Essay on Main Features of Spartan Culture Life

📌Category: Ancient Greece, Culture, History
📌Words: 645
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 14 June 2021

Ancient Greece was full of Polis, or city-states, because of the geographical outlines of Greece. The two main ones were Sparta and Athens. Every Polis had its government, rulers, practices, and laws, but some city-states didn’t accept each other. In my opinion, Sparta is the most successful city-state in all of Greece.   

In Sparta, the form of government used was Oligarchy. The Spartans decided on Oligarchy because they wanted to make sure the military was their top priority. The Athenians accepted democracy as their form of government because it granted their citizens more freedom, which could lead to a rebellion. Oligarchy was the best way to govern a society because it gives power to the people who are often experts on the subject and can make a well-educated decision. Rather than a democracy, where everyone has a say in judgments. The military power of Sparta was powerful, they were known for how their men became great fighters for war. According to history.com, The Spartans “constant military drilling and discipline made them skilled at the ancient Greek style of fighting in a phalanx formation".  This explains how the Spartans had unique yet powerful techniques that they used to make sure they won in wars.   

During childhood, the Spartans would separate boys from their families and constantly train them for war. As claimed by Khanacademy.com, Around age seven, "Spartan boys were separated from their families and sent to live in military barracks, where they underwent serious military training, leading up to active service when they were barely out of their teens". This explains how the Spartans believed that the military was an important factor in a man's life and that it embraced their success. While the men were out in war, the women managed the property and cleaned around the house. Women in Sparta had more freedom than women in Athens. The women got to own property and wealth and got trained to be almost as strong as the men. According to ukessays.com, Spartan women "could inherit property while Athenian women had no such rights.". For the low-class citizens, they were known as helots. The helots were slaves and often farmers that kept to themselves, as they were not allowed to talk to the higher classmen like the aristocrats. The masters of the Helots could not free nor sell them. According to Britannica.com, due to their being more helots than upper class Spartans, ‘the Spartans were always preoccupied with the fear of a helot revolt'. This describes how the Spartans were anxious in case the helots would decide to charge back at the Spartans for controlling them.   

Besides just military, the Spartans had cultural achievements also. They gave women more respect and freedom, a more organized civilization, and inventions for years to come. Their most important military achievement was the use of a specialized confidential communication system called the encryption tool. It allowed Spartan generals to speak to each other for war tactics. As stated on boxblogs.com, they explain how when reading the message, ‘The recipient had to have an identically-sized scytale to wrap the leather or parchment around. Without it, the message was a vertical jumble of letters completely lacking in meaning.’ The Spartans succeeded with fighting, but sometimes they needed assistance, for example, the Battle of Thermopylae. The Battle of Thermopylae lasted three days and the battle rivals were the Persians and the Spartans, who happened to team up with Athens. In the end, the Greeks won that battle between Persia and that is just one of the many battles the Spartans were involved in. When in battle, you would need great armor. Their armor was usually made from bronze material, weighing nearly 70lbs. The bronze material was expensive so besides bronze, linothorax, or linen fabric, was a more affordable material.  

As you can see, Sparta was very advanced in military, and in culture. The Spartans are better in the military, had better education for girls, and women had more freedom than in Athens. Although Sparta is not as wonderful as the world today where women and men both have the same amount of respect, it is still better than the other polis, Athens. 

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