Historiography of Sparta
The expression the” Spartan mirage”, first coined by Francois Ollier in the 1930’s
describes the idealization of Sparta in Greek Antiquity, that is , the distorted or imaginary literary
tradition about ancient Sparta as militarist and devoid of culture. .Paul Cartledge suggests that the
Spartans themselves were adept at promoting this image for their own internal stability .Ancient
writers were polarized in their view of Sparta regarding it, largely from an Athenian viewpoint.
Successive generations of modern historians too have perpetuated these polarized views.
The ancient version of the mirage had three components. First , it maintained that the
Spartan polis had been uniquely free from internal disorder. Second , it claimed that this utopian
situation was owed to the Spartan citizens, dutifully obeying the laws laid down by the lawgiver
Lycurgus. Third, it promoted the idea that these laws, strikingly different from all other Greek
states affected absolutely every aspect of Spartan life, both public and private
By far though this mirage has been handed down almost exclusively by non Spartans
Contemporary writers such as Herodotus, Thucydides emphasized the distinctiveness of Spartan
customs, portraying her as deviant from Athenian norms. Herodotus conversed with Spartans
both in Laconia and in Asia Minor but the focus of his work was not Sparta and the stories he
tells are an aside comment on the main narrative. Thucydides experienced Sparta during the
Peloponnese War 431-404BC, but it appears that he found it difficult to acquire evidence to
supplement his critical external view.
Others such as Kritias and Xenophon, both extreme admirers of Sparta described her as
the closest to the ideal polis. Kritias is famed with the comment that in Sparta the free were the
most truly free, the slaves the most enslaved of all Greece. Xenophon, the best informed
foreigner, was an exile from Athens, resided in the Peloponnese for two decades, while living on
an estate allocated to him by King Agesilaus. His description of Spartan society was an attempt
by a disillusioned politician to find order and stability .He opens his description of Spartan
society with a tone of awe;
“ Now once it had struck me that Sparta, despite having one of the lowest populations, had
nonetheless clearly become the most powerful and most famous in Greece, I wondered how this
had ever happened. But I stopped wondering once I had pondered the Spartiate institutions, for
they have achieved success by obeying the laws laid down for them by Lycurgus.”
As well as describing these ideal sociopolitical institutions , Xenophon also elaborated on the
nature of the ideal leader, focusing on King Agesilaus
In post classical antiquity utopian images portrayed by writers such as Plutarch and
Pausanius became prominent . Pausanius, who visited Laconia in the first century AD, described
the monuments he saw and recorded the stories he heard .Plutarch, who lived 46-120 AD wrote
The Life of Lycurgus . In this it appears he was influenced strongly by later Spartan kings King
Agis and Cleomenes who attempted to proclaim themselves restorers of Lycurgan Sparta, and it
is believed that his history transfers 3rd century conditions to the early days of Sparta’s history His
biographical agenda was clear He wanted Greeks and Romans alike to recognize the tremendous
legacy which they had inherited from the great men of the past -- and the great city-states of the
past. His aim was therefore clearly didactic. Plutarch begins his biography with a warning ;
“ Generally speaking it is impossible to make any undisputed statement about Lycurgus the
lawgiver, since conflicting accounts have been given of his ancestry, his travels, his death and
above all his activity with respect to his laws and government, but there is least agreement about
the period in which the man lived.”
Despite the limitations of his writings , his usefulness lies in the fact that he relies on sources like
Theopompos and Timaeus( 4th century BC ) whose writings are lost to us.
As a balance to this utopian tradition we have the fragmentary works of Aristotle in The
Constitution of the Lakedaimonians. Aristotle knew Sparta in decline, and so, was concerned
with its failings as well as the operation of its political system. His beliefs that Sparta failed
because of women’s ownership of land reflected not only his Athenian but gender bias as well.
After the French Revolution, with the growth of modern democracy, Sparta became the
archetypal contrast, representative of ancient as against modern liberty. Enlightened philosophers
still saw the positives in the ideal Spartan model. Jean-Jacques Rousseau declares of
Lycurgus, the legendary Lawgiver of Sparta:
"He fixed upon [the Spartans] a yoke of iron, the like of which no other people has ever born; but
he tied them to that yoke, made them, so to speak, one with it, by filling up every moment of their
lives. . . . And out of this ceaseless constraint, made noble by the purpose it served, was born that
burning love of country which was always the strongest—or rather the only—passion of the
Spartans."
In 1930’s Germany the Spartan image was appropriated by National Socialism to
highlight the value of a totalitarian regime. Victor Ehrenberg in the 30’s presented his ideas on
the uniqueness of Spartan social and political formations. Ehrenberg admired Sparta’s masculine,
military society, which depended on complete devotion to law. He presented Sparta as the “ first
and greatest of all authoritarian and totalitarian states, where authority dominated the political
and social world of its citizens”. Ironically Ehrenberg was a liberal Jew who was forced to flee
Germany and seek refuge in Britain. As well German scholarship sought to find common racial
origins and link them to ideas of Aryan supremacy. It has taken time since WW2 for German
scholarship to reassert itself on the topic of Sparta
Modern historians such as Cartledge, Pommeroy, Finlay, Hodkinson and Powell, utilize the
abundance of archaeological evidence, come to light by such excavations as the Acropolis,
Artemis Orthia and the Menelaion, in the 19th and 20th centuries to critique the mirage. Rather
than examining Sparta in terms of otherness , their studies highlight those aspects of culture that
the Greeks had in common, with a focus on the everyday , rather than the elite. Finlay’s agenda
was to study the underlying social structures of Sparta and how these affected the workings of the
state. Ste Croix’s study also looks at the impact of social infrastructure, in particular the
significance of the helot threat and its pressure on foreign policy. Departing from previous
German scholarship which focused on the politics of the elite, Ste Croix's great contribution to
the study of classical Greece and Rome was to re-establish economic class as a valid concept for
the analysis of ancient societies and to reaffirm that their history can only be understood in terms
of the struggle between classes..
Pommeroy’s work on Spartan Women is the first of its kind, seeking evidence on this relatively
silent group. Pommeroy however , while conceding the problems of the mirage states that;
“I must confess however that my tendency is to grant more credence to the primary sources than
some contemporary hypercritical Spartanologists are wont to do, and to understand that they
generally reflect an actual historical situation rather than a utopian fiction.”
Hodkinson’s approach is to assemble the ancient evidence and to subject the written evidence to
rigorous archaeological review. Cartledge as well applauds this approach. The aim of his research
is “ to consider the bearing of archaeology and art history on Spartan economy mainly as they
were constituted during the 7th and 6th centuries. Had Sparta always been the cultural desert
projected by the later mirage.’
Modern historians generally agree that ,although elements of the mirage appear to have
merit, the abundant pottery , art and sculptural remains clearly reveal that Sparta of the 7th and 6th
century ran parallel with the aesthetic developments in the rest of Greece.
Cartledge’s final note issues the challenge to future historians.” To call it a mere
barracks bereft of high culture, as did certain Athenian propagandists, was probably going to farbut not all that much too far. The historical question for us is why the open and progressive
Sparta of the mid 6th century metamorphosized.”. The question then is not otherness but an
explanation of change and continuity over time.