by Jim Lacey
Still, even with the Peloponnesian League behind it, Sparta did not feel secure. Argos, its perpetual enemy, remained much too powerful for Sparta’s liking. The start of the new round of Spartan-Argive enmity is lost to us and can be accounted for only as the natural result of two rising powers within a restricted geographic zone. With its frontiers at peace as a result of the advent of the Peloponnesian League, and the Messenian helots apparently docile, in about 545 BC, Sparta marched into southern Argos and claimed the fertile plain of Thyrea. Instead of engaging in a full-scale battle for the territory, both sides agreed to decide the issue by letting three hundred selected champions meet and fight to the death. The Battle of the 300 Champions took place in roughly 544 BC, and when it was over two Argives and one Spartan were left alive.9 The two Argives, showing no great desire to close with and finish the dangerous Spartan, declared victory by virtue of their superior numbers and returned to Argos. The remaining Spartan then turned to stripping the Argive dead of their arms and armor and used the collection to build a victory monument on the battlefield. He then proclaimed himself and Sparta the victor on the grounds that he alone remained on and held the field of battle. With both sides claiming victory, a general battle was inevitable. When it took place, Argos was decisively defeated and did not rise again as a power for a generation.10
It is difficult to underestimate the effects this almost continuous warfare had on Spartan society. Prior to the Messenian conquest and its subsequent revolts, Sparta was similar to any other Greek city and there was no reason to suspect it would develop into a warrior state. But after the conquest of Messenia and the reduction of that populace to helotry, the Spartans were relieved of all economic responsibilities. The helots were forced to till this land, and set amounts of the produce were delivered to Spartan landowners. After these payments were made, the helots were permitted to keep any excess produce.
Although the helots were not slaves in the traditional sense of that word, the conditions of their lives were harsh. As a result, they were always ready to revolt whenever presented an opportunity. To counter this threat, Sparta was forced to maintain a constant high state of war preparation, which was possible only because its men no longer had to till fields or harvest crops. The state also created the krypteia, a secret police that enlisted the best of Sparta’s youth. These young men were sent into the countryside with a writ to kill any helot they deemed a threat to Sparta or good order. To relieve these young men of the burden of “blood guilt” for these institutionalized murders, each year Sparta ritually declared war on the helots. Despite these precautions, revolts remained a regular occurrence and were typically repressed with unrestrained violence. This domestic situation resulted in the adoption of an extremely conservative policy when dealing with affairs outside of the Peloponnesus. So although the Spartans possessed the most feared and effective army in the Greek world, the continuous threat of a helot revolt made them supremely reluctant to send that army far from the Peloponnesus for any lengthy period.
As the Spartans were relieved of the necessity of earning a living, they were free to dedicate all their energy to affairs of state, and the state’s primary affair was war. Spartan society and its institutions were relegated to the job of producing warriors, and every citizen was a soldier. Men performed this duty by fighting as hoplites in the battle line, while women performed it by rearing future soldiers. From the moment of birth, a person’s worth was decided by his or her fitness to perform these sacred duties. Any infant found physically wanting was left exposed on Mount Taygetus to die of exposure or to be consumed by wild beasts. At the tender age of seven, boys were taken from their mothers and placed into the agoge (the upbringing).11 Here a youth passed the next decade in brutal training designed to inure him to any hardship, create an unwavering discipline in the battle line, and push him repeatedly to the edge of human endurance.
At age eighteen (or twenty), a Spartan graduated from training and took his place in a “mess” as a full-fledged Spartan soldier. Selection to a mess was by vote, and a single no vote by any mess member was enough to blackball a candidate from that particular mess. If a Spartan was refused admittance to every mess, he was excluded from Spartan society. For recent graduates of the agoge, membership in a mess did not end their trial period. For the next decade they lived in barracks with their companions, and if any of them married, they could see their wives only during short, furtive visits. Only at age thirty did a Spartan become a homoioi, a peer.12 And only at this point did he receive the privileges of full citizenship and earn the right to live in his own home. As one Athenian later said, “The Spartan’s life is so unendurable that it is no wonder he throws it away lightly in battle.”13
This Spartan discipline extended itself to the women. They were expected to be physically strong, able to bear many children, and imbued with the Spartan spirit. In his Sayings of Spartan Women, Plutarch gives some indications of what that spirit meant:
Damatria: After hearing her son was a coward and unworthy of her, Damatria killed him when he made his appearance. This is the epigram about her: “Demetrius who broke the laws was killed by his mother—she a Spartan lady, he a Spartan youth.”
Unnamed: Another woman, as she was handing her son his shield and giving him some encouragement, said: “Son, either with this or on this.”14
In most of Greece, the state of women was not far above chattel. In Athens, for instance, upon reaching puberty a girl would be locked away until marriage. Afterward, she would be kept out of the public as much as possible, and her husband would consider it a mortal insult to hear her discussed by any man outside of the immediate family. By contrast, in Sparta girls were encouraged to participate in physical exercise, often doing so nude and in contests with the boys. Spartan girls were fed much better than girls anywhere else in Greece and were even taught to read and write, a practice other Greeks ridiculed. Menander, an Athenian, quipped: “Teaching women to read and write? What a terrible thing to do! Like feeding a vile snake more poison.”15 Spartan women were also allowed to own property, were expected to speak their minds on public issues, and had the right to take another husband if the first was gone too long at war. Furthermore, when her husband was away, a Spartan wife was expected to look after her husband’s property and protect it with any violence required, a job they were uniquely prepared for by both training and temperament. From the evidence still extant, one could easily get the impression that the only thing more dangerous then fighting the men of Sparta was fighting the women of Sparta.
By the middle of the sixth century BC, this system made Sparta the undisputed military superpower of the Peloponnesus and probably the rest of Greece. It was for this reason that Lydia’s king Croesus sent for Spartan assistance against Cyrus in the early 550s and why the Ionians begged for their support against Cyrus’s Persians and again when they later revolted against Darius and Persian rule. Sparta, with enough concerns at home, refused both entreaties.
Foremost among Spartan concerns were developments 150 miles to their north, in Athens. Throughout the period of Sparta’s rise to dominance in the Peloponnesus, Athenian power was also growing. Athens’s political institutions, however, were developing in a radically different direction from those of Sparta. Always slow to send its army far from the Peloponnesus, Sparta at first contented itself just with monitoring developments in Athens, though with growing unease. This hands-off policy ended with the rise of a new king, Cleomenes, who possessed a spirit of adventurism not typical of most Spartans. The start of Cleomenes’ kingship marked the beginning of a fresh policy of active Spartan participation and interference outside of the Peloponnesus, particularly in Athenian affairs. Cleomenes himself is a difficult person to portray in much depth, but Herodotus appears to go out of his way to give him the worst press possible:
• Cleomenes son of Anaxandridas now held the kingship; he had obtained it not by virtue of merit and valor … 16
• Because Cleomenes, it is said, was n
ot right in his mind and lived on the verge of madness … 17
Herodotus also states that Cleomenes did not rule for long, which is particularly interesting, as the historical record shows Cleomenes actively ruling as king for over thirty years, a remarkably long time for someone on the verge of madness since his coronation. The truth, which can be pieced together from other scattered segments of Herodotus’s account, shows that the true Cleomenes was clever, unprincipled, cunning, ruthless, and determined. During his reign he bribed the Delphi oracle, deposed his fellow co-ruler, outwitted the ephors during a trial for his life, wiped out a generation of Argive manhood in battle, and played kingmaker in Athens.18 It was a truly remarkable career, which, however, came to an inglorious end in the stocks, where he was either murdered or committed suicide.
For Cleomenes, controversy began before he was even born. After many years of marriage, his father, Anaxandridas of the Agiad royal house, had not had a child with his first wife.19 The ephors, concerned for the continuation of the royal line, ordered him to put her aside and take another. In a very un-Spartan move, Anaxandridas took a second wife but refused to divorce the first, so in violation of Spartan law he became a bigamist. This second wife soon gave birth to a son, Cleomenes. However, shortly after this, Anaxandridas’s first wife also had a son, Dorieus, followed by three more sons. When Anaxandridas died in 520 BC, there was a contested succession that Dorieus expected to win based on his performance in the agoge and in war. The tradition-bound Spartans, however, decided that Cleomenes’ claim, as firstborn, was the stronger, and he became king. For Dorieus’s part, he could not abide a Sparta that he did not rule. He and some followers left, and after several failed attempts to establish a new colony, he was killed in battle with the Phoenicians, who did not approve of him causing trouble in their backyard. Even with Dorieus out of the way, Cleomenes was not free to act as he desired, for the unique Spartan constitution called for two kings of equal power ruling simultaneously. One king, descended from the Agiad family line, was considered a bit senior to the other (descended from the Eurypontid family) but had no authority over him beyond that of his own force of personality. In 515 BC, Cleomenes’ co-king, Ariston, died and was replaced by his son Demaratus. For most of Demaratus’s reign, his claim to history consists primarily of his opposition to the policies of Cleomenes, until he was deposed almost on the eve of the Battle of Marathon. Demaratus ended his days in Persian service and accompanied Xerxes’ army for the second invasion of Greece in 480 BC.
When Cleomenes was free to act, he spent much of his time either interfering in Athenian affairs or working to contain the growing power of Argos. In no small measure, his interference in Athenian internal matters greatly influenced and accelerated the growth of democracy. More important from our perspective, his continuous military interventions and threats propelled Athens to develop a military capability that was second to none, not even that of Sparta. Moreover, even his policy toward Argos was to profoundly influence Athens’s ability to resist the coming Persian invasion. When Cleomenes finally tired of Argive insolence, he led a Spartan army that obliterated Argive military power, eliminating the growing threat of Argos allying itself with Persia. In effect, Cleomenes’ thirty years of frenetic activity made the Athenian victory at Marathon possible.
Chapter 9
SPARTA VS. ATHENS
In 527 BC, Pisistratus died peacefully in his bed. He had guided Athens through almost two decades of peace and unrivaled prosperity. His sons, Hippias and Hipparchos, assumed power without any apparent challenge, with Hippias taking the leading role. However, even though Hippias had many of his father’s personal qualities and talents, he found himself contending with a combination of forces that had never coalesced during his father’s reign but were now coming together to his detriment. Moreover, the powerful Alcmaeonidae clan were unceasing in their intrigues to return to Athens.1 For a time, Hippias did prove to be up to the challenge, but when the Alcmaeonidae found a new leader, Cleisthenes (son of Megacles), who was to make common cause with a temperamental and unpredictable Spartan king, Cleomenes, their combined might ended the reign of the Pisistratidae.
Hippias at first pursued the wise and generally peaceful policies of his father. But as Athens’s economic and military power grew, the surrounding cities became increasingly apprehensive. Thebes had already defeated Thessaly and was now looking to expand its power throughout Boeotia. Cities looking to avoid being dragged into Thebes’s orbit could turn only to distant Sparta or nearby Athens, a situation sure to arouse Theban jealousy. Moreover, Corinth and Megara were both reeling economically as expanding Athenian trade began to capture their traditional markets. When both cities entered the Spartan-dominated Peloponnesian League, their concerns became Sparta’s, causing a fraying of Athenian-Spartan relations. In all likelihood, keeping Sparta as a friend would have been difficult for Athens under any circumstances. Growing Athenian power was sure to spark first the interest and then the jealousy of Sparta. That Athens was simultaneously trying to maintain close relations with Sparta’s sworn enemy Argos further inflamed a deteriorating situation. Fortunately, for the time being, Sparta’s growing wariness of Athens did not translate into immediate military action. Conservative Sparta, as always, remained slow to act, but that hesitation was ending now that Cleomenes had become king of Sparta.
The first opportunity for Sparta to make trouble for Athens came in 519 BC. Plataea, a small city-state just north of Attica and on the southern edge of Boeotia, came under heavy pressure to submit to Thebes’s rule. In its search for a powerful ally, Plataea first turned to Sparta. For the Spartans, an invitation to expand their writ north of the Peloponnesus must have been tempting. Only the certainty of perpetual Theban enmity, which might become the basis of an effective anti-Spartan alliance with Athens and Thessaly, deterred it from making the deal. Acting with a cunning not typically expected of a Spartan, King Cleomenes advised the Plataeans to seek help from Athens, which being much closer to them could come to their support in a timelier manner.
The Plataeans took this advice, and the Athenians in turn offered them their protection. In a stroke, Cleomenes had placed his two most dangerous potential enemies (Athens and Thebes) at each other’s throats. Predictably, upon hearing news of the new alliance, Theban hoplites immediately set out to conquer Plataea. The Athenians, their policy of peace at all costs now ended, marched to meet them. Before hostilities began, Corinth tried to mediate a settlement. The Corinthian mediators decided that Thebes should not coerce any city into its budding Boeotian League. Thinking the matter resolved, the Athenian army began marching for home. However, the Corinthian decision did not sit well with the Thebans, and they opted to roll the die and try to overturn the verdict through force of arms. Despite being surprised by the sudden Theban attack, the Athenians won the battle decisively enough to extend their borders into Boeotia.2
Unfortunately, this is all that Herodotus tells us of this affair. However, military historians can draw information from these scanty details of the battle that is critical to our full understanding of the Battle of Marathon. First and foremost, this attack wedded the Plataeans to Athens and accounts for the fact that they sent one thousand hoplites to fight beside the Athenians at Marathon. Just as interesting is that this is the first proof that Athenian hoplites had lost little, if any, of their military effectiveness in the years since the war with Megara and the long peace of Pisistratus. The Theban army was not a force that was easy to dismiss or vanquish. It must be noted that just the year before this battle, Thebes had decisively defeated Thessaly, previously the strongest power in Greece, at the Battle of Ceressus.3 That the Athenians could administer such a thorough beating after being caught by surprise speaks highly of their discipline and martial prowess. Moreover, this battle took place twenty-nine years (or less) before Marathon. So a twenty-year-old hoplite fighting in his first battle would not yet have been fifty at the time of Marathon. As a Greek citizen was liable for military serv
ice until age sixty, one can assume that some veterans of this battle were still in the fighting line at Marathon. At the very least, most of the Greek generals at Marathon, including the polemarch (the overall commander), were almost certainly present. Commanders with thirty years’ experience in war surely must have provided a steadying influence at Marathon. This is also the first, but far from the last, indication we have that the Athenian army was not exactly the force of unprofessional farmers of legend.
For the moment, Athens had come out ahead, and Cleomenes’ first attempt to cause trouble by helping to tie it to Plataea had backfired. But in the long term, Hippias had made a fatal mistake. For Thebes, which had supported his father in his bid to return to power, was now a mortal enemy. Within months of being forced to withdraw their claims on Plataea, the Thebans opened their territory for the Alcmaeonidae to use as a base of operations. From here, the new head of the clan, the clever and determined Cleisthenes, gathered his forces and bided his time.
