Spartan Brutality

[jasonxx]

Paralus Ive just been rethinking the issue you once clarified about the Serfs helping the Spartans out and subsequently getting killed.

I dont know if its the same story. But I do recall the Sparatn Army beentrapped on an Island and facicing defeat. Wasnt it the Serfs who saved the Spartans and as a result were executed. Its fair to say that the Sparatn military superiority or so called was basically based on Paranoia.

Also just how much of Spartan military reputaion was warranted and compare it to Alexanders or the Thebans. Was it that Spartans thought a Sparatn existence and toughness made them better. It must be what they believed.

Although they had that reputaion. They were still only seasonal fighters and withdrew for the winter, a real reason that the Pelopenesian wars were hardly conclusuve. Also the Spartan war machine in my opinion was very rigid and predictable. Ok if it kept formation. But im pretty sure had the more versatile Macedonian force had met them in open battle the Spartans would have been easily anhialted.

The Macedonian Phalanx with its extra reach would have pinned or split open a Spartan line and or Alexander cavalry or foot compamions would have his and run fron the flanks and rear. And finaly had the Spartans been beaten and tried to retreat to the Pelopenses. Alexanders army was an all year force would Im sure have pressed Sparta to its home land and done a Thebes. I guess to demonstarate Macedonian Superiorit was indeed to totally take out the big boy as it did with Thebes. To do the same to Sparta would have been a very good second nail in Greeces coffin.

Kenny

[Paralus]

I dont know if its the same story. But I do recall the Sparatn Army beentrapped on an Island and facicing defeat. Wasnt it the Serfs who saved the Spartans and as a result were executed...

Also just how much of Spartan military reputaion was warranted and compare it to Alexanders or the Thebans. Was it that Spartans thought a Sparatn existence and toughness made them better. It must be what they believed.

The action you are referring Kenny to took place in 425 during the Peloponnesian War and described by Thucydides. Demosthenes had persuaded the Athenian generals sailing with him to Corcyra to establish a fort at Pylos in the Peloponnesus, some fifty miles as the crow flies from Sparta. They left him with three ships and he duly fortified the place. The Spartans eventually decided this was not to stand and readied a naval force to assault the Athenian position. As well, they landed 420 hoplites and helots on the island of Sphacteria which abutted the headland of Pylos.

Demosthenes, reinforced by some forty Athenian triremes, routed the Spartan fleet of sixty ships and laid siege to the island. The Spartan response was an immediate request for a truce whilst terms of a peace were discussed at Athens. All for some 420 troops. An eloquent indication of how substantially their loss would impact on homoioi numbers in serious decline. Athens rejected the peace terms.

All the while helots, on the promise of freedom, rowed or swam supplies to the stranded Spartans. There is no mention of them being killed by the Spartans though..

In the end Demosthenes, aided by Cleon, assaulted the Spartan position and invested the remaining 292 Spartans who, seeing no way out, requested of their government whether they should surrender. The response was that they should make up their own minds but should do nothing “dishonourable”. They duly surrendered and spent some five years as a zoo exhibit in Athens.

As to the Spartan reputation, that was deserved. Prior to Thebes and, more so, the Macedonian army, the Spartans were the professional army of Greece. Much is made of their “season” (as with other Greek states) but this fails to acknowledge the basis of the warfare: damage to the economy and stability of the enemy by the systematic reduction of its territory and food production. Generally this forced a state to the field for battle. Once on that field the Spartans were in their element. These were superbly drilled infantrymen and there were few who could hold a field against them.

Pericles summed it up at the outset of the war: do not engage them. He would know having been one of a few who may well have engaged a Spartan army of inferior numbers at Tanagara in central Greece in about 457. The Athenians marched “in full force” and numbered 14,000 (including 1,000 Argives and other allies). Although the battle was fierce the Peloponnesian army – with only some 1,500 Spartans – held the field. Athens would see the next invasion off (446) with a bribe or other accommodation.

Don’t sell them short. The Spartans of Alexander’s time were a far cry from those who went to war in 431. Those Spartans had little to fear from Greek land armies – as Mantinea would demonstrate (mistakes by an inexperienced king and all) in 418.

[jasonxx]

Indeed Paralus.

But its fair to say the Spartan supremecy was not long lived nor was it very big.

Your comments put to bed the Myth of Spartan no retreat no surrender stuff and to come back on or with your shield. Indeed they did surrender and retreat.I do feel history has left Athens rather short changed and have to live in the Sparatn shadow prinmarily I would say due to Thermopalae. Its fare to say Marathon against darius 1st was a fantastic victory for the Athenians and its fair to say Athens has to take pride for its economics and its fleet. Athens is still around whaere as Sparta is now ruins.

I have lambasted the Ancient Greeks many times but Athens should get a lot more credit than the myth of Sparta would let them.

Kenny

[Yauna]

Pericles summed it up at the outset of the war: do not engage them. He would know having been one of a few who may well have engaged a Spartan army of inferior numbers at Tanagara in central Greece in about 457. The Athenians marched “in full force” and numbered 14,000 (including 1,000 Argives and other allies). Although the battle was fierce the Peloponnesian army – with only some 1,500 Spartans – held the field. Athens would see the next invasion off (446) with a bribe or other accommodation.

Thucydides says that Sparta´s army was 11500+Thessalian cavalry in Tanagara, so forces were not so diferent and this cavalry was very valuable as ATG will learn later.We tend to number only Spartans in Peloponnesian armies and this magnifies their victories.

Besides this there was a great killing in both armies, and victory only allow Spartans to return home. Afterwars Athens will conquer Beotia, so strategically this victory was a Pyrrhic one.

[Paralus]

Thucydides says that Sparta´s army was 11500+Thessalian cavalry in Tanagara, so forces were not so diferent and this cavalry was very valuable as ATG will learn later.We tend to number only Spartans in Peloponnesian armies and this magnifies their victories.

Besides this there was a great killing in both armies, and victory only allow Spartans to return home. Afterwars Athens will conquer Beotia, so strategically this victory was a Pyrrhic one.

Much of what we learn of Atheno-Spartan relations (and the personalities involved) in the period between the Persian and “great” Peloponnesian War is, unfortunately, limited to Thucydides’ Pentecontaetia. It's not that Thucydides is bad, just I'd love more.

In his description Thucydides is clear in that the Peloponnesians won the battle and returned to Laconia after ravaging Megarian territory (an Athenian ally at the time). Diodorus is a little more lyrical in declaring the battle a draw and paints the picture of both sides requesting from the other a truce at day’s end. Excuse me for finding this a little difficult to believe. I can recall only one clearly described instance of Spartans asking for such (aside from Sphacteria) and being documented: Leuctra in 371. If memory serves, the Ephors had to restrain those homoioi left alive who refused to have anything to do with a truce so as to collect their king’s body and that of the other dead homoioi. They were, indeed, about to collect their weapons and fight for them for to ask for a truce was to concede the field.

I can’t see this as being a possibility in 457.

And yes the numbers we have for Tanagra in 457 are some 14,000 for the Athenians and their allies and 11,500 Peloponnesians, including 1,500 Spartans. Nevertheless, the Athenians had the numbers and, therefore, the ability to outflank – crucial in hoplite warfare. The Thessalians, if we may believe Diodorus (11.80.1) "changed sides during the fighting" and so may initially have been of some advantage to the Athenians. Greek armies of this period are, though, notorious for the complete lack of imagination in the use of cavalry.

There would be no way that the Athenians will have taken the field had they the lesser numbers. Similar would occur in 418 at Mantinea where Spartan drill and valour would overcome an inexperienced king and greater numbers. Again we see levies not terribly keen on engaging Spartan hoplites.

Well may the Spartan victory at Tanagra be portrayed as “Pyrrhic”. My view would be that what was of a Pyrrhic nature here was Athenian land power. Yes they held Boeotia but only by defeating the Boeotians (at this stage nothing like the force of the 390s and into the 360s) and only whilst the Megarian alliance with Athens made life rather difficult for Spartan armies operating beyond the Peleponnese. Once that alliance evaporated, Athens – in 446 – was left to either bribe Plistoanax into marching the Peloponnesian army home or, more likely, Pericles agreed to Spartan terms rather than face that army in the filed. There is nothing else to choose from.

Evidently, as Thucydides would later make plain, Pericles would not put the future of his city and her empire into hands that gripped a hoplon. He was, though, much more comfortable in placing it with the “naval crowd” sweating and swearing on those plentiful benches that filled the bilges of his city’s triremes.

[Yauna]

I have no doubt that spartans were the best hoplite in all Greece for a long time,and they won the peloponnesian war, that´s a fact.What I want to defend is that somehow their superiority is overrated. Besides this, they were very slow, reluctant to move, and short minded taking decisions, e.g. an spartan general always made same deploy.

Leuctra 371 Spartans right wing, theban phalanx takes the field.
Mantinea 362 the same, no reaction to theban phalanx.
Cunaxa 401 Spartans right wing, they destroy persian left wing but the battle is in the middle and lost.

However Athen was an active and agile city, tried to do many things (sicily, egipt,persia) but had little chance. Great things could have been achieved with the help of the gods. Sparta hardly could have got little things.

Well may the Spartan victory at Tanagra be portrayed as “Pyrrhic”. My view would be that what was of a Pyrrhic nature here was Athenian land power.

Well with such a superiority in land power is a fantastic achievement of the atheneans that they hold their city for 50 years against Sparta, and that they only lost the war when Sparta became a naval power (with persian gold?).

And yes the numbers we have for Tanagra in 457 are some 14,000 for the Athenians and their allies and 11,500 Peloponnesians, including 1,500 Spartans. Nevertheless, the Athenians had the numbers and, therefore, the ability to outflank – crucial in hoplite warfare.

Anibal will outflank romans in Cannae with a disavantage of 30000. So I don´t think these numbers are so crucial. Going again about land power, Anibal had it in Italy, no roman army could engage him, but Roma won the war.

Yauna

[Paralus]

Leuctra 371 Spartans right wing, theban phalanx takes the field.
Mantinea 362 the same, no reaction to theban phalanx. Cunaxa 401 Spartans right wing, they destroy persian left wing but the battle is in the middle and lost.

Cunaxa is irrelevant. The Greek mercenaries were under the command of Cyrus who took the centre – in the Persian manner. Interestingly, Cyrus asked that the Greeks advance at an oblique towards the opposite centre – from their right wing – saying plenty (as I’ve remarked before) about the incontinently inflated numbers in Artaxerxes army.

Leuctra and second Mantinea do not offer a sensible comparison as we were, I thought, speaking of Tanagra. Certainly these engagements show that the Spartan way of commanding the right wing had not altered along with a predilection for files twelve deep. It is rather senseless debating the disposition and tactical use of some 700 homoioi – there will hardly have been more at Mantinea – as against 6,000 Theban hoplites stationed opposite them. Cleombrotus might well have stacked them in a wedge fifty deep and that will have achieved exactly what? A wedge of 5,000 homoioi a little over a hundred years earlier – when such numbers were available – might be a comparison worth the making.

The battle, to go on Diodorus’ paraphrasing of Ephorus, was a grim and hotly contested piece of work. Xenophon, crestfallen and appalled at the precipitous fall from grace of his idolized Sparta, seems barely able to bring himself to the task of describing it.

However Athen was an active and agile city, tried to do many things (sicily, egipt,persia) but had little chance. Great things could have been achieved with the help of the gods.

Of the three, she singularly failed at two – going down to utter defeat in both Egypt and Sicily. As for Athens, having lost their pre-eminent and panhellenist general Kimon – and likely the engagement – to Persian forces in Cyprus, she came to that arrangement with Persia known as the “Peace of Callias”.

This did not stop her showing appalling judgement during the “Ionian War” stage of the Peloponnesian war in backing the satrap Amorges in his rebellion. As if she didn’t already have enough enemies.

Anibal will outflank romans in Cannae with a disavantage of 30000. So I don´t think these numbers are so crucial. Going again about land power, Anibal had it in Italy, no roman army could engage him, but Roma won the war.

Apples and apples Yauna – we’re in Greece two and a half centuries earlier with stylised, almost ritual fighting.

Well with such a superiority in land power is a fantastic achievement of the atheneans that they hold their city for 50 years against Sparta, and that they only lost the war when Sparta became a naval power (with persian gold?).

Now that, I presume, means fifty years down to Aegespotami? I believe you are an Athenian politician Yauna. You might wish to acknowledge the “thirty years peace” – or that of it which lasted until 431 – within that time. As well, as the Athenians did not engage Sparta on land, it is hardly a petard to hoist. It might be argued that this simply proves the Spartans weak in siege warfare and that might well be true.

How long did it take Athens to take Potidea? Let’s not mention Amphipolis.

There’s that “Persian gold” again. Evidently from that “Persian purse” on the other thread. There are a few things taking up time at the present Yauna – not the least of which being a weekend conference – but I believe I might just address a post to this subject of the Persian purse. It goes to nature of the Greek state’s power games and the supposed all-popular “panhellenism” just awaiting a Sparta, Argos, Athens, Philip or Alexander to tap.

[Yauna]

Ok Paralus you rule.

After your fantastic replay I hardly can take a few and irrelevant items to answer.

I believe you are an Athenian politician Yauna

You catch me, I should have been a Demostenes disciple. I hope this subject won´t awake my dear Philippus from his tomb because he´d get lost in a museum jejeje.

Regards

Yauna