It is hard to imagine what Sparta would have looked like in Leonidas'
lifetime. The city was destroyed by earthquakes more than once,
and the site completely abandoned for more than a thousand years. Today what
few ruins remain date predominantly from the Hellenistic or Roman
periods, and an unattractive modern town has been dumped upon the
ancient site.
So naturally our images of the ancient city-state have been shaped by
what we have been told about Spartan society. Spartan society was
characterized by rigid discipline, a disdain for luxury, and endurance
of hardship. We are told that the boys suffered a childhood of
deprivation in which they had to steal to get enough to eat and were
allowed only one garment per year, and allegedly the women were prohibited from
wearing jewelry or taking pride in their weaving. Indeed, gold and
silver were banned entirely, and so could not adorn even the temples of
the Gods. The houses, we are told, were not painted (as elsewhere in the ancient world), and the cuisine was infamous for its lack
of sophistication and variety.
You would think that such a society must have developed in an austere,
plain, indeed barren, landscape. After all, a society
deprived of food and clothes, and lacking all forms of decoration and
fine cuisine, sounds like a desperately poor society. It is easy to
assume that Spartan society evolved to make a virtue out of necessity.
But the valley of the Eurotas River, the heart of
ancient Lacedaemon, is anything but barren! It is green and fertile and
stunningly beautiful – like riches cupped in the hands of the gods.
From the blooming oleander to the wild iris, the valley is a garden.
Orange orchards stretch as far as the eye can see, brazenly advertising
the abundance of soil and sun and water. Most spectacular of all, the
Eurotas valley is one of those few places on earth that offers the
sensually stimulating sight of palm trees waving against a backdrop of
snow-capped mountains.
Nor is this richness a product of modern fertilizers and irrigation.
The ancient historians also speak of Lacedaemon's agricultural
wealth. Sparta's hinterland in fact produced in abundance
every staple of ancient Greek agriculture from grain to grapes, and
from citrus fruits to olives. Furthermore, ancient Lacedaemon was
famous for its forests and pastureland. The former provided exportable
timber and abundant game to enrich the Spartan diet, while the latter
nourished sheep, cattle, goats and fine horses. Finally, Lacedaemon had
exploitable mineral resources such as lead, tin, copper, and marble.
Sparta took full advantage of these natural blessings. The fact that
the ruling class, Sparta's full citizens or Spartiates, were prohibited
from engaging in any profession other than arms has led many modern
observers to imagine Lacedaemon was devoid of industry, trade and
commerce. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sparta's tiny elite
of professional soldiers had the luxury to devote themselves to
perfecting their skill at arms precisely because Lacedaemon had a large
population of helots and perioikoi.
Both helots and perioikoi are believed to be the descendants of the
peoples who inhabited Lacedaemon before the Doric invasion.
While the helots had a status similar to medieval serfs and enjoyed
only limited freedom, the perioikoi were fully free men. The
perioikoi had abdicated control of foreign policy to Sparta, but they
otherwise governed their own affairs by their own customs and laws.
They were not bound by the Spartan constitution attributed to Lycurgus
regarding dress, diet, profession, or the possession of gold and silver.
Among the perioikoi there were artisans and architects, merchants and
bankers, tradesmen and shipbuilders – just as in any other
Greek city. The perioikoi produced everything from mundane
domestic articles to exportable-quality works of art in bronze, ivory,
and stone, and they traded from a variety of ports with direct access
to the Aegean and Ionian Seas.
In short, Leonidas' Sparta was not poor, but the center of the powerful
city-state of Lacedaemon. It was the administrative hub of a large
territory with an abundance of natural resources and agricultural
produce, good lines of communication, and an active commercial and
trading community. It was also the leading nation of the Peloponnesian
League, a powerful defensive alliance of independent city-states
– the NATO of its age. Last but not least, it was the site of
annual vocal and dance festivals that attracted mass tourism from
around the ancient world. It was most decidedly not a provincial
backwater lost in a barren and inaccessible landscape.
Modern writers, however, have often been misled by the disparaging
remarks made by Athenian observers about their hated rival. Nicolas
Nicastro in his The Isle of Stone (p.67), for example, describes the
capital of the dominant superpower of Greece as no more than "an
agglomeration of sleepy villages." Jon Edward Martin, an
author whose research is on the whole very sound, writes in The
Headlong God of War (p. 83) that "large buildings were few" and depicts
the city as having only "a small collection of civic buildings
clustered to the southeast of the acropolis." Steven Pressfield, in his
best-selling novel Gates of Fire, describes Sparta as "… a pile of stones," and goes
on to claim: "It contains no temples or treasures of note, no
gold…."
Yet Pausanias, whose travel guide to Greece was written in the 2nd
century AD – long after Sparta's decline from prominence
under Leonidas – needed 26 sections and more than
60 pages to describe only the noteworthy architectural sites of the
ancient city! Far from being a backwater, Sparta was a large,
prosperous, and important city in the lifetime of Leonidas. But, as the
Athenian commentary suggests, it was also very different from other
Greek cities.
Visitors to Leonidas' Sparta would have come expecting the capital of
this rich and powerful state to be like other power centers of the
ancient world. Whether tourists coming for the dancing and
singing at the annual festivals, or diplomats coming to plead for
Spartan troops to support some distant conflict, foreign visitors would
have compared Sparta to Susa, Sardis, and Memphis no less than Athens
or Corinth. These foreigners came expecting a city enclosed
by walls whose strength matched Sparta's military reputation.
They expected to pass through imposing gates into a city crammed with
brightly painted, colorfully tiled, and elaborately decorated public
buildings. They expected to find temples laden with gold
crushed between pompous civic buildings. They expected to
find a confusing maze of residential streets crammed with humanity
humming incessantly with activity. They expected –
as in other crowded cities – these back streets to be clothed
in the perpetual shadows cast by the tall walls which shielded the
private spheres – and women – of inhabitants from all this
frenetic public commotion. They expected a commercial
capital as well as an administrative one. It is hardly surprising that
they were disappointed with what they found at Sparta.
Sparta was different from other Greek cities, but it was not
necessarily without its unique charms. For example, we know
that in ancient Greece most statues and temples were painted vivid
colors and the statues of the gods were dressed in robes, ivory, gold
and jewels. Spartan temples were not. But isn't it precisely
that simplicity of white stone structures of flawless proportions and
lifelike naked marble statues that we find striking in ancient Greek
architecture and sculpture today? Would we admire the
Parthenon in Athens as much if it were dressed – as it was in
the age of Leonidas – in vivid paint? Would we prefer to see
Venus de Milo painted in flesh tones with red lips and blond hair?
Sparta's ethos and aesthetics were different from other Greek cities,
but that doesn't mean it lacked beauty or refinement. Yes,
Leonidas' Sparta had no walls, but this meant it could spread out
graciously upon its valley, as all major European cities did after their
confining walls were torn down. No one today would call
Paris, Vienna, or Rome "a collection of villages." Yet all did
in fact begin as collections of villages, which later grew into a
single metropolis after the need for fortifications disappeared and
economic growth fueled urbanization. Why should we assume, just
because Sparta was made up of five distinct villages in pre-archaic
times, that it was not – by the age of Leonidas when it was at
the height of its glory – a cohesive, dynamic city?
Spartan homes may indeed have lacked elaborate interior paintings, but
then maybe such decoration was not necessary because, unlike their
Athenian counterparts, they were not compressed into the back alleys of
an overcrowded city and surrounded by high, protective walls. Spartans
could afford to build their houses on generous plans. They
could incorporate interior courtyards planted with fruit trees and
herbs. They could surround themselves with gardens and
orchards. Spartans could have decorated their homes – as they
did themselves – with things of nature: cut flowers, bowls of
fruit, running water. Even without gold or silver, their
homes could still sparkle with sunlight glinting off the water of
courtyard fountains.
Ironically, Leonidas' uniquely Spartan city might well have been more
pleasing to modern taste than Athens or Memphis of the 5th century
BC.
Picture a city spread across the broad floor of the Eurotas valley
before the backdrop of snow-capped Taygetos. Picture a city
of wide, tree-lined avenues along which the whitewashed civic
buildings, marble monuments, and graceful temples stretched like pearls
upon a green thread. Imagine a city of sun-soaked theaters
and imposing but airy stoas. Imagine a city where the
barracks and civic buildings, with their long porches and batteries of
Doric columns, face green, open spaces set aside for running and
horse racing. Imagine a city decorated with fountains and
flowering trees, which gradually spreads out into suburbs where
large villas set in blooming gardens sprawl out toward the mountains on
either side of the Eurotas. That image will bring you closer
to the Sparta of Leonidas.
Note: This article was modified from one published
by the author in "Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and Greek
History", Vol 5, II, January 2010.