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Whats your thoughts on the causes of the decline of Sparta in the 4th century???

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  Posted by LeonidasMagnus (U2215769) on Wednesday, 26th October 2005

  Whats your thoughts on the decline of sparta?
  Do you see at as inevitable or avoidable??!!
  Which reasons are the most plausible the decline in manpower 'oliganthropia', as Aristotle says lack of innovation in military tactics or that the empire and its wealth destroyed Spartiate society. In my view it was a culmination of all these factors and the disastorous policy of Agesilaos towards Thebes. But it seems that Leuctra was the death blow which destroyed the bluff which was the Spartan Empire.

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  Posted by Rurfus (U1800117) on Wednesday, 26th October 2005

  Thats funny, I got an essay like that at university a couple of weeks ago.
  
  In the end many put it down to her social system. Access to Spartan citzenship was so highly exclusive it was never going to remain very large. Firstly they had to pass the strict military education; secondaly they had to own land and slaves so they were able to produce food for the Spartan population.
  
  The requirement for the second was pretty easy to meet as that was provided by the state to newly born. Later on though there just wasn't enough land to give to new born. Land was thrown back into state ownership upon the death of a Spartan. The flaw was there is a possibility of some inheriting the land, therefore the newly born were unable to provide and were not given full rights.
  
  Strict regulations also exsisted on marriage. Marriage was banned till the end of military education. They didn't live with their wives, they lived with fellow soldiers in small groups. Spartans also were regually been sent out to deal with various problems within Spartan territory. The Spartan's therefore had little time to reproduce.
  
  The low fertility rate in Sparta wasn't helped by the onset of the Peloponnesian war which was a serve drain on Spartan manpower. Sparta's stokes of manpower continued to be depeleted. By the time of Leuktra the actual stoke of Spartan soldiers was down to 1,000. Increasingly following the Peoponnesian war slaves begain to be drawn into the ranks as well as Spartan allies which made up their numbers!
  
  Her other fatal flaw was that as a nation she was so dependent on a slave class to provide her needs. They were by no means self sufficent.
  
  

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  Posted by dwrmatt (U1984005) on Friday, 28th October 2005

  Slightly off-topic, last year I managed to attend a local CA meeting where Hans van Wees argued that there was no specialised military training in the agoge in terms of fighting, tactics etc, but it was rather aimed at developing endurance, "team-building" and so forth.
  The training was so harsh you have to wonder how many failed to survive it - the story of the boy and the fox has always stuck in my head. Bring back national service, I say, and on the Spartan model!

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  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Sunday, 30th October 2005

  In order to answer the question we have to see it on a broader perspective. So, in the 1st BC millenia around the Mediterranean (east or west) various forces and nations tried to prevail such as the Egyptians (very early and south east), Phoenicians (actually Carthagenians, in south and west), Persians (east) Athenians and Spartans (mainly around Greek populated areas but then Alkidiviadis had even plans that reached up to... Spain!!!), Macedonians (that concentrated in the east of course), Epirots (unlucky effort of king Purrhos in the west) and of course Romans... if I am not forgettig anybody else (perhaps the raiding Celtics who however did not try consciously to expand an empire of their own in the mediterranean).
  Of them the most succesful were the Persians, the Macedonians the Carthagenians and the Romans that finally prevailed.
  What do the above Greek/Latin/Phoenician/Irananian forces have in common????
  All had strong armies of their own but then they were also open in recruitment among foreigners often of different nations (even from ex-enemies), and that goes hand in hand with giving considerable rights to other people... thus in few words they had more flexible political and military tactics.
  Spartans had a rigid system that was inherently an obstacle in their expansion. Yes, Spartans were always in small numbers, but even if they produced 15-20 kids each that would not be enough if at the same time employing the same social system. It was a democratic one in a sense (and not exactly an oligarchic as people like to say) but then only the first-born son had 100% voting rights, the second son had 80% rights and no land (a system in order to maintain the equal size of land-parts and hinder the appearence of large landowners by means of inheritance - cos buying lands was anyway forbidden).
  It was so rigid that even Spartan colonies like Akragas in South Italy (a very large and succesful city!) never continued that system cos it was way out of the reality in their new lands.
  An interesting side of that story is the spartan general Pausanias. Pausanias was the leading general of the around 80,000 soldiers Greek allied army against the more than 100,000 soldiers Persian one (plus their Theban allies) in the battle of Plataies in 479 BC. Out of that 80,000 soldiers a maximum 5,000 to 7,000 were Spartans (Sparta's full military force was maximum 10,000) and it was only the admiration of other Greeks on their military system that permitted the spartans to apply their tradition of 'going into war with allies only as leaders and not as followers'.
  However in that battle also it was the Athenians that fought most of it, and it was in generally due to the Athenians that the overall war was victorius and not due to Spartans. Pausanias knew that and he predicted that soon most Greeks would follow Athenians who already challenged directly the theoretic Spartan supremacy over Greeks.
  Hence, Pausanias wanting to maintain Sparta as the most powerful Greek city, even perhaps as the leading city in a continuous war against Persians - exactly what Philip tried to do and finally done by his son Alexander) 150 years after Pausanias' death). Pausanias arguably had some more Panhellenic ideals from traditionalist Spartans (whose world started and ended within the lands of Lakonia). Hence, he had proposed to abolish the system of 'eilots' since these are anyway Greeks, and even give them some basic political rights in order to enlist them in the army and train them with the Spartan method thus creating an all-powerful army of more than 30,000 or even 40,000 soldiers (Athens had an army of 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers - though the biggest hellenic power was in Italy were cities were always bigger, Syracuse could employ nicely an army of 100,000 in a single battle). What Pausanias proposed was exactly what Spartan oligarchs did in the 8th century in order to increase their 800 men army (it was only the nobles!!!): they gave rights to Spartan commoners in order to increase their ranks!!! However, traditionalists thought that this would endanger the city itself (giving weapons and rights to 'eilots' that were always ready to revolt) thus Pausanias was charged with irrelevant charges of treason with Persians (he had no reason to do that - like Athenian Themistocles) so he was executed as a traitor (sad story).
  Sparta continued in its traditional system. However when they prevailed over Athens, their small forces were by far expanded (in Athens they managed to maintain a small spartan guard that soon left) and on the other hand, the persian gold given to them to built a naval force (cos Persians always remained in the background taking this side or that side) had already corrupted Spartan leadership and soon corrupted Spartan society - in the late 5th early 4th century we have signs of "social inequalities" previously uknonwn to Sparta!
  
  If we take the succesful example of Rome we see that a similarly traditional society like Rome. Rome was a city founded by Romos and Romulus as the myth says (both having greek names) and by descendants of the Troyans (that is also a myth). However what we know is that nobles till 6th century largely spoke Greek while the written language was Greek till 5th century. Hence, since archaic Rome was formed by the surrounding communities, some of them must have been Greeks (who probably formed most of the patrician social class) and others italic tribes (who mainly formed most of the plebeians)... that is also obvious by the names of many patrician families (Graechus or Gaius are typical Greek names). Hence, when in the 5th century and in front of the surrounding dangers when patricians gave more rights to the plebeians they crossed not only class systems but elso ethnic boundaries. Rome did that repeatedly in the following centuries by successive reforms hence by 1 BC century most surrounding italic tribes had become roman citizens not to mention the increasing number of greek and later other people that gave way to 212 AD law that named whoever within the empire and loyal to the emperor as Roman citizen.
  
  Rome's power was gradually built on its expansive manners, Sparta did not think like that - they were not even willing to give the slightest rights to their neighbouring Messinians, hence they were inherently not capable of expanding or doing anything far out of their lands... thus abiding to the law that whoever does not expand is doomed to disappear, they simply disappeared as a power.
  
  PS: as people Spartans did not disappear of course! Spartans were the last of the Greeks to become christian... they were turned into christianism by force by easterner fanatics in the 11th century AD!!!!! And in the 14th AD century the greatest philosopher of the time (though not known to you cos his works were all destroyed by his political opponents - supported by turks), Plinthon (wrongly mentioned as a neo-platoneian), he was claiming the return to the ancient 12-god religion because christianism despite being largely a 'hellenised' religion it never worked in favour of the Greeks, nor did the late Roman Empire (i.e. Byzantine).

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