Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander

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6. The Late Archaic City-State

Although the Greek city-states differed among themselves in size and natural resources, over the course of the Archaic age they came to share certain fundamental political institutions and social traditions: citizenship, slavery, the legal disadvantages and political exclusion of women, and the continuing influence of aristocrats in society and politics. During this time, however, different city-states developed these shared characteristics in strikingly different ways. Monarchy had died out in Greece with the end of Mycenaean civilization, except for the dual kingship that existed in Sparta as part of its complex oligarchic system rather than as a monarchy in the ordinary sense. In Sparta and some other Greek city-states, only a rather restricted number of men exercised meaningful political power (thus creating a political system called an oligarchy, meaning “rule by the few.”) Other city-states experienced periods of domination by the kind of sole ruler who seized power in unconstitutional fashion and whom the Greeks called a tyrant. Tyranny, passed down from father to son, existed at various times across the breadth of the Greek world from city-states on the island of Sicily in the west to Samos off the coast of Ionia in the east. Still other city-states created early forms of democracy (“rule by the people”) by giving all male citizens the power to participate in governing. Assemblies of men with some influence on the king had existed in certain early states in the ancient Near East, but Greek democracy broke new ground with the amount of political power that it invested in its male citizen body. The Athenians established Greece's most renowned democracy, in which the individual freedom of citizens flourished to a degree unprecedented in the ancient world. By examining these different paths of political and social development, we can grasp the great challenge faced by the Greeks as they struggled to construct a new way of life during the Archaic Age. In the course of this struggle, they also began to formulate new ways of understanding the physical world, their relations to it, and their relationships with each other.

6.1. The Power of Sparta

The Spartans made oligarchy the political base for a society devoted to military readiness, and the resulting Spartan way of life became famous for its discipline, which showed most prominently in the Spartan infantry, the most powerful military force in Greece during the Archaic Age. Sparta's easily defended location--nestled on a narrow north-south plain between rugged mountain ranges in the southeastern Peloponnese, in a region called Laconia (hence the designation of Spartans as Laconians)--gave it a secure base for developing its might. Sparta had access to the sea through a harbor situated some twenty-five miles south of its urban center, but this harbor opened onto a dangerous stretch of the Mediterranean whipped by treacherous currents and winds. As a consequence, enemies could not threaten the Spartans by sea, but their relative isolation from the sea also kept the Spartans from becoming adept sailors. Their interests and their strength lay on the land.

• Spartan way of life: Xen. Const. Lac. 1.1ff [Text]
• Sparta's easily defended location: Views and description of Sparta [Site]; Sparta [Atlas]; Description of Laconia [Encyclopedia]; References to Spartans [Encyclopedia]; References to Spartans [Encyclopedia]
• harbor: Gytheion and Sparta [Atlas]; Harbor of Sparta-Gythion [Text]; References to harbor [English index]
• their strength: Thuc. 1.10.2 [Text]

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OCLC: 33900145
ISBN: 0300069561

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