Sparta Flash Card #1: - The Cohen Curricula



Sparta Flash Card #10: Social Structure: ‘Inferiors’ | |

|Historian |Evidence |Relationship to other |

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|Kevin Hendrix- Glossary of Terms |hypomeiones - "inferiors"; a shadowy class thought to be Spartiates who had lost full | |

| |citizenship status due to poverty or other disenfranchising circumstances | |

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|These were the Greeks" by H.D.Amos |When a Spartan was asked why it was that Lykourgos had made so few laws he replied, 'Men of | |

|and A.G.P. Lang, |few words require few laws.' Another, in reply to someone who was praising the people of | |

| |Elis for their fairness in the management of the Olympic Games, answered, 'Yes, they deserve| |

|sparti_h_1.htm |a lot of praise if they can do justice on day in five years.' The retort of a Spartan to an | |

| |Athenian who had said that the Spartans had no learning was, 'You are right. We alone all | |

| |the Hellenes none of your bad qualities.' | |

| |It can be seen from such remarks that the Spartans were both intensely patriotic and sure of| |

| |their superiority over others.They had chosen to remain a select minority dominating a | |

| |majority of inferiors in the form of the helots and the perioikoi. The helots did all the | |

| |everyday work, so that the Spartans could be free to become exceptional soldiers. Curiously,| |

| |in order to preserve their privilege position, they adopted a system of living in which | |

| |their individual freedom was very slight. Nevertheless, there were many people from other | |

| |parts of Greece who greatly admired Sparta. Among these was the philosopher Plato, and when | |

| |in the course of his philosophical inquiries he constructed an imaginary 'ideal state', it | |

| |had many points of similarity to Sparta.Most of the admirers were people whose political | |

| |views were in favor of aristocracy. Living very often in city-states which had reached | |

| |democracy by a series of upheavals, they looked enviously at Sparta with it's order and | |

| |discipline. Sparta had avoided the total democracy of many other states by compromising at | |

| |an early stage and adopting a constitution which had some of the the features of monarchy , | |

| |some of aristocracy (the gerousia), some of democracy(the ephoroi and the assembly). | |

|E. David, "The Conspiracy of |Cinadon was a young and valiant man. He was a police officer who carried out important | |

|Cinadon". Athenæeum 57 (1979), p. |missions for the Ephors; he had a Scytale in his possession which was used to direct | |

|239–259 |Hippeis, members of the elite Spartan guard. He was literate and had thus received some | |

| |education. Because of his job he should have been a valued and respected person likely | |

|^ Reginald Walter Macan, Herodotus: |(according to Xenophon and Aristotle[2]) to be a member of the peers (Homoioi). In fact, he | |

|The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books |was a member of the "Inferiors" (hypomeiones), those Spartans who had lost their civil | |

|with Introduction and Commentary |rights through cowardice[3] , or poverty (for example, inability to pay their dues to the | |

|explains the term 'tresantes' which |syssitia). He aspired, as he rebuts in the course of his trial, "to be a Lacedaemonian | |

|is associated with this misdeed. |inferior to no one" | |

|online accessed 13 June 2006. | | |

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| |Social and Economic problems | |

|Anonymous |Sometime after the Peloponnesian War or early in the 4th C BC a law, the Epitadeus , was | |

|asmalltowninlaconia. |passed which altered the rules of the entitlement to land of the homoioi. Previously under | |

|com |Lycurgan law the kleros inherited by the Spartiate was inalienable, and this land along with| |

| |the helots who worked it was the basis of the economic support of the homoioi. This new law | |

| |permitted a Spartan to deed his land to any other Spartan during his lifetime and bequeath | |

| |it in his will freely. It was to be done in the guise of a gift for a gift of equal value, | |

| |but the gift could be money. The result was that over some time a minority began to possess | |

| |the majority of the land while another minority though growing more numerous were without | |

| |land (hypomeiones). Thus the number of Equals was reduced still further. This law and its | |

| |operation could only have been brought about if the Lycurgan prohibition against coined | |

| |money and its ownership by individuals was relaxed. | |

| |By the end of the war with Athens in 404 BC  much Persian gold had been brought into Sparta | |

| |as subsidies, and after victory Lysander brought 470 talents on his return to Sparta. | |

| |Gyllipus who had been charged with the delivery of these subsidies was subsequently found to| |

| |have had his fingers in the till and was tried and exiled. Population decline and Army | |

| |organization. | |

| |The defeat at Leuctra can be easily explained in purely military terms as early as 390 new | |

| |tactics had caught the Spartans wrong footed, at Laecheum by Iphicrates at Tegyra by | |

| |Pelopidas in 375 and in 371 Epaminondas adopted even newer tactics. But one defeat hover | |

| |shattering cannot explain why Sparta was internally too weak to survive it as a great power.| |

| |By Leuctra the Spartan army consisted of 'Equals', Perioicoi and a number of hypomeiones, | |

| |the numbers of which are debatable. The neodamodeis served in separate units of whom there | |

| |were a large number. The Spartans during their period of hegemony also deployed numbers of | |

| |mercenary hoplites and peltasts. As seen the number of 'Equals' was declining thus the | |

| |number of 'Unequals' by the same token would be rising. Although they did not belong to a | |

| |kleros and could not pay their mess bills because they were landless they would still have | |

| |been part of the Spartan army organization and training although without the full citizens | |

| |rights. There were also a certain number of 'Spartans' who may have been adopted by 'Equals'| |

| |and sponsored  by them. As well as these there were those of military age, either sons with | |

| |living fathers or younger brothers who could serve as a pool of reserves. | |

| |Lets look at the size of the army in the 5th and 4th centuries from the facts as given by | |

| |the classical writers. At Plataea in 479 5,000 Spartiates and 5,000 Perioicoi served | |

| |separately, Herodotus does not mention how they were organized except that there was a | |

| |lochos of Pitane of unknown size included among the Spartans. After 371 the army is | |

| |described as consisting of 12 units called lochoi by Xenophon. In between both Xenophon and | |

| |Thucydides describe an army of 6 units but they differ on the name of the unit, mora or | |

| |lochos. | |

| |In 425 the Spartans put 420 men onto Sphacteria drawn by lots from all of the lochoi. Those | |

| |who surrendered were 120 Spartiates and 170 non-Spartiates (Perioicoi and Hypomeiones). In | |

| |418 at Mantinea Thucydides numbers the army at 3,072 on a 32 year call up  consisting of 6 | |

| |lochoi each of 4 pentekostys of 4 enomotiai,  not enough to make sense of the battle. | |

| |Xenophon mentions the mora first in 403 and in 390 and gives its strength at 600. At Nemea | |

| |the strength of the army was 6,000 in 5 units. In his Lakedaimonian Politeia Xenophon | |

| |describes an army of 6 mora consisting of 4 lochoi each of 2 pentekostys of 2 enomotiai. At | |

| |Leuctra 4 mora were present on a 35 year call up and according to Xenophon only 700 were | |

| |Spartiates. Now 700 Spartans could not make up 4 mora, so who were the rest? I believe the | |

| |Perioicoi were not expected to serve outside the Peloponnese except as volunteers. Therefore| |

| |the remainder must have been hypomeiones with  Perioeci volunteers and that these served as | |

| |part and parcel of the Spartan field army. The Perioicoi must have always been brigaded | |

| |separately as attested by Xenophon in several passages where the Spartan field army had | |

| |advanced beyond the frontier only to have to wait for the perioicic contingent. Pausanius in| |

| |395 specifically waited at Tegea for them and 8 years later Agesilaus sent some of the | |

| |hippeis to hurry them up. Another objection to the supposition that both Spartans and | |

| |Perioicoi were brigaded together is that they were amateurs and unaccustomed to the day to | |

| |day training in tactics and drill. Thus Xenophon in his Politeia is describing a purely | |

| |Spartan Mora undiluted by Perioicoi and Thucydides has in his description of the Spartan | |

| |forces at Mantinea missed out one whole level of organization, the Mora and has given the | |

| |numbers of the Spartans alone ignoring the Perioicoi. | |

| |When scholars talk of Spartan population decline they are not talking about the population | |

| |of Lacedaemon which would have retained a healthy growth in the 5th and 4th centuries, the | |

| |perioicic communities were as healthy as any other but of the decline in the number of | |

| |Spartiates or 'Equals'. The losses from the earthquake of 465 were soon restored, the losses| |

| |of 400 at Leuctra could be replaced. Economic factors and the loss of the Messenian kleros | |

| |combined with a declining birth rate among Spartans caused by the laws of inheritance, a | |

| |general unwillingness to produce children and the inadequacy of the public kleros were | |

| |contributing factors in this decline. The loss of perioicic territories in Laconia and | |

| |allies in the Peloponnese after Leuctra further reduced the pool from which Sparta could | |

| |build an adequate force with which to play in the first division nor had she enough money to| |

| |make up the difference by hiring enough mercenaries. | |

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|BOS NOTES |HOMOIOI, PERIOEKI, INFERIORS AND HELOTS | |

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| |( Peers/equals/Spartiates that were Dorians and held political power. They were the | |

| |privileges social class and were subject to state discipline. They owned kleros, were | |

| |members of a sysittion/mess club and were full time soldiers. Lived by a code of honour and | |

| |courage. | |

| |( Perioeki lived in about 100 communities and worked as sailors, fisherman, traders and | |

| |craftsmen. They were self- governing and not allowed to marry homoioi. Adults served as | |

| |hoplites alongside Spartiates to gain numbers however they were not involved in training. | |

| |They were chiefly engaged in mining, manufacture (weapons) and commerce. | |

| |( Inferiors were neither slaves nor citizens. They were either illegitimate children of | |

| |Spartiate fathers and helot mothers, helots who had been freed for a courageous act, adopted| |

| |playmates, or Spartans who had lost their citizenship (cowards). They were unable to vote, | |

| |wore special clothes and exercised alone to avoid people. Partheniai and Tresantes | |

| |( They were an enslaved population of the lowest class. They were owned by the state, unable| |

| |to marry, taxed by the kings and had no legal or political rights. They were a constant | |

| |threat to Spartan security as could be rebellious and often acted as servants during times | |

| |of war. As there were such large numbers of helots they were a constant threat to Sparta | |

| |because of fear of revolts and were therefore often treated harshly. | |

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|BOS NOTES |Inferiors | |

| |They were Spartiates who had lost their status | |

| |They were neither slaves nor citizens | |

| |Some slipped into poverty and could no longer contribute to the communal mess | |

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| |Adokimos – disgraced, person of no repute | |

| |Tresentes/tremblers – cowards | |

| |Atimia – loss of honour | |

| |Hypomeiones – inferiors | |

| |Partheniai – illegitimate offspring of helot mothers and Spartiate fathers or Spartiate | |

| |mothers and helot fathers | |

| |Neodamodes – Helots, who for some courageous act or service to the state were given freedom | |

| |Mothoces – sons of helots often ‘adopted’ as playmates of Spartan boys – shared training | |

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| |No one knows for sure who they were | |

| |Wore special clothing and were unshaven | |

| |Exercised alone, avoided by everyone | |

| |Could not vote or attend the assembly | |

| |A special decree was needed to strip a Spartan to inferior status | |

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| |Sources on the Inferiors | |

| |We have only one reference to the inferiors, in Xenophon’s Hellenica | |

| |Plutarch describes the penalties for cowards in his Life of Lycurgus | |

|BOS NOTES |Inferiors | |

| |The inferiors were those who had failed in the Agoge of could not keep up their contribution| |

| |to the mess clubs | |

| |Special clothes worn, were unshaven | |

| |Exercised alone – were avoided by everyone | |

| |Could not vote or attend an assembly | |

| |Partheniai – Illegitimate offspring of helot mother and Spartiate father | |

| |Neodamodes – Helots, who for some courageous act, were given freedom | |

| |Tresantes – Cowards who lost citizenship | |

| |Mothoces – Sons of helots adopted as playmates of Spartan boys | |

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