This is a survey of ancient Greek history from the Bronze Age to the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. Along with studying the most important events and personalities, we will consider broader issues such as political and cultural values and methods of historical interpretation.
Sparta 1- Conquest
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来自 Wesleyan University 的课程
古希腊
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从本节课中
Two City-States: Sparta and Athens
In Module 3 we will analyze some major political developments in the Archaic Age, which were largely responses to the huge societal changes discussed in Module 2. We will focus on Sparta and Athens. Sparta evolved into a unique hoplite-polis, famed for strict discipline and military prowess. Athens followed a very different path, showing the first traces of democracy. We will also observe how tyrannies arose in many poleis, often, paradoxically, to the community’s benefit. In fact we can now consider the historical effect of individual leaders, like the renowned lawgivers, Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens. Both men came to be revered as the “founding fathers” of their poleis. Both men also belonged to the legendary Seven Sages, who were famed for their wisdom. The module concludes with a consideration of Peisistratos, who ruled Athens as a tyrant in the mid-6th-century BCE and led the Athenians to new levels of power and prosperity.
与讲师见面
Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, PhDProfessor
Classical Studies
Leaving behind now, the little village of Oscara in Boeotia and Hesiod, we're going
to move to southern Greece, to the Peloponnese.
And we're going to talk about the development of one of the most powerful,
one of the most important Polis in Greek history and that is Sparta.
Before we do so, we should be very, very careful, however, one modern historian
has said, that if evidence about archaic communities has to be handled with
caution, the evidence about Sparta should come with a warning label.
It's because Sparta was unique. There was really no other place like it.
It resembled other Poleis in some ways, but its way of defining itself was
utterly different. Moreover, a lot of things that had been
believed about Sparta are no longer believed.
For example, there was this idea that Sparta was isolated, utterly isolated
from the other Greek communities of its time, at least in terms of economics.
But archaeologists have found Spartan-ware in other locations and
pottery made elsewhere in Sparta. So while it's certainly the case that
Sparta didn't have the extensive trade networks of Athens, say, or Corinth, it
was not totally separated from what was happening elsewhere in the Greek world.
Likewise, as we'll see, the Spartans prided themself, prided themselves on an
ideology of likeness of a sort of radical equality.
But, closer, a study of the evidence has shown that this equality may have been
honored more in the breech than in the observance.
That is to say, there were certainly distinctions of class and status even
among the Spartans themselves. Even a poet like Tyrtaeus, who had been
identified as the spokesman for a kind of Spartan value, which we'll see in a
moment. Scholars have come to think, some
scholars think at least, that Tyrtaeus like Homer, is a name that was applied to
a set of poems that were composed by a number of different poets.
So with all of that as a preliminary caution, let's move on to where Sparta
is. It's in the area called the Peloponnese
in southern Greece. Here, you can see the Isthmus of Corinth
and the Peloponnese. This is the area of Argos.
And Sparta is here. It was originally four straggling
unwalled villages. Later on, the Spartans would boast, our
men are our laws. But, these villages coalesced, and that
process that we described as synoecism. And, they took advantage of their natural
location, which is on the Eurotas River, a swift flowing cold stream that begins
in the mountains of Arcadia and flows down to the sea.
Sparta is on the Eurotas and it is located also between two mountain ranges.
To the west, the towering Mount Taygetos, and to the east, the lower but still
quite impressive, Mount Parnon. In other words, Sparta had access to
plentiful water. It was in a beautifully defensible
location and in fact controlled access to this entire region in the Southern
Peloponnese. You can get some sense of what the
Spartan location is like, this view of the modern city, yhe little bit of the
ancient left here in the foreground. In Homer, Sparta is the home of Menelaus
and Helen. Yeah, that Helen, Helen of Troy.
In a wonderful modern short story, John Barth wrote called the Menalaiad,
Menaleus, who's the narrator says rather wistfully, why don't they ever call her
Helen of Sparta? A reasonable question one might say, but
in the war against the Trojans, the Spartans contribute a commander
Menelaides of course, and a contingent which is large, but is by no means the
largest. They are part of a kind of generalized
community of Achaeans fighting against the Trojans, and it seems that
historically as well, Sparta in the Dark Ages and in the early Archaic Age was
really no different from the other Greek communities of the time.
One of the things about Sparta is that its remains are really fairly meager.
Even in the fifth century, Thucydides, the historian said, that if people in the
future found the ruins of Athens, they would think that the Athenians were much
more powerful, than they had actually been.
Whereas, if they went to Sparta, they would think that the Spartans were much
less powerful than they had actually been, because the Spartan buildings were
so modest. This continues to be true.
If you think about the difference between, say the Parthenon on the
Acropolis and in this rather battered remains of a theater in Sparta, you can
make it some idea of this disjunction. Where things start to change is in the
eighth century with the so called First Messenian War.
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.
Whether he actually existed, we'll never know, but it, what is certainly the case
is that the reforms that turned Sparta into the Sparta of history and legend,
couldn't have been the work of just one man.
Nonetheless, Lycurgus became the founding hero of the spartan system.
Its his name that is attached to the reforms that turned spartan to what it
was, and it is to those reforms, and their creation of the kind of military
utopia that we will turn our attention as well.
