Name ________________
DBQ – Comparing Athens & Sparta
Introduction:
One of the reasons we know so much about the ancient Greeks is that they wrote
almost everything down. Historians use these documents to hypothesize on ancient
times. These documents can also be useful to compare different Greek city-states.
Directions:
At the end of this assignment is a selection of ancient texts for Athens and Sparta.
Read each section and answer the following questions.
Athens
The Speech of Apollodorus
1. Who is Apollodorus and to whom is he speaking?
2. What is his complaint?
3. What does Apollodorus provide to the court?
4. What does this reading tell you about the rights of Athenian citizens?
The Athenian Constitution
5. What were the three important features of the Athenian constitution?
Thucydides’ History
6. How was Athens founded and how did it get its name? Hint: Attica was the larger
region or countryside all around Athens.
Sparta
Xenophon on the Spartans
Hint: “Lycurgus” was one of the first rulers of Sparta, and “Lacedaemon” is another
name for the city.
7. What did Lycurgus believe was the purpose of marriage? How do you know?
8. Why were children educated?
9. How did Spartans treat their laws?
10. What personal quality seemed most important to Lycurgus?
11. Who was a citizen in Sparta?
The Polity of the Spartans
Hint: “want” in this document means lack or hunger.
12. What can you conclude about what life was like in Sparta?
Texts about Athens
The Speech of Apollodorus
This speech was made in an Athenian law court. The record of the case has survived
and so we can still read it today. In Athens warships (called 'triremes') were captained
by wealthy citizens, who served as captain for a year and had to pay for the crew's
wages and supplies. A man called Apollodorus, is angry at having to wait for a man
called Polycles to take over from him as captain.
"To show that I am telling the truth, the clerk will read you out the statements made
about these matters by those who collected the military supplies and those who sent the
supplies out. There is also a record of the pay which I gave every month to the rowers
and fighting men....also there is a list of the sailors I hired and how much money was
paid to each of them. From the evidence, you will recognise how generous I was and
why the defendant was unwilling to take over the ship from me when my term as
trierarch [trireme captain] came to an end.
... There is plenty of evidence from which I can prove that Polycles never intended to
take over the ship from me in the first place. Even after you voted that he should and
made him join the ship, he was unwilling to take over from me as captain. He came to
Thasos when it was already four months after my term of office had finished. I took
witnesses with me, as many citizens as I could, fighting men as well as rowers. I went
up to him in the market place at Thasos and told him to take over from me as my
successor and to repay me for what I had spent since my term of office came to an
end."
The Athenian Constitution
By Aristotle – written 350 B.C.E
Translated by Sir Frederic G. Kenyon
Part 9
Such, then, was his legislation concerning the magistracies. There are three points in
the constitution of Solon which appear to be its most democratic features: first and most
important, the prohibition of loans on the security of the debtor's person; secondly, the
right of every person who so willed to claim redress on behalf of any one to whom
wrong was being done; thirdly, the institution of the appeal to the jurycourts; and it is to
this last, they say, that the masses have owed their strength most of all, since, when the
democracy is master of the voting-power, it is master of the constitution. Moreover,
since the laws were not drawn up in simple and explicit terms (but like the one
concerning inheritances and wards of state), disputes inevitably occurred, and the
courts had to decide in every matter, whether public or private. Some persons in fact
believe that Solon deliberately made the laws indefinite, in order that the final decision
might be in the hands of the people. This, however, is not probable, and the reason no
doubt was that it is impossible to attain ideal perfection when framing a law in general
terms; for we must judge of his intentions, not from the actual results in the present day,
but from the general tenor of the rest of his legislation.
Thucydides:
from The History of the Peloponnesian War, c. 404 B.C., II.5
In the days of Kecrops and the first kings, down to the reign of Theseos, Attica was
divided into communes, having their own town halls and magistrates. Except in case of
alarm, the whole people did not assemble in council under the king, but administered
their own affairs, and advised together in their several townships. Some of them at
times even went to war with the king, as the Eleusinians under Eumolpos with King
Erectheos. But when Theseos came to the throne, he, being a powerful as well as a
wise ruler, among other improvements in the administration of the country, dissolved the
councils and separate governments, and united all the inhabitants of Attica in the
present city, establishing one council and town hall. They continued to live on their own
lands, but he compelled them to resort to Athens as their metropolis [i.e., "mother-city"],
and henceforward they were all inscribed in the roll of her citizens. A great city thus
arose which was handed down by Theseos to his descendants, and from his day to this
the Athenians have regularly celebrated the national festival of the Synoikia, or "union of
the communes," in honor of the goddess Athena.
Texts about Sparta
Xenophon on the Spartans
Lycurgus ...
."....He took from the men the liberty of marrying when each of them pleased, and
appointed that they should contract marriages only when they were in full bodily
vigor, deeming this injunction also conducive to producing excellent offspring..."
"Lycurgus prohibited free citizens from having anything to do with business.... they
should not desire wealth with a view to sensual gratification. At Sparta the citizens
pay strictest obedience to the magistrates and the laws. Lycurgus did not attempt to
establish such an ‘Excellent Order of Things’ (EUNOMIA) until he had brought the
most powerful men in the state to be of the same opinion as he was with regard to
the constitution... OBEDIENCE is of the greatest benefit, as well in a State as in an
army and a family..."
"An honorable death is preferable to a dishonorable life.... At Lacedaemon everyone
would be ashamed to allow a coward into the same tent as himself, or allow him to
be his opponent in a match at wrestling...."
"Lycurgus also imposed on his countrymen an obligation, from which there is no
exception, of practising every kind of political virtue; for he made the privileges of
citizenship EQUALLY available to all those who observed what was commanded by
the Laws, without taking any account either of bodily weakness or limited financial
means; but if anyone was too lazy to do what the Laws demanded, Lycurgus
commanded that he should no longer be counted among the number of ‘equally
privileged citizens’ (the HOMOIOI)."
Xenophon (c.428-c.354 BCE):
The Polity of the Spartans, c. 375 BCE
Instead of softening their feet with shoe or sandal, his rule was to make them hardy
through going barefoot. This habit, if practiced, would, as he believed, enable them to
scale heights more easily and clamber down precipices with less danger. In fact, with
his feet so trained the young Spartan would leap and spring and run faster unshod than
another in the ordinary way. Instead of making them effeminate with a variety of clothes,
his rule was to habituate them to a single garment the whole year through, thinking that
so they would be better prepared to withstand the variations of heat and cold. Again, as
regards food, according to his regulation, the eiren, or head of the flock, must see that
his messmates gather to the club meal with such moderate food as to avoid bloating
and yet not remain unacquainted with the pains of starvation. His belief was that by
such training in boyhood they would be better able when occasion demanded to
continue toiling on an empty stomach....On the other hand, to guard against a too great
pinch of starvation, he did give them permission to steal this thing or that in the effort to
alleviate their hunger.
When Lycurgos first came to deal with the question, the Spartans, like the rest of the
Hellenes, used to mess privately at home. Tracing more than half the current problems
to this custom, he was determined to drag his people out of holes and corners into the
broad daylight, and so he invented the public mess rooms. As to food, his ordinance
allowed them only so much as should guard them from want.....So that from beginning
to end, till the mess breaks up, the common board is never stinted for food nor yet
extravagantly furnished. So also in the matter of drink. While putting a stop to all
unnecessary drink, he left them free to quench thirst when nature dictated.....Thus there
is the necessity of walking home when a meal is over, and a consequent anxiety not to
be caught tripping under the influence of wine, since they all know of course that the
supper table must be presently abandoned and that they must move as freely in the
dark as in the day, even with the help of a torch.
Source:
From: Fred Fling, ed., A Source Book of Greek History, (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1907), pp.
66-75.