LECTURE 11 Hoplite Warfare and Sparta .docx

LECTURE 11 Hoplite Warfare and Sparta ecture 11 Sparta was unique in many ways. Unlike its fellow Greek city-states, it erected no monuments, made no art, amassed no wealth, and engaged in no intellectual pursuits. Its single, overwhelming focus was warfare. To this end, it developed a social system...

LECTURE 11 Hoplite Warfare and Sparta ecture 11 Sparta was unique in many ways. Unlike its fellow Greek city-states, it erected no monuments, made no art, amassed no wealth, and engaged in no intellectual pursuits. Its single, overwhelming focus was warfare. To this end, it developed a social system whereby male children were taken from their mothers at the age of seven and trained to be the perfect soldiers, and all female children were raised to breed soldiers. Ironically, in focusing on martial strength, the Spartans neglected the social and biological functions that keep societies functioning. The Hoplite Revolution •  In Greece, beginning around the 7th century B.C., there was a change in military equipment and tactics that would have farreaching effects. This has been labeled the hoplite revolution. The hoplite was a heavy infantryman, a foot soldier equipped with protective armor and powerful offensive weapons for hand-tohand combat. •  The hoplite’s most important piece of equipment was his shield—a heavy, circular, concave, wood-and-bronze construct measuring a full three feet in diameter. The hoplite wore a bronze helmet; a breastplate made of bronze, leather, or laminated linen; and greaves to protect his shins. He carried a six- to nine-foot bronze-tipped spear and, as a weapon of last resort, a two-foot sword. •  The hoplite’s equipment was extremely expensive since it used so much precious bronze. It might have represented something akin to the investment one would need today to buy a car. 72 Lecture 11: Hoplite Warfare and Sparta •  Along with this new equipment came a new way of fi ghting. In the Homeric era, combat was a muddle of one-on-one duels. Now, hoplites formed lines with their shields slightly overlapping. Thus each protected his neighbor, and from the front, they presented a solid wall of metal punctuated by spear-points. •  Usually multiple rows of hoplites would be arranged one behind the other, forming a solid mass of men. Such a formation was known as a phalanx. As long as there was no gap in the phalanx, they were almost impossible to harm. The ideology of the phalanx was that all hoplites were equally valuable, all did the same thing, and all were interchangeable. This placed a new emphasis on drill and discipline. •  Hoplite battles were brutal, physical affairs where the entire goal was to kill as many of the enemy as possible. Some historians have argued that the Greeks set the model for what has been called “the western way of war.” The entire Spartan social system was aimed at a single goal: producing the Spartan military. © The Teaching Company Collection. 73 Sparta—The Martial City-State •  From the beginning, Sparta was unusual in being located fairly far inland and was extremely isolated due to steep mountains on all sides. Whereas other states solved the problem of overpopulation by forming colonies, Sparta invaded the neighboring territory of Messenia, conquered its inhabitants, and stole their land around 730 B.C. in the First Messenian War. •  The Messenian people were reduced to the status of slaves, called Helots. Each Spartan citizen was assigned one or more Messenian farms, and the Helots were required to give over half of everything they produced to their Spartan owner. Aside from this, however, the Helots were left largely undisturbed. •  The Helots revolted around 650 B.C. and several more times thereafter. As a result of the constant threat of Helot revolt, the Spartans became preoccupied with maintaining a very high level of military strength. •  Sparta traced its constitution to a man named Lycurgus, who may well be mythical. At the top of the political system were two kings drawn from separate royal families who served as the generals of Sparta’s armies. When Sparta was at war, one king would lead the army and the other would stay at home to ensure that both could not be lost in a single disaster. •  There was a council of elders called the gerousia (literally, “the old guys”) composed of 28 men over the age of 60 plus the 2 kings. Spartan Military Training •  What was really distinctive about Sparta was its social system, which had the single goal of producing fanatical, identical, and superbly trained hoplites. 74 Lecture 11: Hoplite Warfare and Sparta •  When a male Spartan child was born, the gerousia would inspect the baby for any deformities or signs of weakness. If they perceived any fl aws, he would be exposed to the elements to die. If he was deemed healthy, he would live with his mother until the age of seven. •  At seven, the boy would be taken away and enrolled in a communal school. There the boys were divided up by age, with each age group known as a herd. The boys spent all their time in athletic training, sports, gymnastics, and military skills. •  The boys were only given a single cloak for clothing and no shoes; they had to run barefoot over stony ground or through the snow. They were not given beds but were allowed once a year to gather some reeds that they could lie on for the next year. •  The children were constantly forced to compete against one another in sports to hone their aggressiveness, and those who lost too many times were savagely humiliated and mocked, often causing them to commit suicide. •  They were deliberately underfed. At fi rst glance, this seems counterproductive; the reasoning behind it was to force the boys to fend for themselves by sneaking into the forest to hunt or by stealing food. If they were caught, they were whipped. But the Spartans felt that this made the boys immune to hardship and taught them valuable skills. •  Boys stayed in these schools until they were 20. During the last 5 years of school, they were encouraged to form a homosexual relationship that served as a kind of mentoring program. In the last year or two of their schooling, they joined the Krypteia, the Spartan secret service that spied on and assassinated Helots. 75 •  As a kind of fi nal exam, young men were sent on a mission to assassinate a Helot. He was sent out unarmed. He had to cross the mountains, live off the land, fi nd the Helot, strangle him in the night, and make it back to Sparta. If successful, he became a full Spartan citizen. The Adult Spartan Man •  At the age of 20, Spartan men joined one of the clubs, known as syssitia. These clubs of about 15 members would be the center of their lives. They would live there, eat there, and continue to practice for war with their club mates. When the army marched off to war, each syssitia comprised a unit. Sparta was unique in Greece in having a professional standing army. •  It seems that sexual relationships were encouraged between the older and younger men in the syssitia on the grounds that if your fellow soldier was also your lover, you would be less likely to run away in battle. •  Spartan men could not get married until about the age of 30, and for the fi rst fi ve years of marriage, husbands and wives were forbidden to meet openly. For most of their lives, even married men spent the majority of their time at the syssitia. At the age of 60, they became eligible to join the gerousia. The Women of Sparta •  For Spartan women, life was similar to that of men. They, too, were inspected at birth, and unpromising girls were discarded. At the age of 7, they went to a girls’ school where, like the boys, the emphasis was on physical fi tness. At the age of 18 or 20, instead of entering the secret service, Spartan girls were assigned to a husband and began producing children. 76 Lecture 11: Hoplite Warfare and Sparta •  Although the life of a Spartan woman may not sound appealing by modern standards, in some ways, Spartan women had much more freedom and power than women in the other Greek states. They were not restricted to the house and in fact probably managed the Spartan farms and had a great deal of independence and responsibility. •  Perhaps because so many children were exposed at birth, Sparta suffered from a shortage of women, and it was not uncommon for one woman to have multiple husbands. Very often, a set of brothers would share one woman as their wife. The Scarcity of Spartan Art •  Spartans disapproved of luxury and commerce in general and did not conduct trade with other cities. They were forbidden to possess gold or silver. Sparta did not produce any coins, and if any sort of economic transaction had to be made, they used iron rods as money. •  Sparta produced no literature, no plays, and very little art, and the only known Spartan poet, Tyrtaeus, wrote poems exclusively about how wonderful war was. •  In keeping with their philosophy of simplicity, Sparta built no large, impressive public buildings. The only hint of ostentation in Spartan society was that both Spartan women and men wore their hair long. Before battle, Spartan warriors would ritually comb each other’s hair, rub perfume into it, and bind it up so that an enemy could not grab it. •  Since the perfect hoplite was identical to and interchangeable with all the others in the phalanx, Spartan society was set up to stress the group over the individual, and the Spartans took pride in this, calling themselves the homoioi—literally “the equals.” •  The attitude of the other Greek states toward Sparta was a mixture of puzzlement, admiration, and fear, but no one could deny that the system turned out Greece’s most fearsome warriors. 77 •  However, there was a fatal fl aw in the system. By exposing so many babies, keeping the men and women apart, and not allowing marriage until relatively late in life, the Spartan system simply failed to sustain its population.