Alexander and Sparta

[aleksandros]

Does anyone know if there's a well established explanation on why Alexander didn't move against Sparta when the later refused to join his campaign ?
If not, i look forward to hearing every probable explanation.

[dean]

Hello,

Like the question and see it as especially well timed. I think that there was a long on going sense of distrust going back to the days of Philip and some of the verbal exchanges between Philip and the Spartans and some of my favorite of this period.

Alexander had made it clear that he was in charge after Thebes and I think that he had his sights on getting to Asia Minor a.s.a.p. for bigger showdowns. Had he subjugated Sparta too what would he have gained more than what he already had?

Best regards,
Dean

[athenas owl]

Does anyone know if there's a well established explanation on why Alexander didn't move against Sparta when the later refused to join his campaign ?
If not, i look forward to hearing every probable explanation.

What Dean said. Also, I think that by "ignoring" Sparta, he let them know they didn't matter anymore in the big scheme of things, they were has-beens and while the Greeks didn't like the Macedonians, they may have hated the Spartans even more. I have this image of Alexander hearing of the Spartans not wantng to join the crusade saying "whatEVER!".

[jasonxx]

athenas Owl.

Whatever I think is spot on. I think Paralus can puit a great deal more info with Sparta At that time. As far as I know Sparta was well beyond its sell by date by then. thebes had put pay to Sparatan Invincibility. In fact Im sure the Spartans had done a few runners prior to Thebes taking them out.

i think the idea of the Spartan Army is pretty overstated due to the legendary Leonidas. As Paralus would also testify. The Spartans used slaves Helots in extreme ways. I think I read some where that the Sparatn Army was in trouble with one engagemnet. As A result the helots helped there Spartan Masters. As a reward the Spartans massacred the Slaves fearing them. A little sketchy with that but Im sure its right.

Spartans were profesional. But at the same time Seasonal fighters. For all the Peleponese wars I dont think the Spartans actually took Athens by siege.

Sparta was basicaly the enigma. And I would say more bought than her Athenian Neighbours. I guess Alexander thought it a pain in the ass with Athens etc and the Persian input without worrying about the Spartans.I guess rather than going for Sparta. He basically neutralised them by bottling them at the Isthmus of Corinth. RElying on the wholesale Greek hatred of Sparta to keep them out.

Its fare to say Sparta hardly came out of the Laconia state. In open siege Alexander would have swallowed them whole. So basically why bother.

kenny

[aleksandros]

Interesting thoughts...

In his letter to Darius, Alexander mentions the Spartans as sold by Persian gold... he says that more than a year before the Spartans attacked Macedonia.
Having this in mind, i think that Alexander already knew at Corinth that the Spartans would probably attack his rear sooner or later...

Well i think that Alexander had learned his lesson by the southern Greeks and i don't think he was naive enough to assume that the Spartans would have been repelled by the Athenians for example if they tried to attack Macedonia....

I believe that Alexander was frustrated enough by the destruction of Thebes and he wouldnt try another before he attacked Persia "to free the Greek city states and punish the Persians". Afterall he was supposed to take revenge for Athens and Sparta too.

It is clear that Alexander believed in his army's superiority and he was sure that his guard in Macedonia would easily crash any ATTACK by the southern Greeks, in no way he wanted to be the aggresor against Greeks any more....his campaign had to maintain its purpose at any cost.

[Paralus]

…while the Greeks didn't like the Macedonians, they may have hated the Spartans even more.

Yes, hang on to that thought.

Hi all.

Sparta is, as always, interesting. The first thing to recall here is that Sparta in 338-336 is not the Sparta of 480 or, for that matter, 380. Its record in the recent Sacred war (that of 355-346) was more lackadaisical than Laconian, amply demonstrated by its king Archidamus occupying the pass of Thermopylae (346) and promptly departing having not ever raised a spear in defense of it. One suspects the hallowed ground of the pass suffered minor seismic rumbles as his ancestors turned in their graves.

The city state was, by this time, showing the unarguable results of its terminal diseaseoliganthropy; this being an irreversible decline in its enfranchised manpower due to the nature of the strict system of laws that defined the male citizenry, the wealth (land) within the state and how that attached to being in a position to pay mess fees. The gradual accretion of this wealth into smaller numbers of hands (and, in the end, many of them women) guaranteed declining homoioi numbers.

The numbers tell the tale (P Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia a Regional History). In 480 there were likely 8,000 or more and so 5,000 at Plataea; those numbers in 418 (by Mantinea) about 3,500 and by Leuktra some 1,500. We can further reduce this figure to 1,100 on Xenophon’s reckoning of 400 having bitten Boeotian dust that day along with their king. Xeneophon also describes some of the Peloponnesian allies as happy with the result (Hell. 6.4.15). And there in lies the “leave them alone” rub.

That fact was not missed by Epaminondas and he set about surrounding Sparta with empowered former “subjects”. The lesson was not – as with others from the great statesman – lost on Philip either. Having settled “Greek affairs” on the field at Chaeronea, Philip enquired of Sparta what she would do: acquiesce of fight. Corinth. Argos and other Peloponnesian states had already come over and/or installed friendly regimes – a Macedonian garrison on Acrocorinth, always a reminder of their friendly northern master, helping no doubt. Pithy Lakonic replies could not hide the fact that the bygone bull-ant of the Peleponnese was in no position to resist the Macedonian army along with contingents from Elis, Arcadia and others. Philip, in a display of kingly largesse and diplomatic skill, laid waste Spartan territory as far as Gytheion and then partitioned off Thyreatis, Denthaliatis and some of the Mani peninsular and Sciritis. These were picked up – seized might be a better term – by Argos, Messenenia and Tegea respectively.

Not only did Sparta suffer a(nother) reduction of its territory, but it now found itself surrounded by former “allies”, empowered both by their acquisitions and Macedonian support and who, while they will have loved to do without a Macedonian overlord, found their hatred of Sparta a more comforting thing to nurse.

There was, in dealing with the Greeks, always one thing Philip could count on: that Greek would dislike Greek more than he. He just had to find that Greek. Philip found the Peloponnesians their Greek in Sparta. As well, like Athens, it wouldn’t do to be seen reducing to rubble the other glorious shoulder of Greek resistance to the barbarian invader prior to the great Pan-Hellenic festival of Macedonian imperialism in the east.

It wasn’t without its dangers of course as Agis was to show. For the most part though, it worked well: Sparta simmered in a stew of its own impotence as others in the Peloponnesian pot grew in importance and influence. Every now and again it raised itself until, eventually in 223/222, Antigonus Doson, tired of Kleomenes III’s aggression, defeated the Spartans at Sellasia and became the first foreigner to occupy the city.

In short, Alexander had little need nor, I'd think, inclination to change his father's arrangements with respect to Sparta. They had no interest in a "Pan-Hellenic" crusade - had not since selling off the Asian Greeks in 410/09 (and the half-hearted propaganda invasion of Agesilaos a little more than a decade later). Something they grew accustomed to doing over the period of their hegemony. Their interest was that which they had lost in their own backyard.

[Paralus]

The Spartans used slaves Helots in extreme ways. I think I read some where that the Sparatn Army was in trouble with one engagemnet. As A result the helots helped there Spartan Masters. As a reward the Spartans massacred the Slaves fearing them. A little sketchy with that but Im sure its right.

You are dead right old son (er, pardon the Pun). I was going to address it in my little discourse above but neglected to. The incident to which you refer is related by Thucydides when describing the woes of Spartans, recently pole-axed at Pylos.

The Spartans contrive to raise an army under Brasidas – comprised of allies and freed Helots (hereafter the ‘Brasidoi’ or ‘Brasideians’) – to march noth and cause the Athenians trouble of their own in the Chalcidice and Thrace. This he did to some telling effect.

The helots were indeed freed. As Thucydides relates, this was not always the case with such “offers” though (Thuc.4.80):

It had been less difficult for them (the Spartans) to get an army to leave Peloponnese, because of the ill fortune of the Lacedaemonians at the present moment. The attacks of the Athenians upon Peloponnese, and in particular upon Laconia, might, it was hoped, be diverted most effectually by annoying them in return, and by sending an army to their allies, especially as they were willing to maintain it and asked for it to aid them in revolting.

The Lacedaemonians were also glad to have an excuse for sending some of the Helots out of the country, for fear that the present aspect of affairs and the occupation of Pylos might encourage them to move. Indeed fear of their numbers and obstinacy even persuaded the Lacedaemonians to the action which I shall now relate, their policy at all times having been governed by the necessity of taking precautions against them.

The Helots were invited by a proclamation to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves against the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high-spirited and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their new freedom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished.

[jasonxx]

Paralus Hail

As you may accept I am no Pro Spartan and as you know quite a bit about the none descript nastyness about the Spartans. Yet I believe the movie was and is about the best movie out there.

Sometimes its good to leave the historian at the door and just enjoy a fantastic movie without getting embroyled in your own political or historical agenda.

Kenny