

For two centuries, roughly from the mid-sixth to the mid-fourth century bc, the polis of Sparta was accepted as one of the three strongest Greek states, and often as the most powerful. Its male citizen body of Spartiates,⁶ the homoioi or peers, although an increasingly small minority of the overall population, controlled the other inhabitants of its territory in such a way that all helped to sustain the strength of the whole. The perioeci, or the ‘dwellers-around’, will have contributed to the economy in areas such as trade or metal-working which full Spartiates would not undertake,⁷ as well as controlling significant parts of the agricultural land; they were a factor in Spartan military power and, as citizen numbers declined in the fifth century, they came to be brigaded alongside the Spartiates themselves. The helots, a type of slave sometimes referred to as ‘state-serfs’ to distinguish them from the individually owned chattel slaves who were the norm in most Greek states,⁸ cultivated the land owned by Spartan men and women; their occasional revolts, especially those which involved the helotised population of conquered Messenia where memories of former independence remained strong, could seriously threaten Spartan security,⁹ but helots were also recruited for military service on several occasions and performed important functions in the imperial Sparta of the late fifth and early fourth centuries. There were in addition various obscure groups of subordinate citizens, inferiors (hypomeiones), tremblers (tresantes), illegitimates (nothoi) and mothakes (probably offspring of male Spartiates by helot women), categories which together incorporated those who failed to qualify for full membership on grounds of wealth, parentage, courage or other unknown factors.¹⁰ In its heyday Sparta operated a system which appeared capable of channelling Spartiate competition and the productive energies of all other social groups into the service of the state.¹¹ It has been plausibly suggested that Spartiates acted as patrons for ambitious perioeci, and such exploitation of client networks was probably a significant factor in the Spartiates' ability to manage the potential of all the subordinate categories.¹²

Sparta was regarded by many as an inspiration on social and political matters: the reputation of the Spartan army struck terror into its opponents (e.g. Thuc. 4.34; Xen., Hell. 4.2.18; 4.10-11),¹³ Sparta appeared to have devised a stable politeia¹⁴ which contrasted with the constitutional changes experienced by other Greek states, Spartan citizens were famous for their self-control and disciplined existence, Sparta epitomised tradition in contrast to the innovations associated with its main rival, Athens. While there is some truth in all these beliefs, they also raise major questions about our knowledge of the operation of Sparta's political system,¹⁵ its social structure, and its interaction with the outside world. The key issue is evidence, what we really know about Sparta, and this involves consideration of what the Spartans permitted to be known about themselves and of how different images of Sparta were repeatedly created and reshaped, by Spartans and, more often, outsiders.

SOURCES

The difficulty of investigating Sparta was recognised in antiquity: Thucydides commented on the secrecy of Spartans (5.68.2), admittedly in the specific context of military preparations and numbers, while Plutarch referred to the conflicting traditions about their lawgiver Lycurgus (Lyc. 1.1). Of the literary evidence relevant to the study of Sparta, only the poems of Tyrtaeus and the choral odes of Alcman (both seventh-century) were composed by Spartans, and although this material is of considerable importance for the nature and development of Sparta in the Archaic age,¹⁶ it does not contribute much to our understanding of the functioning of the state at its peak. Outsiders picked up varying amounts of information. In the mid-fifth century Herodotus conversed with some Spartans, both in Laconia which he said he had visited (Pitana: 3.55), and probably also at the court of the exiled king Demaratus in Asia Minor, but the history of Sparta was not his theme and the stories which he relates, even about such a relatively recent figure as King Cleomenes, cannot be marshalled into a coherent narrative.¹⁷ Thucydides experienced Sparta during the Peloponnesian War (431-404); as an exile from Athens he might have had opportunities to visit the great enemy, but it appears that he found it difficult to acquire evidence with which to supplement his analysis of Spartan affairs as an intelligent but hypercritical outsider.¹⁸ His judgements were bound to be influenced by contemporary conditions, and so may not merit the universal application which they are often accorded.¹⁹

The best-informed foreigner was Xenophon, another exile from Athens after his mercenary service in Asia had brought him into the employ of Spartan generals; after the 390s he resided in the Peloponnese for two decades, living on an estate allocated to him by his patron King Agesilaus and perhaps entrusting his sons to the Spartan educational system. Xenophon knew much about Sparta, but had difficulty in reconciling his idealised vision of the state with the contemporary reality: one solution was to focus on Agesilaus as an ideal Spartan, but this meant ignoring some of the consequences of the king's actions; another was to provide a timeless description of the Spartan politeia²⁰ with only a brief allusion to contemporary departures from that ideal. A third, and much less direct, solution was to create a fictional account of the education of an ideal leader and the organisation of his country, the Cyropaedia; this, though set in the Persia of Cyrus the Great, appears to recall Sparta in certain ways.²¹

At Athens Xenophon had been a young associate of Socrates whose circle had probably often discussed the best form of politeia, with considerable admiration accorded to Sparta. At least one of its older members, Critias, composed two works on the Spartan politeia and then, after Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War, attempted to impose aspects of it on Athens when the presence of the Spartan Lysander in 404 had helped him to seize power and lead the regime of the Thirty Tyrants. Plato was another Socratic disciple to find inspiration in Sparta, especially the austere life and regimented society which might provide a model for a system designed to lead humanity towards ‘the good’; as with the Cyropaedia, some information about Sparta, or perceptions of Sparta, can be filtered from the Republic and Laws.²² Aristotle knew Sparta in decline, and so was concerned with the failings as well as the operation of its political sytem. There is a useful discussion of Spartan problems in the Politics (2.6; 1269a29-1271b19), but the almost complete loss of the Aristotelian Constitution of the Spartans (Lacedaimonion Politeia) has deprived us of a considerable body of evidence—though it would undoubtedly have thrown up its own collection of scholarly disputes. Of later authors the most important are Plutarch and Pausanias, who visited Sparta in circa 100 ad and 170 ad respectively when the city had been reinvented in a self-conscious attempt to recreate the society of its greatest age. Pausanias described the monuments he saw and recorded the stories connected with them; Plutarch relied much more on his own very extensive reading, though at times, as with his account of the ‘Lycurgan’ educational system, contemporary experience clearly intrudes.²³

In comparison with Athens we lack the types of evidence which bring alive the everyday existence of the city—the comedies, law court speeches, accounts of conversations or inscriptions which reveal how people might be represented interacting socially and politically. For Sparta the historians provide accounts of some public events, for example the debate in 431 on the declaration of war with Athens or the actions of King Pausanias in 403, but these narratives assume that the readers are either sufficiently familiar with Sparta to know how matters should have proceeded or not interested in detailed background information. It is therefore necessary to proceed cautiously from such narratives towards a reconstruction of the political system. By contrast the philosophical and political tracts present an ideal which will have a certain, though indirect, relationship with the system that existed either currently or at some unspecified moment in the past.²⁴ A further problem is that much of this evidence is fragmentary, so that the significance of phrases or sentences divorced from their literary context is bound to be disputed. It is not at all easy to unite this material with the historical narratives. Another factor is the paucity of archaeological information. When comparing Athens and Sparta, Thucydides observed that there was a marked contrast between the greatness of Spartan power and the insignificance of its public buildings (1.10.2). It is not therefore surprising that archaeology has not made a great contribution to the understanding of Classical Sparta: the most impressive remains are either Mycenaean and so predate the period of classical greatness, or Roman and illustrate the reconstituted city of the imperial period. It is possible that field surveys in Laconia or Messenia may produce information on population distribution,²⁵ or material relevant to the questions of how and where helots and perioeci lived, but to date the most informative finds from a century of exploration have been the assemblages of dedications from various major shrines which may provide insight into the development of Sparta in the Archaic period (especially the seventh and sixth centuries).²⁶ Sparta, therefore, remains a challenge.

HISTORICAL OUTLINE

The early history of Sparta, down to circa 500, could claim special status as a topic for scholarly speculation. The Greeks knew a story that was clear in outline, if not in all its details. In Homeric times the Peloponnese was controlled by three main kings, Agamemnon at Mycenae, Menelaus at Sparta and Nestor at Pylos; their realms survived for two generations after the return from Troy, at which point they were overthrown by Dorian invaders from the north under the leadership of descendants of Heracles. Among these were the twin brothers Eurysthenes and Procles, who settled in Laconia, establishing the two royal houses of Agiads and Eurypontids. Thereafter the Dorian intruders gradually asserted control over Laconia, before turning their attention to Messenia. After a bitter struggle, which was followed within a couple of generations by a long revolt, Messenia was secured, though the crisis inspired both the poetry of Tyrtaeus, which attempted to inspire patriotic ardour in the Spartan youth, and some constitutional reform which came to be associated with the shadowy figure of Lycurgus. Sparta was transformed into a society which projected an image of stability and uniformity. This state was able to acquire territory to the north-east in a series of disputes with Argos, and then to extend its influence north into Arcadia in the sixth century, though here alliances rather than outright conquest were the mechanism.

Parts of this outline are probably true, others more or less plausible. In Laconia there was one important Mycenaean (fourteenth/thirteenth-century bc) site at the Menelaion, 2.5 kilometres southeast of Sparta itself, on a ridge overlooking the Eurotas valley; much later a small temple was built, where dedications were made to Helen and Menelaus. There was another major complex at Pellana, 30 kilometres to the north, whose importance is indicated by the cemetery of rock-cut tombs.²⁷ The Mycenaean buildings at the Menelaion were destroyed by fire circa 1200, and most other Mycenaean sites in Laconia also disappear: there is a shrinkage from fifty sites to fifteen in the early twelfth century, and then to fewer in the eleventh century; thereafter only Amyclae and Sparta provide definite evidence of continued occupation. During the eleventh century there is also a stylistic shift, regarded by experts as significant, in the pottery discovered at Amyclae.²⁸ Quite what this amounts to is another matter, since archaeological silence is not equivalent to complete absence of inhabitation, though it is clear that the elite which inhabited the Menelaion ridge was replaced in the long run by a different set of rulers who gradually set about consolidating their hold over the Eurotas valley.

One can guess at the main stages of this process, but no more. The nearby village of Amyclae, only 5 kilometres to the south, was attached to the four central villages of Sparta, perhaps as late as the mid-eighth century. The conquest was symbolised, or a process of integration furthered, by the incorporation of the local festival of the Hyacinthia as one of the major events of the Spartan religious calendar: an older god Hyacinthus was associated with Apollo. Other communities were reduced to differing degrees of subjection, perhaps depending on the extent to which they resisted Sparta's expanding power, with the helots at the bottom of the heap, people whose name suggests a link with the Greek word for capture. Sparta would appear to have been led by a dynamic warrior elite in the eighth century:²⁹ in addition to consolidating control over Laconia it also launched the conquest of Messenia, and Sparta's only major colonial venture was dispatched to southern Italy, which resulted in the establishment of Taras (modern Taranto).³⁰ One factor in these successes may have been enthusiastic participation by the mass of the citizens, the demos, who were accorded certain constitutional rights in what was one of the very earliest of laws written in Greek, the document preserved for us in Plutarch's Lycurgus as the Great Rhetra.³¹ Another factor may have been the willing participation of the dependent populations of Laconia, who may have found in Sparta's growth opportunities for personal advancement analagous to those which Latins and Italians exploited during Rome's expansion. Of possible relevance is a difference in the level of collective, or centralised, control in the respective regions: it would appear that the polis of Sparta had managed to assert control over Laconia, but power in Messenia may still have been fragmented between different local centres, much as areas such as Arcadia, Achaea or Boeotia continued to resist unification into the Classical period.³²

Consolidation was the order for the seventh century, perhaps because of internal wranglings over the constitution, possibly because of a major defeat by Argos at Hysiae, which is traditionally dated to 669 on the basis of Pausanias (2.24.8),³³ certainly because of a major effort by the Messenians to cast out their new overlords: it is possible that the need to resist Spartan domination stimulated the construction of Messenian identity and promoted unification, much as England's attempts to annex Scotland did in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ad. A combination of these challenges forced Sparta to exalt the cult of discipline at home, a process reflected in Tyrtaeus' poem Eunomia, ‘Good Order’,³⁴ and probably also in the acceptance by Spartan soldiers of the military developments in Greek infantry warfare which are for convenience known as the ‘hoplite revolution’.³⁵ Sparta triumphed and in the sixth century there is fresh evidence for a renewed interest in territorial expansion: conflict with Argos in the middle of the century was successfully decided at the Battle of the Champions, when 300 representatives of each side fought to the death (Hdt. 1.82)—a reminder that the hoplite revolution did not change everything, even if this encounter still resulted in a formal battle. War against Tegea, however, resulted in Spartan captives being made to till Arcadian fields (Hdt. 1.66). These difficult contests may have occasioned further internal developments in Sparta, with greater attention paid to conformity and discipline even than before. After the conflict with Tegea Sparta seems to have used alliances rather than outright conquest to project its power in the central and northern Peloponnese, probably exploiting its reputation as the enemy of Argos to offer protection to the latter's neighbours. At the same time it showed an interest in the affairs of central Greece, in Boeotia and at Athens, as well as in the wider world through alliance with Croesus of Lydia and involvement in the affairs of Samos (Hdt. 1.69; 3.46-7, 54-7; 5.64-5, 72-6; 6.108). Spartiates denied the chance of domination at home might look overseas for new lands to acquire: thus Dorieus, half-brother to King Cleomenes, led expeditions to North Africa and then towards Sicily, where the oracular bones of Laius had promised that the whole land of Eryx belonged to the children of Heracles (Hdt. 5.42-3).³⁶

By the late sixth century Sparta was recognised as the most powerful Greek state, and through its nexus of alliances, which now assumed the more orderly arrangement that scholars call the Peloponnesian League,³⁷ Sparta was the natural leader for the Greek world when Persian invasion threatened. First the eastern Greeks appealed unsuccessfully for help before their revolt in 499, then Athens secured help, even if belated, to oppose the Persian landing at Marathon in 490, and finally in 480-479 Spartan commanders were in command at all the major engagements of Xerxes' invasion; Leonidas' death at Thermopylae came to symbolise the professionalism of Spartan soldiers and their heroic devotion to the rule of law and the demands of their country. For the remainder of the fifth century Sparta was confronted by the rapid rise of Athens, a democratic, naval expansionist state which appeared to represent the antithesis of the Spartan ideal. When conflict came, Sparta was victorious, first at Tanagra in 458 or 457, and then in a series of naval engagements that eventually terminated the Peloponnesian War (431-404). But there had been many setbacks en route, including the destructive earthquake of 465 and the ensuing helot revolt, and the surrender of Spartiate troops on Sphacteria in 425 and the consequent Peace of Nicias in 421 in which Sparta effectively recognised that it could not uphold the interests of its allies. The navies which ground the Athenians down during the ‘Ionian War’ (412-404) could be financed only with Persian support, and that had to be purchased by conceding the Great King's right to control all the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Above all, the opportunities of foreign service repeatedly placed before Spartiates the temptations of wealth and personal power unfettered by the political and social controls within Sparta itself; many succumbed, starting with two of the commanders in the war against Xerxes, Pausanias the regent and King Leotychidas.³⁸

At the end of the fifth century Sparta stood supreme, but its powerful image was becoming increasingly stretched. Former Greek allies resented the attempt by Sparta to secure the main benefits from the defeat of Athens; Persia was alienated when Sparta tried to return to its more traditional stance of guarantor of Greek liberties against any other tyrannical power; more individual Greek communities experienced the harsh reality of Sparta through the behaviour of Spartan representatives. First the Greeks in Asia had to be sacrificed again to Persia under the terms of the King's Peace (387/6); then Spartan hegemony in Europe prompted the creation and rapid growth of a new Athenian-led alliance which had an explicitly anti-Spartan mission; finally the Spartan army was crushed by the Thebans at Leuctra in 371, and within two years Epaminondas, the great Theban commander, had invaded the Peloponnese to liberate Messenia. Sparta was humbled and never again possessed the citizen manpower to live up to its historical reputation, though just as its real power waned so the force of its image waxed in the theoretical discussions of political and social organisations.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

The thrust of much of the best modern research into Sparta can be traced back to the publication in 1933 of the first part of Ollier's Le mirage spartiate (The Spartan Mirage): this examined the ways in which ideal images of Sparta were propagated, sometimes by Spartans but more importantly by non-Spartans, to represent what they wanted Sparta to be. These mirages influenced both how contemporary Sparta was described and how its historical achievements were remembered. After Ollier it should have been difficult to study Sparta without constantly being aware of the need to assess the distorting effects of the varying ancient perceptions. In a sense, then, it is ironic that Ollier has not been as influential on subsequent Francophone scholarship as on other traditions.³⁹ Some writers, notably Ducat on the helots, have indeed applied the principle of rigorously assessing evidence in its literary and historical contexts, but others have been less careful about combining evidence from different periods, especially in attempts to reconstruct aspects of the early social system. The work of French structuralists, especially Vidal-Naquet, is vulnerable in this respect: his anthropological approach to the study of Greek rituals generates fascinating and sometimes illuminating suggestions, but his analyses repeatedly raise the question of the compatibility of the evidence being assembled.⁴⁰ A similar charge can be levelled against the Swiss Calame's study of the choral poetry of Alcman, which undertakes the important project of placing this poetry in its ritual, social, political and military contexts: Calame champions the need for a synchronic approach and reconstructs the civic character of early rites and the ritual cycle on the basis of evidence from the Roman imperial period.⁴¹

German scholarship on Sparta over the past two generations has been profoundly affected by its appropriation by scholars propagating the thesis of Aryan supremacy, particularly in the context of the Nazi regime: recognition of common Indo-European linguistic origins was twisted to produce common racial origins between members of the linguistic family, or at least their elites; the origin of these elites came to be located in northern Europe, either Scandinavia or Germany, and a link was perceived between the Germans and the Dorian tribes who had invaded Greece from the north.⁴² These distortions built upon a much longer-standing German interest in the tribal structure of the Greek world and the different characteristics in particular of Dorians and Ionians, but they produced important historical precedents for a militaristic state whose citizens were rigorously trained to generate an elite which would dominate its neighbours. Such deformation had serious consequences for scholarship. Although Rawson, writing towards the end of the 1960s, alludes to the continuing impact of German scholars on the study of Sparta, Christ's major historiographical survey identifies a period when Sparta was almost a taboo subject for Germans with the main stimulus to continued study being provided by Helmut Berve, the expert most closely associated with the National Socialist agenda.⁴³ Though it is true that Sparta naturally continued to feature in general works on Greek history and constitutional matters, and there were specific studies of Spartan social and economic institutions,⁴⁴ it has taken time for the momentum of German scholarship to be re-established. Only in the last dozen years has there been a sustained flow of specialist studies. The publication of Karl Christ's Wege der Forschung volume in 1986 might be given credit for helping to re-establish Sparta as a legitimate topic, and there is now reason to look to Germany for important new work. For example, Stefan Rebenich's edition, translation and commentary of Xenophon's Lacedaimonion Politeia is the first detailed scholarly study of this deceptive but important text.⁴⁵ Christ himself has contributed to German preeminence in the field of the history of historiography with a major survey of studies of Sparta from the mid-eighteenth century to 1986.⁴⁶

In this glance at German scholarship on Sparta Victor Ehrenberg, the professor of ancient history at Prague, must command a prominent place since his views on Sparta were formulated and first published in that language. In addition to ten Pauly-Wissowa articles in the decade 1928-37, which included the major entry on Sparta,⁴⁷ Ehrenberg's Neugründer des Staates of 1925 presented his theories on the construction of the unique Spartan social and political formation in the sixth century. Ehrenberg admired Sparta's ordered masculine military society, which depended on complete devotion to Law, the ideal which the exiled King Demaratus presented to the Persian King Xerxes (Hdt. 7.104). He presented Sparta as the ‘first and greatest of all authoritarian and totalitarian states’, where authority dominated the political and social world of all citizens.⁴⁸ Ironically, since Ehrenberg was a liberal Jew who had to flee the German annexation of Czechoslovakia, this view of Sparta was analagous to that exploited by the Nazis. After 1939 Ehrenberg found refuge in Britain and his important work thereafter was published in English.⁴⁹ One offshoot of Ehrenberg's time in Prague to deserve mention is the Czech scholar Pavel Oliva, some of whose articles appeared in German (as well as Czech, French and English), but whose major work, Sparta and her Social Problems, was published in English in 1971. This sets the various attempts at reform in Sparta during the Hellenistic period within a much longer chronological perspective of the creation and development of the distinctively Spartan system; particular attention is paid to the debates of modern scholarship, with a noticeable respect naturally accorded to the views of Ehrenberg.

For a British scholar to assert that the most interesting work on Sparta in the past generation has been produced by scholars based in the United Kingdom might smack of petty national pride, but it is difficult to gainsay.⁵⁰ To single out individuals is invidious, but two men in particular can be credited with influencing this development, Moses Finley and Geoffrey de Ste Croix.⁵¹ Finley wrote only one essay specifically devoted to Sparta, originally published in French but soon translated into English and reprinted in the various collections of Finley's works.⁵² It may now be difficult to recapture the impact of this slim essay, which refused to engage in many of the sterile disputes of current academic Spartan studies and instead attempted to lay down a general framework within which Sparta might profitably be studied. Its success is revealed by the extent to which the ‘Finley agenda’, which might be described as the study of the underlying social structures of Sparta and of how these effected the working of the state, has permeated scholarly discussion of Sparta. On the other hand, partly because Finley's trenchant observations are now so familiar, more attention is likely to be drawn to important questions of interpretation which his survey often begged.⁵³ Specific evidence does matter, and few can afford to operate as magisterially as Finley. … By contrast de Ste Croix's ‘big green book’, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, contains a mass of detailed discussion of different aspects of Sparta, primarily in relation to its international dealings but also on a number of important internal matters, since the nature of Spartan institutions and developments in Spartan society had a profound effect on the state's willingness and ability to act outside its borders. De Ste Croix's conclusions do not command universal agreement, but his approach forces dissenters to engage with the primary source material.

Finley and de Ste Croix have also been of great influence as teachers at Cambridge and Oxford respectively, and to an extent their individual approaches can be seen to typify the differences between the study of ancient history at these two universities; between them, however, they can take credit for the training of the two current authorities on Sparta, Paul Cartledge and Stephen Hodkinson. Cartledge has throughout his work acknowledged the twin influences of Finley and de Ste Croix,⁵⁴ and his numerous articles can be viewed as a project to combine the methods of de Ste Croix with the ‘Finley agenda’: thus central issues such as Spartan warfare, women, homosexuality, slavery and literacy are approached through a careful review of the evidence. Here Cartledge's distinctive contribution is his determination to locate discussion of ancient Sparta within contemporary historical debates and thereby remind more narrow-minded professionals of the obligation to show the relevance of their discipline to other academic discussions. His three major books on Sparta embrace the entire history of the classical polis. The first, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300-362 bc, is the best example of a historical-geographical approach to the history of a Greek state.⁵⁵ This takes Sparta from its misty beginnings through to its triumph in the Persian Wars of the early fifth century, a period for which he combines the available archaeological material with the stories preserved in later historians and the fragments of contemporary literary evidence; the better-documented fifth and fourth centuries are covered more briefly. The second, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta, focuses on the king whose life and achievements reflect the best and worst aspects of the Spartan system, the most powerful man in the Greek world for much of his reign (397-60) but who stood on feet, or probably legs, of clay. The importance of Agesilaus was signalled in Origins of the Peloponnesian War, and Cartledge underpins de Ste Croix's assessment with a massive discussion of Spartan society and institutions as well as engaging in more general debates about the historical importance of individuals. The third, Hellenistic and Roman Sparta (jointly with A. Spawforth, who was responsible for the Roman section), is a less ambitious undertaking than either of its predecessors. Cartledge narrates the various Spartan attempts to overcome the consequences of their defeat at Leuctra in 371 and to adjust to life as a second-division state in a world dominated by Macedonian monarchs. Cartledge is undoubtedly the scholar most seriously underrepresented … in terms of contemporary importance, the main reason being that his writings are surprisingly difficult to excerpt.⁵⁶ I attempt to redress this by noting Cartledge's key contributions at relevant points.

Hodkinson, though repeatedly acknowledging the importance of Finley's guidance, has also been more prepared than Cartledge to challenge the former's opinions, and his attention to evidence brings him nearer to de Ste Croix's approach. Hodkinson's practice is to assemble the ancient evidence, however poor it may be, and then to subject the literary material to a rigorous ‘archaeological’ review in order to establish its stratigraphy. This method is vital since the evidence is invariably limited and Sparta, despite its reputation for stability and continuity, underwent numerous profound political and social changes, with the result that evidence in late sources cannot be assumed to reveal conditions in earlier generations or centuries. The benefits of this approach are revealed most clearly in his solution for one of the most vexed Spartan questions, that of property ownership.⁵⁷

Spartan history has for long been regarded as a contentious field,⁵⁸ and the consequence of modern studies has undoubtedly been to increase the complexity of the arguments on individual issues. A danger is that the wood is being lost for the trees, and it is worth reminding oneself of the lucidity of the last general history of Sparta in English, George Forrest's A History of Sparta, 950-192 bc: though short, a mere 140 pages of text with no annotation, this presents a coherent and enjoyable picture of the rise and fall of Sparta, with the occasional flash of Forrest's intellectual brilliance, as in the excursus on the Lycurgan reforms.⁵⁹ It would be harder now to produce such a tour de force, and that is a price for the greater precision of our understanding. Another major work, which has already been mentioned in other contexts, is Elizabeth Rawson's survey of the influence of ideas about Sparta from the ancient world through to the mid-twentieth century; others have dealt at greater length with Sparta's influence in antiquity,⁶⁰ but Rawson's grand sweep illuminates how its reputation has exerted a continuing fascination over the centuries and reveals why some appreciation of Sparta is necessary in order to understand the development of European political and social thought.

Sparta's continuing challenge to our understanding is reflected in the regular succession of scholarly studies and academic conferences devoted to it. In this connection the stimulating enterprise of Anton Powell deserves recognition since he, twice in collaboration with Stephen Hodkinson, has now edited and published three collections of Spartan papers, while the meetings from which many of these papers emanated have prompted further thought. These initiatives have also demonstrated that it is possible for those who are not Sparta specialists to contribute to on-going debates. All students of ancient history can respond to the attractions of investigating Sparta as an important, complex and challenging society, but one for which the literary evidence is sufficiently limited for students to read most of it—Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Pausanias.⁶¹ These written sources can then be combined with surveys of archaeological material, whose study is currently one of the most exciting aspects of Spartan studies. Students will then be able to form their own assessments of rival scholarly theories and continue the respectable intellectual tradition of inventing their own Spartas.

Notes

1. E.g. Osborne, Greece, 53, or quarter of a century of first-year undergraduate lectures at St Andrews by Geoffrey Rickman.

2. Polis can be translated as ‘city-state’ or ‘citizen-state’, though neither fully captures the sense of the Greek, since a polis comprised a state's rural territory as well as its political centre and the institutions of an urban nucleus were a defining characteristic for most poleis.

3. Forrest, Sparta, 13.

4. J. Christien, ‘Les liaisons entre Sparte et son territoire malgré l'encadrement montagneux’, in J.-F. Berger (ed.), Montagnes, fleuves, forêts dans l'histoire: Barrières ou lignes de convergence, St Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1989, 18-44.

5. Sparta was probably not the only Peloponnesian state for which ‘land and mountains’ were the key determinants, but Greek history is rarely viewed from the perspectives of states such as Elis or Tegea, or even Argos (for one interesting, but limited, attempt with regard to the north-east corner of the Peloponnese, see K. Adshead, Politics of the Archaic Peloponnese: The Transition from Archaic to Classical Politics, Aldershot: Areburg Publishing, 1986).

6. ‘Spartiate’ is the technical term for citizens of Sparta, rather than the more obvious ‘Spartan’.

7. Thus Finley, ‘Sparta’, 167; see further Shipley, ‘PERIOIKOS’, 211-26, of which part is reprinted below (Ch. 9).

8. E.g. Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, 165, and see Oliva, Sparta, 38-42, for discussion of various terms; their precise status had puzzled ancient commentators. See further Part IV (Chs 9-11) below.

9. See de Ste Croix, Origins, 89-98, of which part is reprinted below, and the references to other discussions in the accompanying commentary.

10. For discussion of these groups, see Hodkinson, ‘Dependents’; also Ogden, Bastardy, Ch. 7. For the mothakes, at least, there were arrangements for elevation to full Spartiate status.

11. See Ch. 14, esp. p. 246.

12. Hodkinson, ‘Dependents’; the possibility had already been hinted at by de Ste Croix, Origins, 354 (Appendix XXVII).

13. The significance of Sparta's ability to transform a record of moderate military success into a reputation in the Greek world for invincibility needs to be stressed.

14. Politeia is another difficult word to translate: ‘constitution’ is the standard rendition, but a politeia incorporated religious and social aspects in addition to the constitution.

15. See, for example, the debate between Andrewes and de Ste Croix in Part II.

16. See, for example, Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, Ch. 8.

17. Oswyn Murray plausibly suggested that Herodotus constructed his narrative from a variety of local oral traditions, whose divergences he did not attempt to reconcile: ‘Herodotus and Oral History’, in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg and A. Kuhrt (eds), Achaemenid History II: The Greek Sources, Leiden: Brill, 1987, 93-115, esp. at 101ff.

18. P. A. Brunt, ‘Thucydides and Alcibiades’, Revue des études greques 65, 1952, 58-96, at 72-3 suggested that Alcibiades provided information on events at Sparta; S. Hornblower, Thucydides, London: Duckworth, 1987, 79, suggested that Thucydides could have met Brasidas in Thrace.

19. Note Starr, ‘Credibility’, 262, for the tendency to excessive veneration; scholars will often recognise that some judgements are suspect, but fail to exercise the necessary caution throughout: e.g. Powell, Athens, 231 in contrast to 221-2 (reprinted in Ch. 5 below at pp. 102 and 90).

20. For discussion of the Constitution of the Spartans (Lacedaimonion Politeia) see Rebenich, Xenophon.

21. For a different assessment, see C. J. Tuplin, ‘Xenophon, Sparta and the Cyropaedia’, in Powell and Hodkinson, Shadow, 127-81.

22. Discussion of Laws in A. Powell, ‘Plato and Sparta: Modes of Rule and Non-rational Persuasion in the Laws’, in Powell and Hodkinson, Shadow, 273-321.

23. See Kennell, Gymnasium.

24. The issue of what evidence to prefer underpins the debate between Andrewes and de Ste Croix in Part II.

25. The second volume of the Laconia field survey has already appeared: Cavanagh et al., Continuity.

26. This may be too defeatist: discovery of fragments of dedicated models of temples has permitted discussion of temple architecture in Laconia in the Archaic age: see R. W. V. Catling, ‘A Fragment of an Archaic Temple Model from Artemis Orthia, Sparta’, Annual of the British School at Athens (ABSA [Annual of the British School of Athens]) 89, 1994, 269-75, and R. W. V. Catling, ‘Archaic Lakonian Architecture: The Evidence of a Temple Model’, ABSA 90, 1995, 317-24.

27. The location of Mycenaean Sparta is disputed. Hector Catling is the great champion of the Menelaion site: see H. W. Catling, ‘The Work of the British School at Athens at Sparta and in Laconia’, in Cavanagh and Walker, Sparta, 26, with detailed biliography at 161-2. For the claims of Pellana, see T. G. Spyropoulos, ‘Pellana, the Administrative Centre of Prehistoric Laconia’, in Cavanagh and Walker, Sparta, 28-38.

28. Summary in Cartledge, ‘Lakedaimon’; more detail in his Sparta and Lakonia, Chs 6-7. For recent discussion of the pottery see Cavanagh et al., Continuity.

29. Cf. van Wees, ‘Eunomia’, 2-3, for the notion of a highly acquisitive and competitive Sparta.

30. The circumstances of the colonial venture are obscured by the stories (Strabo 6.3) concerning the ‘maiden-born’ Partheniae for whom the expedition was supposedly organised. The standard view (e.g. Forrest, Sparta, 61-2) is that Spartan authorities acted to export a group of men disgruntled by some aspect of the conquest of Messenia, though there is nothing to rule out Cartledge's proposal (Sparta and Lakonia, 123-4) that the adventure was initiated from below and only later acquired official recognition, after the successful establishment of the new settlement. In either case the story presupposes that both fierce internal competition and an interest in external expansion are normal at Sparta. For recent discussion, see M. Nafissi, ‘From Sparta to Taras; nomima, ktiseis and Relationships between Colony and Mother City’, in Hodkinson and Powell, Sparta, 245-72, at 254ff.

31. See further, p. 46.

32. I owe this suggestion to discussions with Nino Luraghi.

33. Pausanias indeed is the only source to mention the battle, and his Olympiad date has to be emended. For a radical proposal to redate the battle to the early fifth century, see P. K. Shaw, ‘Olympiad Chronology and “Early” Spartan History’, in Hodkinson and Powell, Sparta, 273-309.

34. van Wees, ‘Eunomia’, argues that Tyrtaeus' poem, with its respect for royal authority, antedated the Great Rhetra, which allocates significant attention to the assembly. But the differing emphases could be explained by the very different contexts of the two texts, one an appeal for order during a military crisis when royal leadership was likely to be crucial, the other a record of constitutional change; alternatively, Tyrtaeus may have been reacting against the changed balance of power introduced by the Rhetra.

35. See Cartledge, ‘Hoplites’; for a more general survey, with recent bibliography, see P. Cartledge, ‘La nascita degli opliti e l'organizzazione militare’, in S. Settis (ed.), I Greci: Storia Cultura Arte Società, vol. II.1, Turin: G. Einaudi, 1996, 681-714, esp. 693-706.

36. Cf. Starr, ‘Credibility’, 263-4, for Spartan activity.

37. See the contributions of Cartledge and de Ste Croix in Part V.

38. And note the temptation of King Cleomenes by Aristagoras of Miletus in 499, from which he was just rescued by his young daughter Gorgo (Hdt. 5.51).

39. E.g. Janni, Cultura, 13.

40. See in particular his discussion of the krypteia and agoge in ‘Recipes for Greek Adolescence’, in Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World (trans. A. Szegedy-Maszak), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, 147-50.

41. Calame, Choruses, 9-10; 158-9. Calame asserts that diachronic analysis does back up his synchronic approach (e.g. 168), but this argument is circular.

42. For the development of these ideas from the middle of the nineteenth century through to the Second World War, see Rawson, Tradition, 333-43.

43. Rawson, Tradition, 333 (no indication as to which scholars); K. Christ, ‘Spartaforschung und Spartabild’, in his Sparta 59, 62-3.

44. For example, Lotze, Μεταξὺ.

45. Rebenich, Xenophon; note, too, L. Thommen, Lakedaimonion Politeia: Die Enstehung der spartanischen Verfassung, Historia Einzelschriften 103, 1996. This is not to belittle the merits of the English annotated translations by J. M. Moore, Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy, or R. J. A. Talbert, Plutarch on Sparta, but neither sets out to be as thorough as Rebenich.

46. Christ, ‘Spartaforschung’; Rawson, Tradition, is a much broader-ranging volume which does not go into such detail about academic studies or investigate developments after the Second World War.

47. Real-Encyclopädie der classichen Altertumswissenschaft III.2.A (1929), 1373-1453.

48. V. Ehrenberg, ‘A Totalitarian State’, in his Aspects of the Ancient World, Oxford: Blackwell, 1946, 94-104 (quotation from 104); this essay originated as a German radio broadcast from Prague in 1934.

49. For example the collection, Aspects of the Ancient World.

50. One indication would be the contents of Christ's Wege der Forschung volume, where Forrest, Andrewes, Finley and Cartledge are among the nine contemporary contributions; it is reassuring that a similar conclusion is reached by S. Hodkinson, ‘Introduction’, in Hodkinson and Powell, Sparta, ix-x.

51. This is not to deny the relevance of other factors, such as the presence in Britain of Ehrenberg, or the careful studies of Andrewes.

52. Finley, ‘Sparta’; originally published in J. P. Vernant (ed.), Problèmes de la guerre en Grèce ancienne, Paris: Mouton, 1968.

53. Hodkinson, ‘Warfare’, 148.

54. On occasions perhaps to excess: see F. Kiechle's review of Sparta and Lakonia in Classical Review 31, 1981, 79-81, at 81—the deference shown to Finley led Kiechle to assume that Cartledge was one of Finley's pupils, and he assailed him as a surrogate target.

55. Though the discussion of the material evidence should now be read in conjunction with the volumes of the Laconia Survey: Cavanagh et al., Continuity.

56. Cartledge's own collection of his key publications on Sparta (Spartan Reflections) is, therefore, very much to be welcomed.

57. Hodkinson, ‘Land’, ‘Inheritance’, in Powell, Techniques, 79-121 (a summary of his views is reprinted below as Ch. 4).

58. Ehrenberg, Solon to Socrates, 389: ‘The history of early Sparta has been a kind of battlefield for modern historians.’

59. Forrest, Sparta, 40-60.

60. In particular, Tigerstedt, Legend, which is a massive, if somewhat undigested, compilation of ancient opinions about Sparta.

61. For suggestions on translations, see the Guide to Further Reading.

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