As you will see, all of these dates are very approximate.
But what seems to have happened is that the Spartans got the idea of conquering
that large territory to their west beyond Mount Taygetos called Nicene.
Under their legendary king Theopompus, in a line of Tyrtaeus says they took wide
floor from the scenic. Whether this means that they conquered
the whole thing or at least much of it we will never know for sure, but the war
took obviously a very long time. One of the consequences was, again,
something that we have talked about a little bit before, which is some kind of
social unrest at home. It was at this time in the late eighth
century, around 710 or so. That the Spartans sent out their first
and only colony, Taras. And as others were doing at the time,
they sent them west, to the instep of the boot of Southern Italy.
Where in ancient times and Roman times it came to be called Torentum, and in modern
Italy, it's Tarranto. But, the fact of sending out a colony as
we have seen, is evidence of some kind of upheaval or crisis at home.
And the Spartans were clearly using colonization as so many other communities
did as a kind of safety valve to send off a group of folks who were making trouble
of some kind or perhaps just no longer felt welcome there.
The conquest of Messenia may have give the Spartans visions of grandeur, because
the next thing that we hear about, next major event is around 670 and that is the
defeat of a Spartan force by an army from Argos, the Argives, up the north of
Sparta as we've seen. It may have been the Spartan defeat there
that gave the conquered Messenians some idea that they could claim their liberty,
because it seems that its at this time that there occurred the second Messenian
war. The Spartans wanted to retake this
massive territory. This too, was a war of very long duration
and it is the war that has come to be identified with the lyric poet, Tyrtaeus,
many of whose verses have to do with maintaining courage in the face of
struggle, keeping your place in battle. Let each man bear his shield straight
toward the forefighters regarding his own life as hateful and holding the dark
spirits of death as dear as the radiance of the sun.
Those who dare to remain in place at one another's side then advance together
toward hand to hand combat in the forefighters.
They die in lesser numbers, says Tyrtaeus, and they save the army behind
them. But when they flee in terror, all
soldierly excellence is lost. Historians have seen, in Tyrtaeus'
verses, some evidence. For the fact that Spartan conquest of
Messenia may have come close to cracking at times.
Torteas is writing to encourage his fellow Spartans, to keep up the fight, to
hold their place in the hoplite phalanx, not to give up.
He writes elsewhere about the shame that is felt.
By someone that has a wound in the back that is from running away.
We'll never know whether these verses were in fact composed at exactly this
time, much less what effect they might have had on Tyrtaeus's fellow Spartans,
but what we do know is that the Spartans did eventually win.
They wound up conquering and taking over this area to the west.
This is a massive agricultural area. In fact, the territory of the historic
Spartan polis is some 3,000 square miles. It's really big.
It's three times as big as Atigon, that is the territory of the Athenian polis.
But what the Spartans also acquired along with this land, was a subject population.
The native Messenians were brought under Spartan domination and became state-owned
serfs. We'll talk, they're called Helots.
We'll talk much more about them as we go along.
The Spartans had to control the Helots who outnumbered them and one of the
things that we can see is Sparta responding to.
This threat by developing an extremely rigid militarily based system of life,
society, education, the whole thing. Tyrtaeus' exhortations to military or
martial valor were Seemed, as I say, to have succeeded, if we can put it that
way. But it's at this time, almost certainly,
that Sparta underwent the change, that put it apart from the other archaic
Polis. That turned it into the Sparta of the
Spartan legend that gives us the adjectives, in English, of Spartan,
meaning spare or bare, austere. Or laconic, this area is called Laconia,
and laconic is short speech, because the Spartans came to be famous for speaking
in clipped, little sentences. Just the facts, just what you needed to
do. Standing over this entire development is
the shadowy figure of another great law giver Lycurgus.
His name can be etmologized as something like wolf-worker.