History - Sparta: A Captivating Guide to the Spartans, Greco-Persian Wars, Battle of Thermopylae and Peloponnesian War

Sparta is one of the first names that comes to mind when we think about the ancient world. And this is for good reason. After its founding sometime in the 10 th century BCE, Sparta soon rose to be one of the most powerful city-states in not only the Greek but the entire ancient world.

Its unique government, which featured two kings and an elected senate, helped it achieve relative political stability early on in its history, and Spartan leaders were able to use this to expand their power and influence in the region surrounding Sparta as well as the rest of the Peloponnesian Peninsula.

However, no conversation of Sparta would be complete without mentioning their exceptional military strength. They became masters of iron working early on in their history and used this to develop armies that became some of the most formidable in the ancient world. Furthermore, they placed heavy emphasis on military training and created some of the worlds first truly professional armies, a move which helped them rise to be the leaders of the Greek armies that stood up to the great Persian armies of Darius I and Xerxes.

But Sparta was not without its flaws. Much of their power rested on converting those who were disloyal to them into helots . These individuals acquired their status after the Spartans invaded, and they were treated essentially as slaves. Keeping these helots subdued was a major problem for all Spartan leaders, and frequent helot revolts meant that instability and chaos was often the norm throughout Sparta.

Spartan society was also heavily stratified. Citizenship in Sparta was determined by blood, and this meant there was very little room for upward social mobility. This proved to be a major problem for the Spartans later on, as Spartan citizens were eventually outnumbered by their helot subjects.

Perhaps the most significant achievement in all of Spartan history, though, was their defeat of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War. This conflict, which lasted roughly 30 years, put the two greatest Greek city-states of the time, Athens and Sparta, up against one another, and the result, a Spartan victory, helped to reshape the entire ancient world. It ushered in a period of Spartan hegemony which was radically different than when the Athenians sat atop the Greek world.

Unfortunately for the Spartans, though, their time spent as the leaders of the Greek world would be short-lived. Alliances were made between recent and past enemies, and these coalitions were able to overwhelm the Spartans and force them to surrender. After this, Sparta would fall in prominence, but it would continue to be important when the Romans took control of most of the Mediterranean and western Asia.

Nevertheless, we should not take the fact that Sparta eventually fell from prominence as a sign that their time was not a great one. A unique appetite for collaboration helped to produce a truly unique form of government, and a keen understanding of what makes an army great helped Sparta grow from a collection of five small villages at the beginning of the last millennium BCE into a thriving Greek polis that would come to sit atop the entire Greek world.