The Spartan Way

The Spartan Way
Junior Scholastic (Magazine)
Sean Price

For around 200 years, Sparta was the most powerful Greek city-state. This is thanks to its powerful army, and the strict discipline. Spartans live their whole life for military. When a baby is born, and elder would check the baby to see if he/she was strong or not. If the baby was presumed to be weak, they would leave the baby to die in the mountains. Kids that survives the harsh conditions went to the army at the age of 7, where they would receive harsh training. Spartans also avoided luxuries. They were given little clothing even in the winter, and very little food. They went out of their way to make the food bad tasting. One visitor supposedly said after visiting Sparta, "After eating Spartan food, he understood why the were so willing to die in battle. In wars, they had to fight to victory, or to the death.

Women in Sparta were not in the military, but they were still given physical training, because Spartans believed that strong women had strong children. They also had more rights than other Greek women at the time, even though they would not wear jewelry, nice clothes, or make-up, they were allowed to own land, run families and business.

Spartan civilians made up 10 percent of the population, the other 90 percent were made up of 2 groups. Perioeci, had no rights, but were free people, they lived in their own towns and some were quite rich from business. Helots on the other hand, were slaves. There were so many of them, that the slaves outnumbers the citizens 10 to 1, so Spartans were afraid of revolt. Therefore many slaves were killed without reason. However there were still revolts, even if none succeeded.

Sparta conquered Athens in 404 BCE, and remained leader of Greece until 371 BCE, when the city-state Thebes took out their army. Without their might Army, the Romans took over in 146 BCE and that was the end of Sparta's rule .