This is Sparta February 26, 2018 PDF

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Christopher Simon (Winter 2018)...

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This is SPARTA! Feb 26 

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Sparta o Polis of Sparta is located in Peloponnese, a mainland area in Southern Greece o Its immediate surroundings – an area called Lacania – had been inhabited since the Bronze Age o Archaeological evidence suggests that there was an invasion of the Dorians at some point in the century at some point in the 10th century o The Spartans or Lacedaemonians were much like other Greeks: Patriarchal, polytheistic, and dependent on servile labor o However, their social structure and system if government made them unique, a result of the Great Rhetra or series of reforms attributed to the King Lycurgus Syssition o At Sparta all boys at the end of their agoge had to be admitted to membership in a Syssition, a group of fifteen men who regularly ate and socialized together o Krater: A large wine vessel Spartan System o Agoge (Ah-Go-Gey): State-sponsored educational system at Sparta which all Spartan males had to complete in order to qualify for full Spartan citizenship  Only males received the education under state supervision.  Emphasis of this education wasn’t on reading, writing and the liberal arts, but rather on practicing to endure hardships and to fend for themselves… the fundamentals of being a hoplite warrior.  Ritual elements – e.g. the ‘battle’ of boys at the altar of Artemis Orthia – reinforced the civic nature of this education  Extremely competitive and hierarchical in nature an process o Ephors: Overseer an office found in Sparta and in other Dorian states.  In Sparta a board of 5 ephors was elected annually by the assembly.  Senior ephor gave his name to the year  Ephors had great power in the Spartan state, including general control over the conduct of the kings o Krypteia: A part of the Spartan agoge in which selected young men in their late teens wandered the countryside at night, empowered to kill at will helots who seemed less submissive than was expected. o Helots: slave people assigned to the states.  Spartan way of life depended on and was formed by the state’s ownership of the labor of thousands of helots in Laconia and Messania  Helots always outnumbered Spartan citizens even at times by a ratio of seven to one.  Fear of helot uprisings often discouraged the Spartans from becoming engaged in campaigns far from home o Perioeci: term used to describe neighboring peoples who were subordinate relationship to a dominating polis. Most prominent example is Sparta, which

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treated the people of the perioecic communities of Laconia and Messenia as halfcitizens, granting them local autonomy but obligating them to military service and allowing them no say in public conduct A boy who failed to join a syssition or maintain his monthly food contribution ceased to be full Spartan citizen. Membership required the boy to obtain the unanimous vote of the existing members of the Syssition and to contribute a set amount of food each month to the communal meal o Gerousia: Council of elders. Which consisted of the two kings plus twenty eight men over the age of sixty...