The rivalry between ancient Athens and Sparta is infamous—but they may have been more 'frenemies'
Despite being rivals, many Athenians admired the government, clothing, and austerity of the Spartans. Falling prey to “Laconophilia,” some began to adopt the mannerisms and even dress like their adversary.
Something paradoxical happened at the height of hostilities between Athens and Sparta, which culminated in the devastating Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). Some Athenians began to idolize rather than hate their mortal enemies. They cultivated the Spartan look, wearing their hair long and dressing soberly. They shifted to a more Spartan lifestyle and followed Spartan dietary preferences, avoiding the consumption of exotic foods and wine. Wealthy Athenians seemed to obsess over all things Spartan, in a phenomenon known as Laconophilia (Laconia is the historical region in the southeastern Peloponnese of which Sparta was the capital).
The Spartans’ reputation grew during the Greco-Persian wars (490-479 B.C.), when they took command of the Hellenic league and led the resistance against the Persian invaders. The mortal sacrifice made by Spartan king Leonidas and his 300 elite troops at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. was described in vivid and dramatic detail in the Histories of Herodotus. The account of those three days that the Spartans fought tooth and nail in a vain attempt to hold back the Persians would forever associate the Spartans with the Greek struggle for freedom.
The contemporary poet Simonides of Ceos eulogized the Spartans who died at Thermopylae: “Go tell to Sparta, thou who passest by, that here, obedient to her laws, we lie.” In the fourth century B.C., the historian Ephorus went even further and framed the Spartans’ bloody defeat as an act of triumph. Although Ephorus’s works haven’t survived, first-century B.C. historian Diodorus Siculus quoted him, writing that Leonidas and his Spartans “were more responsible for the common freedom of the Greeks than those who were victorious at a later time in the battles against Xerxes; for when the deeds of these men were called to mind, the Persians were dismayed whereas the Greeks were incited to perform similar courageous exploits.” In the fourth century B.C., many Athenian orators were also pushing the idea that the rout at Thermopylae was not actually a defeat, since the Spartans never surrendered.
(Betrayal crushed Sparta's last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae.)
A warrior society
In addition to being renowned for its warrior mentality, Sparta was unique in its social and political organization. The foundation was a minority class of warrior citizens who were freed from daily work thanks to state-owned serfs—the helots—who formed the majority of Sparta’s population. This societal model appealed to wealthy Athenians who criticized the democratic structures of their own city and dreamed of establishing an oligarchic system similar to the Spartan one.
The Athenian historian Xenophon praised Lycurgus, the mythical figure credited with introducing the Spartan constitution, because he had forbidden Spartan citizens to engage in artisanal activities and trade. This meant that they could devote themselves to occupations considered worthy, those that made the city freer: civic affairs, especially politics and war, but also hunting and sport. According to Xenophon, Lycurgus “compelled all men at Sparta to practice all the virtues in public life.”
In the same vein, various ancient philosophers and orators presented Sparta as a model of harmony and stability, in contrast to the constant uprisings experienced by other Greek cities. In the first half of the fourth century B.C., Plato used Sparta as a model for two of his utopian cities: Callipolis, in the Republic, and Magnesia, in the Laws. Plato saw Sparta as the embodiment of the so-called mixed constitution, a combination of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy that prevented the state from degenerating into tyranny (the despotic rule of one), oligarchy (the rule of a few), or ochlocracy (mob rule).
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Sparta sought to achieve an ideal blend of authority and freedom by dividing power among several jurisdictions. In addition to two kings and a council of elders composed of the most respected families, there was an assembly of citizens and ephors (senior magistrates) who represented the people and kept the other two powers in check. The balanced constitution (politeia) maintained long-lasting stability in the regime. In 388 B.C., the orator Lysias asserted in his Olympic address that the Spartans had always been free of internal conflicts. Two centuries later, the historian Polybius agreed that the Lacedaemonians were superior “in the conduct of their internal affairs and in their spirit of union” and that “Lycurgus by doing away with the lust for wealth did away also with all civil discord and broils.”
(Bred for battle—understanding ancient Sparta’s military machine.)
The secretive city, hostile to outsiders
The austere Spartan life
Another much admired feature of Spartan society was the financial equality enjoyed by its citizens (the helots were excluded from this). In the late fifth century B.C., the Athenian historian Thucydides explained that in Lacedaemonia “as a rule the wealthy are not much different from the rest of the population.” He also pointed out that the greatness of Sparta lay in its citizens and in their virtues. Unlike the Athenians, they would leave no great literary or architectural legacy:
For if the city of the Lacedaemonians should be deserted ... posterity would be very loath to believe their power was as great as their renown ... As Sparta has not costly temples and other edifices, but is inhabited village-fashion in the old Hellenic style, its power would appear less than it is.
The Spartans were known for being a people of few words (in fact, the word “laconic” comes from the Latin Laconicus, meaning “Spartan”). Their terseness of speech was seen as another manifestation of their austerity. While it could come across as brusque, it sometimes contained a certain wit, irony, and ancestral wisdom. “He is not a good shoemaker who fits a small foot with a big shoe,” cautioned Spartan king Agesilaus II when an orator was being praised for his ability to dig up trivial topics.
In his treatise On Talkativeness, Plutarch said of the laconic style: “For just as the Celtiberians make steel from iron by burying it in the earth and then cleaning off the large earthy accumulation, so the speech of Spartans has no dross, but being disciplined by the removal of all superfluities, it is tempered to complete efficiency.”
Plato, for his part, associated verbal laconism with an archaic form of knowledge that preceded the damaging influence of sophistry and its rhetorical entanglements. Plato likened the Spartan mode of expression to the sayings inscribed on the Delphic oracle, such as “nothing in excess” or “know thyself,” coined by the legendary Seven Wise Men of Greece, among whom was a Spartan called Chilon.
In contrast to these authors who admired everything Spartan, there were many Greeks, and in particular Athenians, who rejected the customs and values of Sparta. The disdain that the Lacedaemonians showed for philosophical discussions was considered a sign of their cultural sterility.
A Sophist text written in Athens at the end of the fifth century B.C. noted disparagingly that the Spartans saw no benefit in teaching their children reading and music. Aristotle wrote that during their training the young Spartans had to do mindless physical exercises with the aim of fostering courage and bravery.
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Sending up the Spartans
Athenian comic theater of the late fifth century B.C. often mocked the Spartans and their admirers. In Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, the chorus (representing Athens) mocks the Spartan king Cleomenes I, who in 507 B.C. tried to impose an oligarchic government on Athens. They tell how he left the Athenian acropolis, defeated:
His stiff-backed Spartan pride was bent. // Out, stripped of all his arms, he went:
// A pigmy cloak that would not stretch // To hide his rump (the draggled wretch), // Six sprouting years of beard, the spilth // Of six years’ filth.
In The Birds, Aristophanes depicts the well-off Athenians who fall prey to “Laconomania” as hungry and filthy figures. The term “Laconomania” itself was coined by Aristophanes.
Euripides’s tragedies are similarly unsympathetic toward the rival city-state. The only superiority recognized is the Spartans’ military prowess: “If you Spartans did not have your reputation won by spear-fighting, you may be sure that in other respects you are no one’s superior,” jibes a character in Euripides’s play Andromache. Then the character of Andromache accuses the Spartans of greed and duplicity: “Dwellers in Sparta, most hateful of mortals in the eyes of all mankind, wily plotters, masters of the lie, weavers of deadly contrivance, with thoughts that are always devious, rotten, and tortuous, how unjust is the prosperity you enjoy among the Greeks! What crime is not to be found in your midst? Are there not murders in great numbers? Aren’t your greed for gain and your duplicity being constantly unmasked? My curse upon you!”
The Spartan women get a bad rap in this play too: “Not even if she wanted to could a Spartan woman be chaste,” carps one of the characters. “They leave their houses in the company of young men, thighs showing bare through their revealing garments, and in a manner I cannot endure they share the same running-tracks and wrestling-places.” These verses refer to the fact that Spartan women exercised naked, a practice limited to Sparta and that other Greeks found outrageous. The situation of Spartan women was certainly unique in Greek society at the time. They had the right to own property, receive an elementary education, leave the house, and have a certain say in how things were run. This prompted Greek and Roman authors, always male, to construct an image of promiscuity around them. Starting in the fourth century B.C., the progressive decline in the number of male Spartiates led to women accumulating ownership of the land—two-fifths, according to Aristotle, who commented disparagingly that Sparta was subjected to a gynecocracy, or government of women.
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The gold standard
Mixed feelings for Sparta continued even after its defeat in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C. Many Romans saw reflections of their own society in accounts of Sparta, with its political order and its fixed customs. Sparta also became an ethical reference, an “example of virtue,” such as in the Moral Letters to Lucilius (A.D. 65) by the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Discussing the morality of suicide, Seneca highlighted the story of a Spartan teenager who was taken prisoner and enslaved. When ordered to perform a degrading task, rather than comply and live enslaved, the boy smashed his head open against a wall.
While defending the Roman official Flaccus in 59 B.C., the Roman orator and lawyer Cicero appealed to Spartan values as an example to Romans. In a reference to Spartan ambassadors who had arrived in Rome, Cicero said, “Men of Sparta are here; the tried and famed valour of that state is thought to have been supported, not by nature only, but by discipline. They alone in the whole earth have lived for more than seven hundred years with customs unaltered and laws unchanged.”
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Nostalgia for the vanished age of Sparta
