This week, the part you have all been waiting for – we’re going to look at how the Spartans fought. This is part six of our series (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, Gloss., Retrospective) looking at Sparta and its place in cultural memory. As we discussed briefly before, there are two core myths in the Spartan mystique, the myth of Spartan equality, and the myth of Spartan military excellence. We have spent the last four weeks examining the former and found it badly wanting.
Of course, the myth of Spartan equality isn’t what guarantees Sparta’s place in popular culture. Sure, academics and op-ed writers might discuss Spartan society, but we don’t make movies and video games about Spartan society (perhaps we should – they’d be distressing dystopias, but there’s a market for that these days). We make movies and video games about Spartan warriors. And to a lot of folks, that’s all that matters – the child abuse, brutality, slavery, demographic collapse and all the rest becomes somehow ‘worth it‘ if that results in Sparta producing the ‘best’ warriors.
Now, clearly, I object to this position strenuously. What honor is gained by a mighty defense of a horrific, inhuman system? But so much of the Spartans’ fame – whatever the condition of life they protected – is wrapped up in their reputation as warriors.
Spartans are supposed to be warriors, maybe the ultimate warriors. Or perhaps total warriors, whatever that means (as best I can tell, it means ‘mediocre hack-and-slash,’ which, as we’ll see, is oddly appropriate). What to call your one-man army super-soldier? Obvious you call him a Spartan. Or John Spartan.
And all of that is before we get here:
The image of Sparta and the Spartans that is being presented here has a few interlocking parts. We’re going to take those parts and break them up separately so that we can test them one by one against the ancient evidence. In particular, we want to test the ideas:
- That the Spartan phalanx was qualitatively different and better – in organization, discipline, or combat capabilities – than the phalanxes of other Greek poleis or even other ancient states.
- That the individual Spartan – or just spartiate – was some sort of ideal or ultimate warrior individually.
- That – as a consequence of the previous two – the Spartans had the best army in Greece and a very high quality army by the standards of the ancient world.
So now it’s the myth of Spartan military excellence’s turn to be put to the test. I want to be clear that this week’s analysis is a pound-for-pound battle-analysis – we’ll look at strategy, logistics and scale next week when we close out the series. Today is all about winning battles, which, as we’ll see next week, is a far cry from winning wars or achieving grand strategic objectives.
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So grab your shields, pick up your spears, put on your helmets, because it’s time to have some hoplite battles.
All Together Now
In 300, when the Spartans arrive at Thermopylae, Leonidas gives a speech to Ephialtes (changed from a local shepherd into a Lacedaemonian hypomeiones for some reason) about the strength of the Spartan phalanx. Each hoplite in the formation – hoplite being the term for the Greek heavy infantryman who carried the aspis shield (the term hoplite coming from hopla, ‘equipment’ and meaning something like ‘fully equipped man’) – covered not only himself, but the man to his left with his shield. 300 presents this as somehow uniquely Spartan – when the Arcadians finally fight they are “more brawlers than warriors; they make a wondrous mess of things” compared to the Spartans.
This is rich coming from a polis which always fought in coalition with other Greek states, which always forced its own non-spartiates to fight in the phalanx, sometimes even including enslaved helots (so there were, in fact, MANY weak spots), and which would increasingly come to rely on hypomeiones – like this version of Ephialtes – to fight in place of the ever dwindling, ever richer, spartiates.
(Pedantry note: I am, of course, aware of the debate among Greek historians about the nature of the phalanx. I hold – with some modifications – the ‘orthodox’ view on the hoplite phalanx (more Western Way of War and less Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities) and so that’s what you’ll get here. Don’t worry if that means nothing to you – it’s just there to inform the handful of people who care. This argument is unchanged in either case.)
This impression – that the hoplite somehow belongs to Sparta – is reinforced by the way that objects, like the Corinthian helmet, the round Greek aspis shield (those Spartan obstacle course races use both!), sometimes even the complete hoplite panoply (note: panoply means “all the gear” and refers to the complete set of equipment, in this case, of a hoplite), have been assimilated not as Greek imagery but as Spartan imagery in popular culture. I’ve seen more bad web-articles than I can count where this stuff is describes as ‘Spartan’ equipment, as if the rest of the Greeks carried something different.
This…is nonsense. The hoplite phalanx was the common fighting style of essentially all Greek poleis. It was not unique to Sparta.
That comes with all sorts of implications. The Spartans used the same military equipment as all of the other Greeks: a thrusting spear (the dory), a backup sword (a xiphos or kopis; pop-culture tends to give Spartans the kopis because it looks cool, but there is no reason to suppose they preferred it), body armor (either textile or a bronze breastplate), one of an array of common Greek helmet styles, and possibly greaves. We might expect the spartiates – being essentially very wealthy Greeks – to have equipment on the high end of the quality scale, but the perioikoi, and other underclasses who fought with (and generally outnumbered) the spartiates will have made up the normal contingent of ‘poor hoplites’ probably common for any polis army.
Xenophon somewhat oddly stops to note that the spartiates were to carry a bronze shield (kalken aspida; Xen. Lac. 11.3 – this is sometimes translated ‘brass’ – it is the same word in Greek – but all Greek shield covers I know of are bronze). This is not the entire shield, as in 300 – that would be far too heavy – but merely a thin (c. 0.25mm) facing on the shield. It’s odd that Xenophon feels the need to tell us this, because this was standard for Greek shields. Perhaps poorer hoplites couldn’t afford the bronze facing and used a cheaper material (very thin leather, essentially parchment, is common in many other shield traditions) and Xenophon is merely noting that all of the spartiates were wealthy enough to afford the fancy and expensive sort of shield (it has also been supposed that elements of this passage have dropped out and it would have originally included a complete panoply, in which case Xenophon is just uncharacteristically belaboring the obvious).
The basics of the formation – spacing, depth and so on – also seem to have been essentially the same. The standard depth for a hoplite phalanx seems to have been eight (-ish; there’s a lot of variation). The Spartans seemed to have followed similar divisions with a fairly wide range of depths, perhaps trending towards thinner lines in the fourth century than in the fifth, though certainty here is difficult. The drop in depth may be a consequence of manpower depletion, but it may also indicate a greater faith held by Spartan commanders of their line’s ability to hold. Depth in a formation is often about morale – the deeper formation feels safer, which improves cohesion.
It’s hard to say if the Spartan phalanx was more cohesive. It might have been, at least for the spartiates. The lifestyle of the spartiates likely created close bonds which might have aided in holding together in the stress of combat – but then, this was true of essentially every Greek polis to one degree or another. The best I can say on this point is that the Spartan battle record – discussed at length below – argues against any large advantage in cohesion.
That said, the Spartan battle order does seem to have been notably different in two respects:
First: it had a much higher ratio of officers to regular soldiers. This was clearly unusual and more than one ancient source remarks on the fact (Thuc. 5.68; Xen. Lac. 11.4-5, describing what may be slightly different command systems). Each file was under the command of the man in front of it (Xen. Lac. 11.5). Six files made an enomotia (commanded by an enomotarchos); two of these put together were commanded by a pentekonter (lit: commander of fifty, although he actually had 72 men under his command); two of those form a lochos (commanded by a lochagos) and four lochoi made a mora, commanded by a polemarchos (lit: war-leader) – there were six of these in Xenophon’s time. Compared to most Greek armies of the time, that’s a lot of officer, which leads to:
Second: it seems to have been able to maneuver somewhat more readily than a normal phalanx. This follows from the first. Smaller tactical subdivisions with more command personnel made the formation more agile. Xenophon clearly presents this ability as exceptional, and it does seem to have been (Xen. Lac. 11.4). Hoplite armies victorious on one flank often had real trouble reorganizing those victorious troops and wheeling them to flank and roll up the rest of the line (e.g. the Athenians at Delium, Thuc. 4.96.3-4). The Spartans were rather better at this (e.g. at Mantinea, Thuc. 5.73.1-4). They also seem to have been better at marching and moving in time.
Now, I do not want to over-sell this point. We’re comparing the Spartans to other hoplite forces which – in the fifth century especially – were essentially dumbfire missiles. The general (or generals) point the phalanx at the enemy, hit ‘go’ and then hope for the best. Really effective command – what Everett Wheeler refers to as the general as ‘battle manager’ – really emerges in the fourth century, mostly after Spartan power was already broken (E. Wheeler, “The General as Hoplite” in Armies of classical Greece, ed. Wheeler (2007)). While ‘right wing, left wheel’ is hardly the most complicated of maneuvers (especially given that the predictable rightward drift of hoplite armies in battle meant that it could be planned for), compared to the limitations of most hoplite forces, it marked the Spartans out as unusually adept.
More complicated Spartan maneuvers often went badly. Spartan forces at Plataea (479 – Hdt. 9.53) failed to effectively redeploy under orders, precipitating an unintended engagement. Plugging a gap in the line once the advance was already underway, but before battle was joined (something Roman armies do routinely) was also apparently beyond the capabilities of a Spartan army (Thuc. 5.72). While the Spartans are often shown in popular culture with innovative tactical formations – like the anti-cavalry wedge or anti-missile shield-ball (both of which, to be clear, are nonsense) formations in 300 – in practice the Spartan army was tactically uncreative. Like every other hoplite army, the Spartans formed a big rectangle of men and smashed it into the front of the enemy’s big rectangle of men. Notably, as we’ll see, the Spartans made limited and quite poor use of other arms, like light infantry or cavalry, even compared to other Greek poleis (and the bar here is very low, Greek combined arms, compared to say, Roman or Macedonian or Persian combined arms, was dismal). If anything, the Spartans were less adaptable than other hoplites.
So, on the one hand, compared to other Greek hoplite phalanxes of the fourth and early third centuries, the Spartans were, perhaps, half a step above the rest. On the other hand, compared to say, a Hellenistic Macedonian phalanx – which might, say, open ranks, admit light infantry, close ranks and then form square all while under attack (Magnesia, App. Syr. 35) – Spartan tactical flexibility and maneuver was hardly impressive (and, the Roman specialist in me must note, compared to the Roman legion, even the Macedonian sarissa-phalanx was itself rigid and unresponsive, Plb. 18.31-32).
Part of this, to be fair, is about time – tactical sophistication increases quite a bit from 500 to 50 B.C. But that’s the thing about judging the Spartans – the claim is often not “they were a couple of strokes better than par for their day” but rather “they were the best ever.” As we’ll see, this second statement is pretty clearly nonsense – the Spartans manage a profoundly disappointing 0-and-2 record against the Macedonian phalanx (plus one ‘no contest’ where they let Philip II just walk all over them without a fight). They were thus quite clearly second best at most even in the limited pool of “Greek speaking armies in Classical antiquity.”
Instead, what we might say is that the Spartans phalanx was, in most respects, just like every other Greek hoplite phalanx, with the addition that Spartan command and coordination was somewhat better, but hardly excellent by the broader standards of antiquity.
Single Combat
Well, if the Spartan phalanx is only moderately more flexible than any other polis, perhaps the Spartans are just amazing individually. The ‘one man army’ Spartan shows up in popular culture a fair bit – especially in video-games (like Spartan: Total Warrior, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey or even God of War, all of which feature a lone Spartan warrior taking on armies). 300 indulges in this too – after just a few moments of actually fighting in the formation for which they are known, the Spartans break out of the phalanx into cool slow-motion fight sequences.
The Spartans did not fight like this.
The first problem is that the equipment of the Spartans – or indeed any hoplite – was simply not conducive to this fighting style. Now there is some debate about how limiting the weight of hoplite arms are, but they definitely were limiting, the question is how much.
The biggest culprit is the hoplite shield itself, the aspis. The grip system of the aspis is based on two straps, one down the center of the shield, which rests on the elbow, and another at the edge of the shield, gripped by the hand. That means that, when held out in front, the shield is ‘off center’ to the hoplite (who is not standing straight-on, but turned with his side towards the enemy). Compare center-grip shields like the Roman scutum or the Anglo-Saxon/Viking round shield, which are much easier to handle. Even later double-strap grip medieval shields shift the point of balance of the shield away from the elbow and towards the forearm. The result of this is that the aspis is just not a great shield in an individual fight; it isn’t worthless, but if you wanted a solo-shield, you could surely design something better (and the Greeks did, with the pelte and later the thureos used for light troops expected to fight individually). What it is amazing at is, of course, fighting in groups with mutually overlapping shields.
That grip system means that – unlike a center-grip shield – the aspis cannot easily be brought around to protect the right-hand side of the body. This is made worse because Greek forms of body armor, either the linothorax or bronze breastplates, somewhat limit the ability to twist the upper body. This system also limit the ability to use the shield itself as a weapon – the best a hoplite can do is a ‘door open’ slam, swinging their arm out, which exposes their entire body and isn’t that strong of a strike either. In contrast, a Roman with a scutum – a shield well suited to individual combat – can strike with the boss of the shield (essentially punching with 20lbs of iron-knuckles) or with the (metal) rim…all without opening up his body to new lines of attack.
The weight of high-end hoplite equipment – the sort that an elite like the spartiates might use – makes this problem worse. There has been some debate on this point – how restricting was the weight of hoplite armor and the related question of if there was a lighter form of the panoply, but I think Adam Schwartz (Reinstating the Hoplite (2009), 25-101) is largely correct: heavy hoplite armor was largely unsuited for mobile, individual fighting, but extremely well suited for fighting in formation. Subsequent reduction in the weight and vision/hearing restriction of that kit ameliorated this difficulty somewhat, but never removed it completely.
So the Spartans, like all hoplites, were oriented very strongly towards group combat. The one-man-army is simply not how they fight, nor how they ever intended to fight.
Well, ok, perhaps they fight in groups, but are individually better at it. There is something to this. Multiple sources – most notably Xenophon stresses the greater degree of physical fitness that the spartiates display (Xen. Lac. 4.5, 5.9). The spartiates were rich after all, so they were well fed and able to build muscle accordingly; they also had a pretty active life-style (mostly things like sport-hunting) and kept athletically active. Chances are the average spartiate was thus larger and fitter than the average hoplite – although again, the other Lakedaemonians in the phalanx (perioikoi, hypomeiones, mothakes, neodamodes, even helots fighting as hoplites) would probably balance out this effect to at least some degree (more strongly as time went on and the number of spartiates shrunk!)
But what about martial skills and combat expertise? The fact is, there isn’t much evidence for a Spartan military training regime – certainly nothing like what the Romans had, or even what later Hellenistic Greek poleis set up. We’ve already discussed the agoge and you will note that at no point did swordsmanship, spear-use, shield use, or anything of the like come up. There is, to be fair, some mock battles with fennel stalks in place of spears and some war-dances which may have served to mimic combat, but the agoge isn’t a training program, it’s an indoctrination program. Plutarch and Xenophon – who describe it – are quite clear on this: the point is to produce men who are obedient to the laws and subservient to the community (Xen. Lac. 2.10-11; Plut. Lyc. 25.3). Any advantages to military quality are evidently secondary (e.g. Xen. Lac. 2.7).
Xenophon himself notes – in the words of Cyrus (who he presents as an ideal ruler) – that hoplite-style warfare in close-combat required little practice (Xen. Cyrop. 2.1.9-16). And I want to stress two things about this statement: first that Xenophon had seen a lot of hoplite battle when he knew this and was in a position to know and second that he had also seen a lot of Sparta. It is hard to imagine Xenophon – with his Laconophilia – saying that practice for hoplites was unimportant if the Spartans had relied on it heavily. Nevertheless, there he is, saying that all of the movements a hoplite actually needed to perform – blocking with the shield, striking with spear or sword – were instinctive and did not need to be taught or practiced.
I’m beginning to think Leonidas is actually not very good at this.
Plato provides our first solid evidence for the hoplomachia – practice drills in hoplite warfare – but immediately suggests through the person of Laches that the Spartans, specifically do not practice it (Plat. Lach. 182d-183a), because they think it doesn’t work. There is clearly some practicing with arms in Sparta as elsewhere in Greece (see J. K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (1970), 84-93 for the best discussion of the evidence; note also Wheeler, “Hoplomachia and Greek Dances in Arms” (1982)), but it never approaches the formal weapons drills we see from the Romans, or the complex fighting systems of the late Middle Ages. Nor does Sparta appear to be meaningfully exceptional in this regard; they seem to be exactly as tutored – or untutored – as all the other Greeks.
Nor may we rely on the assumption that the Spartan has more battle experience than his foes. The fact is that Greek poleis went to war fairly regularly and that they tended to bring most of their hoplite class out to battle when they did and as such most Greeks of the hoplite class from anywhere will have likely experienced combat. The Spartans are not unique in this and it is not clear that Sparta fights more often – they murder helots more often, sure, but this is hardly effective preparation for open battle.
(The contrast with Rome is again instructive. Sparta is intermittently at war, but the Roman Republic is continuously at war for all but six years out of five centuries, with the average Roman citizen probably spending upwards of seven years under arms – and this is before the professionalization of the legion. The average Roman free-holding farmer (the technical term is assidui) of the Middle Republic might truthfully have considered Leonidas and his 300 as amateurish by comparison.)
So what can we conclude? Well, the Spartiates are probably, on the whole, better nourished and fitter than their average opponent. If they have an edge in weapons training, it is fairly small – some sort of martial arts experts or superlative weapon-masters they are not. Which, of course they aren’t; the way they fight doesn’t require them to be. Hoplite fighting was never about individual martial excellence or skill, but about holding a position in the formation, supporting and being supported in turn by the shields of the men around you. The hoplite didn’t need to be a spear-master and evidently – we must agree with Xenophon – gained little from becoming so.
Spartan Season Batting Average
So what we’ve seen is that the Spartans had a significant, but not overwhelming, advantage in organization and perhaps a slight advantage in individual quality. But in most respects, the Spartan phalanx was a phalanx like any other. So how good were they? Put another way: how impactful were these advantages?
Surely, if the Spartans were as good at fighting as our popular media and popular opinion make them out to be, they must at least win almost all of their battles, right? Let’s test that, shall we? Below, I have listed roughly forty battles involving the Spartans – some large, some small – in the period between 500 B.C. and 323 B.C. I haven’t chosen this period by accident – it represents the best and most sustained period for our evidence, reducing the chance of major battles being ‘missed’ because our sources don’t know about them. It also represents a big chunk of the run of the Spartan state. It is not an exhaustive list, but I think I’ve managed to catch all of the major battles and many of the significant minor battles (and even some insignificant ones!).
The goal here in particular is to test how the Spartans fight against peer competitors, meaning primarily other poleis or at least other states (I’ve included battles against Persia and Macedon as well). Because we want to know how Sparta stacks up against other states, I am excluding battles against the helots – Sparta gains no advantage by having frequent (but easily suppressed) slave revolts.
(The format here is Date – [Battle Name] – Result; I’ve included indications where the Spartans were in a pan-Greek coalition and where the battle was at sea. For some of the more obscure battles, I’ve included text references.)
- 494 – Battle of Sepeia – Victory over the Argives
- 480 – Battle of Thermopylae – Defeat against the Persians (Coalition)
- 480 – Battle of Artemesium – Draw/Defeat against the Persians (Coalition), Naval Battle
- 480 – Battle of Salamis – Victory over the Persians (Coalition; Minimal Spartan involvement), Naval Battle
- 479 – Battle of Plataea – Victory over the Persians (Coalition)
- 479 – Battle of Mycale – Victory of the Persians (Coalition)
- 4?? (early) – Battle of Tegea – Victory over Tegea (Hdt. 9.35.2)
- 4?? (early) – Battle of Dipaea – Victory over Tegea and Arcadia (Hdt. 9.35.2)
- 457 – Battle of Tanagra – Victory/Draw over Athens and Argos (note: effects undone within the year due to heavy Spartan losses which result in Spartan withdrawal. With the sack of Gythion, Thuc. 1.108.3-4, war ends in a draw)
- 427 – Siege of Plataea – Victory over Plataea
- 426 – Battle of Olpae – Defeat against Athens (Thuc. 3.108)
- 425 – Battle of Pylos/Sphacteria – Defeat against Athens
- 422 – Battle of Amphipolis – Victory over Athens
- 418 – Battle of Mantinea – Victory over Athenian/Argive Coalition
- 418/7 – Battle of Hysiae – Victory over Argos
- 417 – Battle of Ornaea – Defeat against Athenian/Argive Coalition
- 411 – Battle of Syme – Victory over Athens, Naval Battle
- 411 – Battle of Eretria – Victory over Athens, Naval Battle
- 411 – Battle of Cynossema – Defeat against Athens, Naval Battle
- 411 – Battle of Abydos – Defeat against Athens, Naval Battle
- 410 – Battle of Cyzicus – Defeat against Athens, Naval Battle
- 406 – Battle of Notium – Victory over Athens, Naval Battle
- 406 – Battle of Mytilene – Victory over Athens, Naval Battle
- 406 – Battle of Arginusae – Defeat against Athens, Naval Battle
- 405 – Battle of Aegospotami – Victory over Athens, Naval Battle (wins the Peloponnesian War)
- 395 – Battle of Haliartus – Defeat against Thebes
- 394 – Battle of Nemea – Victory over Theban/Argive/Athenian/Corinthian Coalition
- 394 – Battle of Coronea – Victory over Theban/Argive Coalition
- 394 – Battle of Cnidus – Defeat against Persia, Naval Battle
- 391 – Battle of Lechaeum – Defeat against Athens
- 382 – Battle of Olynthus I – Draw/Defeat against Olynthus (Xen. Hell. 5.2.35-43; The Spartans attempt to siege Olynthus, are engaged by the Olynthian cavalry, chase it off, but are too damaged to maintain the siege and withdraw – I count this as a draw/defeat, even though the Spartans erected a victory trophy, because they did not achieve their operational objective)
- 381 – Battle of Olynthus II – Defeat against Olynthus (Xen. Hell. 5.3.3-7; the Spartan army from Olynthus I tries again and is annihilated in the effort)
- 376 – Battle of Naxos – Defeat against Athens, Naval Battle
- 375 – Battle of Tegyrae – Defeat against Thebes
- 371 – Battle of Leuctra – Defeat against Thebes (Messenian helots freed)
- 368 – Tearless Battle – Victory over Arcadian/Argive/Messenian Coalition
- 362 – Battle of 2nd Mantinea – Defeat against Thebes
- 338/7 – Philip II of Macedon marches on Sparta and seizes territory, no battle takes place because no serious Spartan resistance is offered.
- 331 – Battle of Megalopolis – Defeat against Macedon
Phew, ok. That list is big and intimidating. Let’s give some basic figures. First off, the total batting average (counting victory/draw as .5 of a victory and draw/defeat as .5 of a defeat, with each also being .5 of a draw):
Spartan Victories: 18.5
Spartan Defeats: 18
Draws: 1.5
Spartan Batting Average (victories/battles): 0.486
Sparta wins slightly more battles than it loses, but the borderline cases are enough to push Sparta below coin-flip odds. Breaking it down as percentages win/lose/draw, it runs 48.7%/47.4%/3.9% (figures rounded; please note that Philip’s invasion in 338 is not counted in this math, since no battle took place, meaning the above list has 38 battles, not 39. Counting it as a defeat (no contest) would put the Spartans properly underwater, with more defeats than victories. The Spartan record against Macedon is worse: Sellasia (222) falls outside of my date brackets, but is a crushing Macedonian victory. Sparta never actually defeats a Macedonian field army, the Spartans lose every time).
Maybe the problem is naval battles? After all, the Spartans never had a reputation for naval excellence – what happens if we remove those? We get 12 victories, 11.5 defeats and 0.5 draws, the balance functionally unchanged. Removing battles where Sparta was in a pan-Greek coalition actually hurts their average, since it removes 3 victories, but only 1.5 defeats and 0.5 draws. It didn’t take Spartans to defeat Persian armies, after all, the Athenians did just fine on their own at Marathon.
In short: Sparta’s overall military performance is profoundly average over the Classical period. They don’t even manage a winning record!
But wait, I hear the cry, the Spartans are supposed to be better! But their record is within a rounding error of a coin-flip!? How is that possible when everything we are told about the Spartans is about how they are superlative warriors?
Herodotus and his Mirror
The answer is actually – for once – neatly summed up by a line from 300: “And of course, Spartans have their reputation to consider.” The greatest military asset the Spartans had was not actual military excellence – although, again, Spartan capabilities seem to have been somewhat better than average – but the perception of military excellence.
Herodotus seems to be at the start of it, at least in our sources – he relates a story where, after an embarrassing failure in an effort to reduce tiny Tegea to helotage (the Tegeans kicked the Spartan’s asses) in the mid-sixth century, the Spartans supposedly stole the bones of the hero Orestes. Consequently, Herodotus notes, the Spartans were from that point on able to always beat Tegea and subdued the Peloponnese (Hdt. 1.68), resulting in the creation of the Spartan led Peloponnesian League. The unbeatable Spartans thus appear. It’s possible the Spartan reputation predated this, but – as we’ll see – Herodotus will be the one who codifies that reputation and cements it.
Except, hold on a minute – how hard was it to subdue the Peloponnese? It seems to have been done with a fairly adept mix of diplomacy and military force (champion one side in a local dispute, beat the other, force both into your alliance, repeat, see Kennell (2010), 51-3 for details). But it is little surprise that Sparta would be dominant in the Peloponnese. Messenia and Laconia together was around 2,600 square miles or so. This is – if you’ll pardon the expression – flippin’ massive by the standards of Greek poleis. More than twice as large as the next largest polis in all of Greece (Athens). Sparta is fully one-third of the Peloponnese (the peninsula Sparta is located on). The remaining two-thirds is home to many other poleis – Corinth, Argos, Elis, Tegea, Mantinea, Troezen, Sicyon, Lepreum, Aigeira and on and on. Needless to say, Sparta was several times larger than all of them – only Corinth and Argos came even remotely close in size. The population differences seem to have roughly followed land area. Sparta was just much, MUCH larger and more powerful than any nearby state by the start of the fifth century.
Sparta thus spends the back half of the 500s as the teenager beating up all of the little kids in the sandbox and making himself leader. When you are upwards of three times larger (and in some cases, upwards of ten times larger) than your rivals, a reputation for victory should not be hard to achieve. And, in the event, it turns out it wasn’t.
Which brings us back to Herodotus (remember, way back in the first of these, I said we’d talk about Herodotus?) because he isn’t just observing the Spartan reputation, Herodotus is manufacturing the Spartan reputation. Herodotus is our main source for early Greek history (read: pre-480) and for the two Persian invasions of Greece. Herodotus’ Histories cover a range of places and topics – Persia, Greece, Scythia, Egypt – and contain a mixture of history, ethnography, mythology and straight up falsehoods. But – as François Hartog famously pointed out in his The Mirror of Herodotus (originally in French as Le Miroir d’Hérodote), Herodotus is writing about Greece, even when he is writing about Persia – those other cultures and places exist to provide contrasts to the things that Herodotus thinks bind all of the fractious and fiercely independent Greek poleis. And he is perfectly willing to manufacture the past to make it fit that vision.
Sparta has a role to play in that narrative: the well-governed polis, a bastion of freedom, ever opposed to tyranny, be it Greek or Persian. We’ll come back to Sparta’s… let’s say relationship… with Persian ‘tyranny’ next week. But for Herodotus, Sparta is the expression of an ideal form of ‘Greekness’ and in Herodotus’ logic, being well-governed (eunomia is the Greek term) results primarily in military excellence. For the story Herodotus is telling to work, Sparta – as one of the leading states resisting Persia – must be well governed and it must be military excellent. That’s what will make a good story – and Herodotus never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.
(Sidenote: Athens – at least post-Cleisthenic Athens – gets this treatment too. Athens ends up embodying a different set of ‘Greek’ virtues and where Sparta shows its prowess on land, the Athenians do so at sea.)
And so, Herodotus – the myth-maker – talks up the Spartiates at Thermopylae (you know, the brave 300) and quietly leaves out the other Laconians (who, if you scrutinize his numbers, he knows must be there, to the tune of c. 900 men), downplaying the other Greeks. Spartan leadership is lionized, even when it makes stupid mistakes (Thermopylae, to be clear, was a military disaster and Spartan intransigence nearly loses the battle of Plataea, but Herodotus represents this as boldness in the face of the enemy; even more fantastically inept was the initial Spartan plan to hold on the Isthmus of Corinth as if no one had ever seen a boat before).
These Shields Will Deceive You
The spin worked. Herodotus’ work was well known, even in antiquity, and he set the tone for all subsequent retellings of the Persian wars (despite the frequent complaints by later ancient authors that Herodotus’ reliability was – let’s say, complicated. I don’t want to give the wrong impression: Herodotus is a valuable source, just one that – like all sources – has his own agenda at play). The Spartan reputation thus seems to be the product of half a century spent fighting far, far weaker opponents, combined with one very skilled propagandist with an agenda.
That reputation was already deeply held even by the early stages of the Peloponnesian War, such that Thucydides notes that “Nothing that happened in the war so shocked the Greeks so much as” the surrender of 120 Spartiates at Pylos/Sphacteria, instead of dying with their weapons in their hands (Thuc. 4.40.1). The Athenians had, in the event, managed to trap a force of Spartans – spartiates and other Laconians – on an island and harassed them with arrow fire from a distance, never closing with them, until the Spartans surrendered. This is, I must stress, in the context of a war that obliterated entire poleis, shredded the diplomatic fabric of Greece and was by far the largest war between Greeks that any of them knew of. But this, the shattering – if just for a moment – of the Spartan reputation, that was what shocked people. The image of Sparta – whatever the reality – was that deeply set.
Thucydides, amusingly, relates that some Greeks were so shocked that they couldn’t believe it, and one ally of Athens inquired to the spartiates – then held as captives in Athens – if perhaps what had happened was that all of the brave men (you know, the real spartiates) had been felled by the arrows, to which the Spartans responded, “an arrow would be worth a great deal if it could pick out noble and good men from the rest, in allusion to the fact that the killed were those whom the stones and the arrows happened to hit” (Thuc. 4.40.2).
To be fair, the Spartans seemed to have leaned into Herodotus’ image of them as the best warriors in all of Greece and the eternal opponents of all kinds of tyranny. Spartan ‘messaging’ in the war against Athens portrayed Athens itself as a ‘tyrant city’ ruling over the rest of Greece (which was, to be fair, pretty accurate at the time). Likewise, the image of military excellence the Spartans put forward is picked up and represented clearly in the writings of Xenophon, Plato, Aristophanes and Thucydides (though he is, at least, more skeptical that the Spartans are supermen) and in turn picked up and magnified by later writers (Diodorus, Plutarch, etc) who rely on them. Other states sought out Spartan military advisors, famously Syracuse (advised by the mothax Gylippus) and Carthage (by Xanthippus, a Spartan mercenary).
That reputation could be a real military advantage. Greek hoplite armies arranged themselves right-to-left according to the status of each polis’ army (poleis almost always fight in alliances). Since Sparta was always the leader of its alliance, the Spartan king and his force always took the right – opposite the weakest part of the enemy army. You may easily imagine the men facing the Spartans – they know the Spartan reputation for skill (and do not have the advantage of me telling them it is mostly hogwash) and by virtue of where they are standing know that they do not have the same reputation. Frequently, such match-ups resulted in the other side running away before the Spartans even got into spear’s reach (e.g. Thuc 5.72.4).
There’s a story in Xenophon, embedded in the larger Battle of Lechaeum, which I think illustrates the point well. Early on, the Argives (the men of Argos, always the enemy of Sparta) meet and rout a group of Sicyonians (who are allies of Sparta). A passing Spartan cavalry company under a Pasimachus sees this and rushes in; getting off of their horses, they grab the Sicyon shields (marked with the city’s sigma) and advance against the Argives. But whereas later in the battle the arrival of the Spartans will trigger panic and retreat, here the Argives do not know they are fighting Spartans (because of the shields) – and so they advance with confidence; Pausimachus with his small force is crushed. As he attacks Pausimachus declared (according to Xenophon), “By the two gods, Argives, these Sigmas will deceive you” (Xen. Hell. 4.4.10; the ‘two gods’ or ‘twin gods’ here are Castor and Pollux).
I rather think that Pausimachus was deceived by the lambda his own shield may have carried (there is debate about if Spartan shields always had the lambda device, I tend to think they did not). Pausimachus expected to surprise the Argives with his Spartan skill. Instead, he found out – fatally – that the magic was never in the Spartan, it was in the image of Sparta that lived in the mind of his opponent.
The Myth of Spartan Military Excellence
So what have we found?
Sparta had a formidable military reputation, but their actual battlefield performance hardly backed it up. During the fifth and fourth centuries, Sparta lost as often as it won. Spartan battlefield tactics were a bit better than other Greek poleis, but this is damning with faint praise. The spartiates themselves were mostly like every other group of wealthy Greek hoplites. But the Spartan military reputation was extremely valuable – the loss of that reputation during the Peloponnesian War does much to explain the rough decades Sparta would experience following its end.
That is one of the core things we can learn from Sparta: a reputation for military excellence can often be more valuable than the excellence itself – real or imagined. A powerful army can only fight one battle at a time, but the idea of a powerful army can intimidate any number of enemies all at once. As we’ll see next week, when Sparta was forced to turn from intimidation to force, it ran out of force with frightening speed.
Those who have been here for a while may already be wondering, “Wait, though – this is the guy who is always telling us that winning battles isn’t as important as achieving strategic objectives and who is always on about logistics and operations! What about that?” I think that actually goes a long way to explaining how an army with a modest advantage in tactics and organization ends up without a winning record. We’ll get into the limitations of Spartan strategy, operations and logistics next week.
But before we go there, I want to stress something here: the horrors of Spartan society cannot be justified on the grounds they produced superior soldiers, because they quite evidently did not. Sparta’s actual military record was, in fact, depressingly average. Only the reputation was special; the men were just men.
Next week, for the last post in this series, we’re going to zoom out a bit and look at the operational and strategic layers – because there is more to war than just battles. How well did Sparta coordinate operations, handle logistics, deal with sieges, finance and the other challenges of maintaining military activity? And how well did all of this military activity and diplomacy actually achieve the objectives of the Spartan state? And what might we take from all of this?
How did Sparta’s win/loss record compare to other Greek states? Is it higher/lower the same as say Athens?
I haven’t done the same effort with Athens – it actually took a fair chunk of time to do this for Sparta. We know of far more battles and sieges for Athens – in part probably because most of our writers are Athenian – so it would be a formidable effort. My gut instinct is to say that Athens probably beats Sparta’s average, but not by much. They miss out on Thermopylae, and pick up a bunch of lopsided victories against the various subject poleis of the Athenian Empire. On the flip-side, of course, they have some much more consequential disasters, in Egypt and Sicily – and famously, Chaeronea (though in some ways, that’s unfair – the Athenians and Thebans fought Philip, I’m not sure the Spartans should get credit for just rolling over).
Syracuse probably has something like a winning record, which is all the more remarkable since it spends the fourth century throwing down with a much more dangerous foe: Carthage. Unlike Sparta, with its reputation for rigidity and stagnation, Syracuse seems to have been driven to innovate in the face of superior Carthaginian forces (and it works well until Rome gets involved). If we stretch the meaning of ‘Greek’ a bit, obviously the record of the Hellenistic military system devised by Philip II was formidable, even if it couldn’t stop the Romans a century and a half later. Unless they’re facing Romans or each other, Macedonians (again, Philip II and onward) tend to win quite a lot.
Looking outside of Greece, the obvious ‘state with a winning record’ is Rome. Rome has this reputation of ‘losing their way to victory’ because of Hannibal and Pyrrhus, but this is a pretty selective reading – Rome wins most of the battles of the Second Punic War, after all. Rome’s record pre-264 is a bit more mixed, but there’s a clear pattern of expansion even in the fourth century with the Latin war and the Samnite wars. Rome did what no Greek state – or the Antigonids in Macedon, for that matter – was able to do: establish durable control of a host of fiercely independent urban communities (including quite a few Greek poleis in S. Italy).
As we’re on an article about myths, I may as well ask: It’s often said that the Romans were uniquely disciplined in combat, able to hold the line when other infantry would break (to a point, of course). Is this largely true, or has Roman discipline also been exaggerated over the course of history?
*enters a year later*
So! Yes and no. :D.
Roman warfare is better attested (but not perfectly so), and particularly during the republic there is a huge focus on both virtue and discipline for the roman citizen soldier.
The roman virtues (virtus) are all pretty much about getting to the enemy and ripping them apart and winning renown in glorious man to man combat (or spear casts). But to prevent a roman soldier from running off without plan or formation to try and win glory, they had the concept of discipline, something a roman citizen soldier did not embody and wouldn’t win him glory. It was an imposition upon him by his superiors, a restraining force on his virtue so that when he is unleashed to win glory, it is at the most opportune time, where the glory he can win is the greatest. Being disciplined doesn’t win you acclaim, but FAILING to be disciplined is an intense shame (and garnered serious punishment), and it was up to the leaders, from NCOs up, to convince their soldiers that they would be allowed to seek their glory in battle and not restrained any longer than necessary. It’s an interesting tension if the roman military culture.
This is also why it was the youngest members of the legion put on the front. They had the most to prove, likely not having been on campaign as of yet and not won any glory in battle.
But there ARE limits to the roman discipline, you can only restrain the glory seeking nature so much. And there are times the army will press an attack against the wishes of its leader, as Caesar admonished his forces for in Gaul.
To elaborate on this – yet another year on – it is worth noting that nobody in the Roman armies expected the first ranks of velites and hastati to actually carry the battle. The younger ranks were thrown at the enemy, and, crucially, *expected to eventually retreat* and tap out with the principes. Other states would frequently offer up their best soldiers in places of honour (on the front, on the right flank, etc), so them retreating could trigger a rout. As the hastati were expected to retreat, they could wear out the opponents’ front ranks before the second line of hardened veterans with better gear smashed into them.
I appreciate that its hard to compare. The reason I ask is that it would be unfair to Sparta to say because they batted below 0.5 that their reputation is undeserved if everyone else batted way lower than 0.5.
It sounds like it was all roughly a wash given the comparisons across time/space and opponents
“it would be unfair to Sparta to say because they batted below 0.5 that their reputation is undeserved if everyone else batted way lower than 0.5.”
If most battles have two sides, it’s impossible for everyone else to bat below 0.5. Losses by one are victories for someone else, it’s zero-sum. At 0.5, Sparta *cannot* be the best; either they’re completely average, or they’re doing okay (compared to a bunch of losers) but someone else is racking up victories and thus better than them.
Theoretically it is possible that very small coalitions tend to win from very big ones, causing a ton of losses for states but few victories. However that seems unlikely and the opposite seems more likely
If Sparta fights two small Greek city-state and beats both, then the record shows: Sparta 1 victory, city state A one loss, city state B one loss.
Thus it’s not zero-sum.
“I am, of course, aware of the debate among Greek historians about the nature of the phalanx. I hold – with some modifications – the ‘orthodox’ view on the hoplite phalanx”
Oh nu! I am the opposite! The Greeks of the hoplite era were a largely chaotic blob! XD
Excellent reading as always. Thanks!
Do we know how hoplites were armed when they fought on board ships? Standard hoplite equipment seems like it would have been pretty useless
“That reputation could be a real military advantage. Greek hoplite armies arranged themselves right-to-left according to the status of each polis’ army (poleis almost always fight in alliances). Since Sparta was always the leader of its alliance, the Spartan king and his force always took the right – opposite the weakest part of the enemy army.”
I think you missed an opportunity by not mentioning the battle of Leuctra here. In this engagement the Thebans and their allies defied the traditional order of battle and put their elite troops on the left flank and stacked them unusually deep (maybe in order to counter that reputation you mentioned earlier?). This battle is one of the few in greek history were the best troops of both sides actually initiated the battle and here the Spartans lost decisively, losing 400 Spartiates including their king. The battle effectively ended Spartan hegemony and the loss of manpower accelerated the decline of Sparta.
You’re right that an opportunity was missed in leaving out an analysis of Leuctra – especially considering that the Spartans themselves apparently highlighted that battle as a major milestone in their “downfall,” with one Spartan commentator asserting that the Spartans (by fighting Thebes “too many times”) taught the Thebans how to beat them. Epaminondas seems to have chosen the tactics he used specifically because he was fighting a “traditional” Spartan line-up – and it worked.
Well hang on. Suppose that Spartans are indeed world-historic martial superheroes, and they’re each worth ten ordinary Greeks. Then everyone else gets the idea soon enough, and they avoid battle until they’ve got eleven times as many guys.
That’s a simplification of course, but a battle usually takes place when both sides believe they’ve got a decent chance of winning. I’m not sure battle win-loss ratio, on its own, works as a proxy for troop quality at all.
Given that Sparta was, by far, geographically the largest polis in Greece, I don’t think it should have been too hard for the Spartans to achieve numerical parity with their enemies, save for their broken social system.
In the event, Sparta – fighting with the Peloponnesian League – has numerical superiority as often as it is outnumbered. This isn’t a case of the Spartans being swarmed by less capable foes, *but even if it was* that would be a poor excuse for bad strategic management from what I must reiterate is geographically the largest polis in Greece, occupying some of the best farmland in Greece.
Shouldn’t possession of the largest polis and best lands in the Peleponnese indicate a measure of regular military success outside of those recorded battles?
Given that the Spartiates were fanatically insular against integration into their ranks and notoriously horrible to their neighbors, the only way to grow their domain should be conquest, right?
Could it have been something as simple as Spartiates being able to continue campaigns beyond the seasonal limit tolerated by typical Hellenic polis and their part-time farmer hoplites?
Sparta was the largest polis because of the conquest of Messenia; as noted, the full Spartan system – including Spartan austerity – is not in evidence during that period but rather appears after it. Subsequent attempts at Spartan territorial expansion – as Herodotus notes – fail.
The record does look a lot better in the 5th century BCE than the 4th. (Still not “gods of war” or anything but decidedly better than 50/50; on the other hand, that makes the 4th century performance that much more dire.) Could we read that as their much-vaunted battlefield prowess going into a precipitous decline, along with the rest of the state?
We also don’t have as many resources from the 5th Century. We can also assume, rather than “Spartans were excellent once but their military declined as their state did” that the Spartans just didn’t make records of when they lost. (Unless that loss is culture-important, like Themopalyae).
Do you know any good movies featuring Byzantine army?
As noted elsewhere, win/loss here desperately needs adjustment. In, say, sports, win/loss is a good indicator of the strength of a team because the conditions of each match are quite consistent, and they play in the same pool of opponents in a fairly even distribution.
If you were to say sometimes the senators play the redwings and sometimes the senators play the entire pacific division at once, or sometimes play 15 back to back games while the other teams are well rested, etc, etc, win/loss would not be quite as illustrative. And you’ll find sports fans will often say certain teams are better or worse than their record because their division is especially weak or strong.
Now, to some degree command picks its own battles, so that can be discounted to an extent. But here you’re arguing against the myth of Spartans being man-for-man or unit-for-unit qualitatively better in the business of plain fighting, so flaws in their strategy (as opposed to tactics) don’t really come into it.
Obviously there’s no simple formula to plug these battles into to get “expected wins”, and such an analysis would be highly subjective. So it’s not clear there’s any good way to evaluate the truth of the myth in question. But your analysis seems a little over-simplified.
The key point is that by doing a simple win-loss count, the author forces the “Spartiates were peerless warriors” argument very firmly onto the defensive.
You can make excuses and say “oh, well, the Spartiates were consistently better warriors BUT that didn’t translate into an elevated win rate BECAUSE…”
But by that point, one is indeed making excuses. It’s not somehow guaranteed that the nation that produces the greater warriors will win a noticeable majority of the battles… but it’s what you’d expect. *Either* it means the Spartans had something very badly weakening them in war so that they kept losing (somehow!) despite being the better men… *Or* it means the Spartans simply were not inherently better men, except maybe for having a few extra pounds of muscle and an extra inch or two of height because they always got to eat well (at the expense of a bunch of helots suffering child malnutrition, if ‘necessary’).
And if somehow it turns out not to be true, then it undermines one of the core arguments of pro-Spartan support throughout the ages, which is that all the brutality is justified by the caliber of warriors it creates. If the brutality *doesn’t* create men who consistently win battles, who have no real and measurable and consistent advantage over their enemies… what’s it even *for?* Is it worth it?
Getting a wee bit Bayesian a year later! Wasn’t it hard to FORCE battle in ancient warfare? My recollection is that was the case, but my recollection could be off. If so, though, I would expect mast militaries’ records to approach 50:50 over time: battles happen because each commander thinks they can win here; each is professionally competent so each expectation is reasonable; because of limitations on maneuver, there’s only so much one can do to influence a battle, once joined. This is a recipe for each actual battle being a coin flip. What would push your record up is superior strategic movement and logistics that make it more likely your opponent has to accept battle SOMEWHERE.
Suppose we are at war. I try to avoid battles except when I have an advantage, and so do you. As a result, there are three types of battles:
-Type A battles, where you are very likely to win.
-Type B battles, where we both have a roughly 50% chance of winning.
-Type C battles, where I am very likely to win.
Now, if our overall armies throughout the war are roughly evenly matched, we can assume that “how easy is this battle going to be to win” will fall on something like a bell curve distribution.
Many battles will be Type B, and we both agree to fight them.
Some battles are Type C, and turn into a contest of your ability to avoid battles versus my ability to force battle. Others are Type A- as before, but the other way around. You will be forced to accept some of the Type A battles when my army catches yours. I will be forced to accept some of the Type C battles, conversely. It averages out.
…
But suppose your army is decisively superior to mine at the point of contact most of the time. Suppose your army is much more numerous (due to greater population or better logistics), or much stronger in a fight (due to superior equipment, training, or tactics).
The breakdown we saw before still applies, but now Type A battles (that favor you) greatly outnumber Type C battles (that favor me). If your advantage is great enough, Type A battles may outnumber Type B and Type C battles combined.
This will greatly tip the overall odds of winning battles in your favor. Before, the number of battles you won would be “about half.” NOW, it’s about half of the Type B battles, and nearly all the Type A battles where you succeed in forcing me into combat. Which you have a strong incentive to do, and your superiority will tend to make it easier for you to do so, because you may have more/better pursuit assets, or officers who are better at coordinating the troops to catch a retreating enemy.
Furthermore, if my army is consistently avoiding yours, you have several strategies that can win you the war, strategies that would be impossible otherwise.
…
You can march straight to my city, pillage its outlands, tear down my olive groves and burn my crops. This will greatly weaken my city’s capacity for resistance, demoralize my troops, and give my army every reason to fight a battle. If we lose that battle against your stronger force, that gives you a decisive advantage to force a favorable peace, game over, you win.
Or you can simply remain in the field, waiting until my army either falls apart due to desertion or my troops force me to fight a decisive battle. This forces me to resort to Fabian tactics, and note how the Romans felt about Fabius while the war was on. He wasn’t very popular, and had it not been for various factors, he might well have been forced to fight Hannibal, or deposed in favor of a commander who would.
…
The overarching point here is that unless someone equips my army with magical means to escape any battle we don’t want to fight, and magical immunity to any adverse consequences of fleeing battle over and over… If your army really is superior to mine in battle, that’s going to show up in the record of who won most of the battles.
The ratio of the odds won’t tip to 100/0, and maybe not even to 80/20… but it won’t be 50/50 anymore.
This all fits into the sports metaphor surprisingly well, or at least, it may surprise you if you don’t also know sports in this level of granular detail. Pro hockey doesn’t let you set your schedule, but pro football *does* in the half of the season’s games which are played against non division members.
Divisions were brought up in an earlier comment because they exploded 100% as proportion of the NFL schedule in recent decades and even much more in MLB and NHL in particular; in the latter, you do in fact play the whole other division in a row, and then you go home and play everyone in your division several times, etc.
The rest of the NFL season, while greatly shrunken in proportion to the number of games scheduled per year*, remains dictated first by which of two conferences you are in (which harkens back to the Two Kings era of pro football, NFL vs AFL, now NFC vs AFC) but in either case -which- non-division/non-conference team you play is down to the algorithm that feeds only on previous W/L records.
So, long story short, you determine your “strength of schedule” by your performance on the field.
*always increasing every couple decades or more, hence the superbowl marching further up the calendar over any one lifetime. lots of labor conflicts and politics around cultural and social capital are involved here, and occasionally political capital, all of which i’ll spare the reader until i set up my own blog.
—————-
College football is actually an even better fit and it’s no coincidence many of the teams are named after Sparta. Each college team is as a spartiate ever in want of a grander and more honorable syssitia (conferences, which despite the name are much closer to a pro league among other competing leagues). It might have opponents picked by algorithm if in a very large conference, but in any case it’s got a “conference schedule” (most of the season) set by the larger organization, and before that it’s got a “non-conference schedule” of almost “friendlies” except they very much count.
So rich and honorable athletics departments schedule sure-win games against helot schools, who are forced to accept each challenge and get thrashed 49-0 a couple times (which in this sport involves as many injuries as some failed military operations) because the school gets a big chunk of money for playing along, which is then used to directly improve the football program, and then in a few years ideally they’re getting beaten 24-3…which doesn’t always happen because there are only so many kleroi and so many spartiates, etc.
Belated proofreading corrections:
Caption to Leonidas: “Each Spartan protects the men to his left…” -> “Each Spartan protects the man to his left…”
more bad web-article than I can count -> more bad web-articles than I can count
where this stuff is describes as -> where this stuff is described as
his side towards he enemy). -> his side towards the enemy).
notably Xenophon stress -> notably Xenophon — stress
I could this as a draw/defeat -> I count this as a draw/defeat
Fixed!
Regarding your comment on The Western Way of War vs Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, I sometimes read r/askhistorians as another place to get some easily accessible online historical tidbits and I recognised the names. The leading contributor there on the subject of ancient Greek warfare has a decidedly negative view on The Western Way of War:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/42isht/how_is_victor_davis_hansons_work_on_greek_warfare/czb50nb/
Do you have any thoughts you would be interested in sharing on why you prefer the side of the dispute that you do, or how I should go about resolving this conflict between people all substantially more expert than I am ever likely to be on the subject? Is there any way of following the key competing claims short of reading several academic books and comparing their arguments myself? I am curious but honesty compels me to acknowledge that the chances that I will ever do that are slender.
Yes, Dr. Konijnendijk (= Iphikrates) and I have debated back and forth on some of these issues on twitter. This is a pretty active zone of debate among ancient military historians. It also gets very technical very fast, revolving around relatively obscure ancient sources (e.g. Tyrtaeus) and archaeological evidence. I don’t know that there is a very accessible way to get a complete understanding of it without a pretty deep dive. Just beware, like most academic debates of this sort, the oddity is that the heterodox school (which is where I’d place Dr. Konijnendijk) publishes more (because they’re trying to make the point and persuade everyone), but while the orthodox position (where I tend to sit) is probably still held by more scholars, although the heterodox standpoint has certainly made gains over the years (you see the same phenomenon with demography, high count vs. low count; low count is the orthodoxy and broadly accepted, but high count publishes a TON (esp. Elio lo Cascio), despite not being generally accepted).
The hoplite debate is further complicated by VDH himself – both that his work after WWoW and The Other Greeks is a trainwreck of trainwrecks and also that his politics makes him pretty toxic in academic circles (I’ll admit, I find his recent writing pretty awful), while at the same time, VDH no longer really does ancient history; he’s essentially a full time political writer. I suspect that’s part of why there aren’t as many full-throated defenders of his model of hoplite warfare, despite it still being relatively dominant. I suspect what we’ll see at some point – maybe not for a few decades – is a ‘reformed’ school of the orthodox vision emerge with some new book. It won’t be mine though, I do the Romans.
Sorry if that’s a bit of a let down.
Honestly, this is a pretty good illustration why outreach work like yours is so important. You certainly justify your wages!
“What honor is gained by a mighty defense of a horrific, inhuman system?”
There are quite a few people in the former Soviet Union who might take strong exception to the implication that there is none – starting with myself. I believe our ancestors gained plenty of honour by _doing just that_. Then again, perhaps one might say that their honour was in that they weren’t _only_ defending the system but also their people. I think one might theoretically transfer this reasoning to Sparta as well, though in practice the helots in particular might never have stood to lose more from Sparta being beaten than from Sparta continuing to exist in its historical form.
(Very entertaining and useful blog and articles, regardless of my quibbles with some of the rhetoric.)
Are you talking about the Second World War? If so, then I’d argue there is no real comparison. Soviet soldiers faced an existential threat from a dominant military power; regardless of Stalin’s exceptional cruelty, the choice given to the Soviet soldier was between victory or ethnic cleansing at the hands of literal Nazis.
Sparta never faced a similar threat, save arguably against the Persians (who at least were foreign conquerors, I guess). For most Spartans, collapse of the state would have meant… having to work for a living instead of leeching off the blood and tears of terrorised slaves.
Agreed that the Spartans never faced such an existential threat. Even from the Persians. What the Persians offered was satrapy, so a reduction in the perceived freedom of the Spartiate class (although in all likelihood not a great deal of change in actual freedom. As long as the taxes kept coming, they could run the place as they wished).
Although for people who regard manual labor as subhuman degradation (e.g. antebellum plantation owners in the American South), the prospect of the destruction of their cherished “way of life” would be considered an existential threat.
Full disclosure: anarcha-communist here. I’ve been in trouble with my parents for USSR/China sympathizing since before I could pronounce republic, but obviously the other part of my politics stands to gain from any criticism of systems or powerful individuals. I’ll try to control both impulses to say this…
As brutal and inhuman as (let’s say) USSR was in (let’s say) the 30s and 40s, as much as you and I and the historian and any random dog on the street might disagree with Stalin’s methods and many details of his politics…we ought to cast aside the existential threat from a brutal force argument, because that’s exactly how Germans saw us (Jews, communists, anarchists, etc). Obviously I strongly disagree with their take but it’s hard to imagine a regular wehrmacht guy being *completely* oblivious to it; like the Spartan messaging, it becomes part of your morale because you see it happening around you. The end of the war would have felt particularly apocalyptic, and thankfully, largely was.
So that brings the ideological distinction into play. The USSR of the day is willing to brutalize an incredible number of human individuals and so grows by ruthless expansion, yes, but this was also the way of Imperial Russia and sure is for Putin now. So again the ideological difference is heightened once more. Here we find a Soviet soldier who, while not yet fully aware of the atrocities inside Occupied Europe, has a *really* good idea and will increasingly smell the burning corpses as she approaches the (say) Austrian countryside. She and you and I and the dog know what this is all about. If the dog is German, she already knows, and so do her humans (under their human denials and excuses anyway). Source: The Nazi Doctors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nazi_Doctors
So really, the key distinction is whether your town was being brutalized for world domination as an end in itself, or nominally and to a large degree practically for the goal of spreading literacy, medicine, supplies and way-less-screwball science to people who speak other languages. I say nominally/practically because, sure, Stalin was no bleeding heart. We know that. But we also know the random Soviet soldier was as likely to be a regular person who will do anything to avoid their family being put in ovens, as a passionate communist who wants to see the world fed and educated, as a Russian (area) military type sociopath found in any era, as a Spanish or English speaking union organizer who read this article (SUPER GORY even for WW2 era) https://libcom.org/history/barcelona-meeting-durruti-taking-sietamo-%E2%80%93-pierre-van-paassen
I won’t defend the horrible things any given one did, right up to the big man himself, but it’s worth the time to imagine what it was like to be a soldier under Stalin or, say, Irene as mentioned in a previous comment in the series. I don’t blame anyone who’d take the Ghost of Stalin (or Lenin etc) over Putin or Nicholas. Given my presence in the English speaking world is because my family was chased out when Jews were being scapegoated and pogromed to hell and back for the “failed” revolutions of the early 1900s… yeah, a ‘brutal communist dictator’ as Lenin is seen here is a guy I’m glad was on my people’s side of that debate.
Great Article series, putting a lot of things in order that I overheard somewhere before.
The scene where Leonidas explains how the phalanx works is one I laugh at with my brother to this day, considering how in the battle scene the first thing they do is break ranks from the all-important phalanx. If they don’t protect the man to their left anyway, what’s the argument against Ephesialtes again?
And in regard to your repeated mention of Halo, which hopefully doesn’t go too off-topic: Of course it features the Spartans as invincible superhuman cyborg soldiers. Admittedly I’m not deep into Halo-lore at all, but I have long suspected that behind its “Humanity F*** Yeah” attitude, Halo is actually much more critical. Somewhat like the Terran faction in Starcraft, perhaps. As far as I know, Halo-Humanity seems to be under some kind of totalitarian/fascist military government that heavily oppresses its colonies, suffers from open nepotism, fights an ongoing civil war against insurrections on the colonies, and with support of its KGB/StaSi style secret service ONI keeps most of its population under surveillance and indoctrinated with massive propaganda. And while Halo-Spartans are superior soldiers, they are created by kidnapping 6-year old children from their parents, replacing their names with serial numbers and subjecting them to brutal military training and genetic manipulation, which, as I remember, only 10% survive,.
This doesn’t seem to get adressed much in the games themselves, although there are allusions. But I assume that it was intentional by Bungie Studios, putting the Sparta->Spartan powerfantasy in front to sell games, while “hiding” a much more critical truth about the setting in secondary media, like spinoff-novels and comics. While the human government could be over-interpretation on my part, I believe that the origin of the Super-SPARTANS as kidnapped and abused children, most of which die from the training, is definitely a call-out to the historic spartiates, as opposed to the pop-cultural spartans.
There are definite call-outs in the games to this lore about the Human government: in Halo 2 the civilian population is caught unawares as the UNSC has hidden the perilous state of the war from them.
In Halo: Reach this is even more explicit – the player character (a SPARTAN) is stated to have spent most of his career putting down colonial rebellions and assassinating political dissidents. About midway through the game he ends up allying with a local rebel group against the aliens. Said rebels have an enormous illegal armory not for fighting the aliens (who, again, they don’t know are winning, because of regime propaganda) but in preparation to fight a government openly acknowledged to be tyrannical.
Haven’t played ODST or Halo 3 yet, but I suspect they’ll continue the theme.
Later in the franchise and in the books, the UNSC are _clearly_ the bad guys, and the Spartans are Exactly What It Say On The Tin: kids brainwashed into terrorising the civilian population providing tribute to the imperial centre. It is pure luck that they found a use in the war against the Covenant. The whole franchise is surprisingly deep if you look at it the right
I’ve read a hot take (inasmuch as any take relating to the 5th century BC could be described as ‘hot’) that the actual heroes of Thermopylae and the people who deserve the reputation for never surrendering or running away were actually the Thespians. The idea was that Leonidas had no real reason to fight and die on the spot instead of an orderly retreat, apart from a prophecy mentioned in Herodotus that requires a dubious chain of communication. Thespiae, on the other hand, was being evacuated, so the Thespian men had a definite reason to stay: by slowing but not stopping the Persian advance, they still bought time for their families and compatriots to get away. If they were resolved to fight to the death in any case, the Spartans may simply have been shamed into doing the same. This is supported by evidence that, while the Spartans shock everyone by surrendering when cornered, the men of Thespiae are reported to have fought to the last man on other occasions.
What was the difference in numbers in the army and casualties in these defeats? Because you are trying to measure FIGHTING ability, not contextless wins or losses.
So I double checked your work.
The Battle of Olpae: The Spartans faced two to one odds. One needs to be very good soldiers indeed to overcome that kind of force asymmetry. But it was a fair fight. Wildly one sided but Spartans fought.
In the Battle of Orneae, the Spartans left ‘a garrison’ to hold the city but withdrew their army (what size is a garrison? Don’t know but I doubt it was more than 500) The entire city of Argos and a 1,200 hoplite army of Athenians fought the garrison and defeated it on Argive home ground.
Battle of Lechaeum: Six hundred heavy infantry Spartan hoplites were stuck in a Cahhrae situation against highly mobile peltasts of unknown quantity who had a ‘home base’ of a city to hide in while they conducted hit and run tactics (plus they could reload) No Ability to Fight (with a touch of poor generalship. Bad Generals can get good troopers killed)
Battle of Pylos: 440 Hoplites (only 120 who were Spartans) faced 3,000 ship mobile Athenians and had zero missile forces to counter the opposing archers. No Ability to Fight
Battle of Haliartus: There were two armies, allies and Spartans and the Spartan contingent of troops NEVER FOUGHT! They arrived late! Lysander lead a bunch of non Spartans to defeat in a city assault (one of the most dangerous types of fight) and even so, they were able to deal the Thebans heavy losses in the retreat.
Really! Counting defeats that didn’t even have Spartans fighting? WTF?
This doesn’t even count the very dishonest addition of Thermopylae. That was a ‘defeat’ in the same way Doolittle’s raid was a ‘failure’ because it lost all the airplanes which went out. It had no path to ‘victory’, which is a far cry from thinking that a ‘measured loss’ isn’t worth accomplishing. It saved the population of Athens, for one thing, which was the strategic victory sought.
So let’s look at your numbers and remove fights where Spartans did not fight (one) and where Spartans COULD not fight (2). This is a legitimate amendment because you are trying to determine Fighting Prowess, not ‘someone able to kill someone with a sniper rifle’.
Suddenly, that 12 victories to 11.5 losses trims down to 12 victories vs. 8.5 losses (one needs to be able to fight to lose) If one makes the very sensible adjustment to remove Thermopylae, than it becomes 12/7.5, which is a much less dismissive number.
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There is a far better metric for ‘fighting prowess’ than ‘victories vs. defeats’ (particularly when one adds three fights where Spartans either didn’t fight or hadn’t been able to fight) Casualty rates in fair fights between ‘equal’ forces.
Battle of Mantinea: 9000 Spartans and Allies vs 8,000 Athens and Allies. 300 dead Spartans vs. 1,100 dead other side.
Battle of Amphipolis: 2500 Spartans vs. 2000 enemy. 600 dead enemy and 7 dead Spartans.
Plataea (Persian) 80,000 Greeks (lead by the Spartans) vs. 70,000-120,000 Persians w Allies. 10,000 dead Greeks, 50,000 Persian dead.
Battle of Sepia: The other force was entirely wiped out. But a lot of subterfuge was used. Military craftiness.
Sometimes it went the other way, but many of those battles only occurred at the end of their ‘legacy’, after huge innovations in tactics and arms composition changed the game in ways that the Spartans were not quick to adjust to.
For the battles of Lechaeam and Pylos, I would argue that having a soldiers that are too tactically inflexible to effectively combat an enemy (especially an enemy they know the capabilities of) should count against any argument that they are somehow superior.
It is when you count those battles as a reflection on ‘ability to fight’. Not ‘ability to conduct war’ but trying to assert that ‘Spartans weren’t so tough and all that training gave them a bad win ratio.’
To wit, this is akin to pitting me against an MMA fighter while I have a bicycle and a pistol. Is this an accurate representation of the ability of said MMA person to ‘fight’? No.
So they should be removed since that is the metric that is supposedly trying to be measured.
The question is fitness to purpose. The MMA fighter has trained to win MMA fights within a certain set of rules. So you judge their training by their ability to succeed in that space.
Armies are prepared to fight in war, in which there are few, if any, rules and to preserve their state and society – an aim which must be accomplished in the real world with all of its unfairness. Consequently, they have to be judged against that reality. An army that can only succeed when the enemy ‘fights fair’ is a bad army.
Now explain your addition of the Battle of Haliartus. What did that measure? There was one Spartan there, not a Spartan army. Your thesis is supposed to be a measure of Spartan fighting prowess, and not the battle prowess of Phocians. So this seems trying to jigger the numbers.
So, asking for a friend: did the Siege of Masada measure the battle prowess of the Jews? Did Carrhae measure the battle prowess of Roman Legionaries or the poor generalship of Crassus?
There is a vast distinction between ‘good troops lead by a poor general’ and your thesis of ‘being mediocre troops at best’.
Just out of curiosity: who won the Peloponnesian War?
JD45, Dr. Devereaux didn’t say the spartiates were “mediocre troops at best.” They weren’t nigh-invincible ubermenschen, that’s all.
The spartiate aristocracy was, in all probability, noticeably better than average at a specific style of fighting- hoplite combat. If nothing else, being richer and better fed than the median hoplite probably paid off in better armor and physical stature. I don’t know if there’s enough evidence to analyze the performance of the Spartan cavalry in particular, but I imagine they did pretty well there too… I seem to recall the Athenians having trouble with Spartan cavalry, but could be mistaken. Because, again, having good cavalry for a Greek polis was largely a function of wealth, and the spartiates certainly had wealth.
On the other hand, the Spartans collectively- not the spartiates in particular but the Spartans as a state- were worse than average at a number of other styles of fighting. Namely, the ones that normally got handled by lower-status men in their society, because low-status men in Spartan society were generally treated poorly and at many disadvantages. That includes skirmishers. The people carrying the baggage were helot slaves, too, and since the helots got treatment so bad even other Greek slaveowners commented on it, they probably weren’t all that happy on the job.
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So, tough hoplites- not hoplites that fight like invulnerable mincing machines, because they weren’t eight feet tall and spearproof or anything. A javelin to the eyeslit of your helmet doesn’t care how many reps you can do. But tough hoplites, at least as long as the only hoplites fighting were spartiates. The lower classes of free Spartans were probably merely average hoplites, having no advantages of equipment, feeding, or much of anything else.
Probably good cavalry.
Bad skirmishers.
Probably bad logistics trains. Because the baggage is being carried by helots, who are disproportionately malnourished and have a non-trivial incentive to just run away along with their share of the food, since even being a slave in another polis is probably better than being a Spartan helot.
What does this average out to?
Well… it clearly doesn’t average out to “wins the vast majority of battles that it would be to the Spartans’ advantage to win.” Because that WOULD show up in the count.
Even if we accept the proposition that Spartan hoplites are marginally superior to other hoplites, we have to ask why this doesn’t cash out in being able to reliably win the battles the Spartans would want to win.
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1) Because the Spartans often find that they are outnumbered. But why are they outnumbered?
1a) The spartiate elite are greatly outnumbered by low-status free Spartans “who would gladly eat them raw,” and overwhelmingly outnumbered by helots. If they send all the available spartiates to fight a battle, they may return home to find that a revolt that has already overrun Sparta, killed all the spartiate women and children, and put an end to Sparta as a spartiate-ruled state.
1b) There aren’t very many spartiates to begin with, so even if the gods grant that there be no revolt, the Spartans simply cannot field a large phalanx of hoplites who are actual spartiates. They can make up the numbers from the lower classes of free Spartans and make them fight in the phalanx, sure. But the lower-class free Spartans don’t have the advantages of wealth that make spartiates that extra bit tougher in a hoplite fight. Nor are they, mostly and on the whole, graduates of the agoge system, if we are taking it for granted that the agoge makes its graduates tougher in a hoplite fight.
So the Spartans are forced to choose between going into hoplite fights outnumbered, or going into hoplite fights having diluted away the nominal advantage their social system gives them of being tougher in a hoplite fight.
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2) Furthermore, the people the Spartan state as a whole relies upon for skirmishers and the baggage train are definitely going to be coming up inferior to those of another polis, all else being equal, for the reasons being discussed.
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So, you expect the Spartans to run into lots of situations where no matter HOW badass the spartiates are in a hoplite fight, they’re showing up to the battle outnumbered, OR they’ve diluted away the spartiate badassery advantage by recruiting from the lower classes of free Spartans, OR their skirmisher disadvantage results in the badass hoplite phalanx getting pelted with rocks and javelins until it falls apart, OR the baggage train runs away and the badass hoplites are half-starved by the time of the battle.
All of which would tend to make the Spartans considerably less good at warfare.
JD45 bring up some pretty good points on problems with measurement equivalence in your analysis (although i wonder if the conclusions would change if he performed the same adjustments to the winning battles, cf. your “bully beating up their smaller neighbours” point).
Anyway, I wonder whether anyone have done a (properly conducted) quantification of fighting prowess in ancient greece (or battles in general – i’m not very familiar with the field). As an expert, do you know of anything of interest?
(Sorry for spamming down your old posts with questions btw – i just find your writings about this super interesting, and are learning a lot!)
The reason for measuring win/loss rates instead of casualty ratios is twofold.
One reason is simple, the other is complicated. The simple reason speaks to more general issues than just “winning battles.”
See… if your state is constantly outnumbered by your enemies, then it is probably doing something ill-advised, or something very dangerous, or both. Since Sparta was geographically one of the largest city-states in all of Greece, very few things it could plausibly have done would be dangerous unless they were ill-advised. Thus, a mediocre win ratio indicates that Sparta was doing something wrong, if only “repeatedly choosing to pick fights with people who outnumbered them.”
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The second reason is more complicated, but speaks more directly to “but do how strong are your fighting men, though?”
See… If you want to judge how skilled a fisherman is, you ask him how much fish he brings home every day. You don’t ask him how big the fish that got away was.
Ancient chronicles often exaggerate the number of soldiers present, or the number of soldiers killed in a battle. Especially enemy numbers. Not all ancient chronicles are equally accurate or inaccurate, too. If you are trying to do a meta-analysis across a lot of different ancient sources, trying to accurately judge the casualty numbers is very hard, because you’re constantly correcting for a constantly variable and unknown degrees of exaggeration.
Whereas it is more difficult, even for an ancient chronicler, to get away with claiming to have won a battle that you actually lost. Some ancients tried, but it would be more difficult to succeed. By comparison, fudging the number of enemy dead to make your own side sound like superheroes is easy.
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So if you want to restrict yourself to facts where we can be reasonably confident that our ancient sources are not simply lying, you restrict yourself to whether the battle was won or lost, not to whether one side or the other racked up a stunningly high kill ratio.
Very good info professor (you are a professor right?), about the myth of spartan super-warriors. I always believe that the Phalanx is more defensive than offensive, but was very effective in Marathon. Also now you mention the way in what the hoplites should never fight alone, you hear about Callimachus one athenian polemarch who die in Marathon in a single fight against Datis the persian commander in just one hit.
Eh, a Doctor (of history), yes. My current job title is “Assistant Teaching Professor.” I suspect there would be quite an argument as to if that entitles me to refer to myself as ‘professor’ (some folks would reserve that only for ‘full’ professors – those without ‘Assistant’ or ‘Associate’ in the title. There are others who would allow ‘professor’ for an Assistant Professor, but not an Assistant *Teaching* Professor).
In any event, I have a PhD and I teach ancient history courses at a university (currently North Carolina State University). I’ll let you decide for yourself if that makes me ‘professor’ or not.
I apologize for the delay. In my country (Argentina) usually we have the habit of calling anyone with a degree in social sciences (anthropology, sociology, etc.) as “professor” even if he has a doctorate.
On the other hand we usually call academics in natural sciences (biology, botany, etc.) as “doctor”.
Something I was left to wonder looking at the list of battles mentioned: the impression I have always got is that the Spartan military reputation was formed during the Archaic period and fairly well established by the time of the Persian invasions (i.e. right at the start of the period mentioned). That would suggest that their relative peak was no later than the end of the sixth century.
You reference this a little later saying about how they spent the second half of the sixth century beating up smaller neighbours – but battles are rarely between opponents of wholly equal standing, and being in a position to dominate smaller neighbours in the first instance does suggest *some* background of success at some point.
I also notice that in that list of battles mentioned the “batting average” is much stronger during the 5th century, especially in land battles, before falling off a cliff in the fourth when Spartan power was essentially exhausted and everyone in the vicinity piled onto it. I know why that period has been selected but does the periodic selection skew the result (it usually does, in such analyses)? If we take it back to 550 or 600 BC does the Spartan record improve?
Of course it might well be that my impression was wrong all along, and that the tertiary+ sources I was reading (in a non-specialist manner) themselves relied overly on Herodotus et al, and as you say, that the Spartan reputation was simply manufactured during the fifth century. The overall conclusion reached: that during the classical era the Spartan army was profoundly mediocre, seems unquestionable (and I am delighted to learn that the Theban army was, overall, stronger).
From an essay I wrote for my publisher, two or three years ago:
I am skeptical of Hanson’s theory on the physical push of a phalanx for four reasons. One is that, facing a Roman legion, the physical pushing of massed ranks should have simply rolled over the Romans, who fought in a much more open order and could never have mustered sufficient counterpush to have held the line. The classical phalanx was so simple to train men to, and the vulnerability of the legion to physical pushing so complete, that one would expect someone to have readopted the phalanx to face the legions. Yet this never happened.
“Ah, but what about the pili, the Romans heavy javelins? Wouldn’t those stop the push?” Doubt they’d get through the Greek shields, frankly.
Secondly, “you are what you were back then.” The Macedonian phalanx, as mentioned, derived from the tactics of Pagondas at Delium and Epaminondas at, among other fields of battle, Leuctra, completely abandoned any chance of physical pushing by massed ranks in favor of a lot of stabbing by massed pike. That, if massed pushing had been routine previously, would represent a suspiciously revolutionary change. Moreover, the pikes weren’t actually that strong. A classical hoplite phalanx, had it been using push, should have been able to physically break the pikes and then roll over the then disarmed, barely armored Macedonians. This, too, never happened.
Thirdly, much of the evidence driving the belief in the pushing phalanx is based on the inexplicability of deepening ranks – massing combat power, in other words – unless it was to push. There is, however, an alternative explanation. The ancient battle tended to be won or lost via the mechanism of desertion. In other words, the side that ran last won. Battlefield desertion, however, could not take place from the front, where to turn was to die. Neither could it take place from the middle, because there were people behind those men blocking escape. Rather, desertion began from the rear, where men couldn’t see much, but could hear screaming, smell perforated guts, choke on dust, and exist in trembling terror for each step closer to the front they advanced. How to fix this? Simple, make the phalanx deep enough that the rear ranks didn’t have to worry about ever reaching the front until a decision had been reached. This would have kept the rear in place, hence the middle blocked from running.
“Ah, I hear, “but what about the Spartans? Surely they never ran or surrendered?” Think so? Check out the Battles of Sphacteria (425 BC) and the Battle of Lechaeum (391 BC).
Fourthly and finally, has anyone done a test to see if a standard bronze breastplate of the day could endure that kind of pressure without warping inward, suffocating its wearer? Was there any chance of the bronze’s replacement, the linothorax (layers of linen cloth held together by glue) holding out for a second against that kind of pressure? One is skeptical, very skeptical.
“…changed from a local shepherd into a Lacedaemonian hypomeiones for some reason” – given that ‘300’ is a work of fiction, i would post that “some reason” is artistic license – which Frank Miller (& yes, i am referencing the source material in the original comic, which no one else seems to be doing here – Zack Snyder ‘did it’ in the movie cos it was in the comic he was adapting) can’t necessarily be criticised for – as, you know… he’s not a historian & not claiming to be factual in his representation (but, i would argue, still relevant/topical, as he contributes to the Spartan Mirage – which i have argued in another comment in this series is equally important when studying Spartan history & cultural impact).