Was Classical Sparta a military society?
By Stephen Hodkinson
Sparta and War, edited by Stephen Hodkinson and Anton Powell (Classical Press of Wales, 2006)
Introduction: The title of this essay poses one of the fundamental questions that underlay the choice of ‘Sparta and War’ as the theme of this volume. In modern scholarship the most common image of Sparta in the fifth and fourth centuries BC has been that of a society dominated by military elements: more like an army camp than the community of citizens to be found in other Greek poleis. Take, for example, the comments in several standard works on Sparta by British ancient historians. According to W.G. Forrest,
it was Sparta’s misfortune that [her institutions] were formalised at a time when military effiency was the only concern of a state education; it was Sparta’s fault … that they were then maintained, more or less unchanged, when otherGreeks were discovering that there were other virtues besides the military.
For Geoffrey de Ste Croix, Sparta was ‘a community of professional soldiers’. For Moses Finley, she was ‘the model military state’. Paul Cartledge argues that Sparta’s ‘new social system, in operation by the time of Herodotus, was characterized by an overriding emphasis on military preparedness and a reduction of non-military wants to the barest minimum’. Similarly, J.C. Hooker claims that ‘the discipline for which Spartan soldiers were famous … was inculcated in the camp-like conditions of their city’; and he subsequently refers to ‘the relentless pursuit by the Spartans of the single aim of military efficiency’. Similar views have been common in works by a large number ob scholars in other western European countries and the USA, especially during the second half of the twentieth century.
