Leonidas and Thermopylae: Go Tell the Spartans.
by More Prisoners of Eternity.
In the Pantheon of Heroes few stand higher than Leonidas, the King of the Spartans, a people whose strangely regimented life continues to fascinate to this day. They have been the inspiration of dreamers through the generations and at Thermopylae against impossible odds everything they stood for and believed in would become justified.
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws, we lie”
On a swelteringly hot summer day in August, 480 BC a Spartan King in command of a small force of Greek soldiers occupied the narrow pass at Thermopylae; There he stood in defiance of the overwhelming might of the Persian Empire. What was to pass that day would become an epic of history.
Sparta
The City State of Sparta, so often dismissed as little more than an armed camp, was situated in the far south of the Greek peninsula in an area known as Laconia. Surrounded by mountains on either side it was to a large extent isolated from the rest of Greece. This isolation allowed it to develop a society unique to itself free of outside interference. It was to become both admired and feared. For whereas some Greeks looked on with envy at the stability of its society and trembled with fear at the discipline and courage of its soldiers, others derided it as politically stagnant, economically backward, morally bankrupt, and a little more than a cultural desert; and it is true that the Spartan’s left no great art and no great literature to posterity. What they did leave, however, was a model for society that has both fascinated and repulsed in equal measure down the ages.
Sparta was a slave state. Earlier in its history it had fought a long and bloody war with its neighbour Messenia. It had been a war that the Spartans had very nearly lost. As a result of this close call the Spartan society we know now was created. Under the guidance of its lawmaker, Lycurgas, steps were taken that would ensure that no such thing would ever happen again. Sparta was reborn.
As a result of their defeat Messenia was occupied and its entire population enslaved. These Helots, as they were to become known, were to make up 80% of Sparta’s population, and the Spartan’s, who were a small minority in their own land, lived in constant fear of slave revolt, so much so that its prospect determined both domestic and foreign policy. As a result the Helots were harshly treated. They were regularly beaten regardless of any wrongdoing, and could be executed for showing too much vigour and likewise for getting too fat. Sometimes Helots would be forced to get drunk and made to behave in a ridiculous fashion in front of Spartan children as an example to them of the perils of drink. Once every year the Spartan’s declared war on the Helots when graduates of the Agoge (Military Academy) under the influence of a mysterious ritual known as the Krypteia were obliged to hunt down and kill as many Helots as they could find. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the Helots loathed their masters and slave revolts were not uncommon.
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