The Spartans
The battle for supremacy
Although Sparta and Athens had fought as allies in the war against the Persians, they were very different.
Athens, a fledgling democracy, could boast of being the commercial and cultural centre of Greece – an outward-looking, civilised society where power supposedly lay with the demos – the people.
Sparta was a militaristic state ruled by the homoioi, a warrior élite, and propped up by a population of slaves. Its boys, if they survived a state programme of infanticide, were taken from the arms of their mothers at the age of seven to be indoctrinated with the Spartan code of death or glory. They lived mainly apart from their women who were a phenomenon in their own right – independent, clever, physically and politically powerful.
These radically opposing systems were so incompatible that, with no common enemy to distract them, cooperation between the two most powerful city-states in Greece was bound to give way to fear and paranoia. And so the stage was set for an epic struggle – Sparta versus Athens, the homoioi versus the demos. The result of that conflict would decide the fate of Greece.
The Spartan status quo
For Sparta and Athens, the experience of the Persian invasion had
been very different. Hundreds of miles from the frontline, in the idyllic
countryside of Lakonia, the Spartan homeland had been untouched, whereas
Athens had been invaded and its acropolis destroyed.
In the rugged, enclosed peninsula of the Peloponnese, the war had seemed a distant affair. With peace restored, the Spartans quickly returned to their usual routine – the pursuit of physical and military perfection. This was a society that was disciplined, obedient and, above all, willing to sacrifice the needs of the family and the individual for the good of the state – and, if necessary, to die for the cause.
The cause was simple – protection of the Spartan version of utopia. To do that, the Spartans needed to produce more of its famed hoplite warriors. But beyond that, they had few other ambitions. All they wanted was to maintain the status quo.
Change in Athens
However, in post-war Athens, things were changing fast. The trauma
of occupation, followed by the euphoria of victory, had transformed the
city. Before the war, the foundations for democracy had been laid, but
this was democracy in name only. In reality, only men with money had governed.
Now a massive power shift was taking place.
The true cradle of democracy could be said to be an Athenian trireme. Each powered by nearly 200 oarsmen, these sea-borne battering rams had annihilated the Persian fleet at Salamis. At a time of crisis, it had been the poor of Athens who had squeezed down on to the cramped rowing benches and sent the triremes smashing into the hulls of their enemies.
These had been the have-nots of the city, the bottom of the political pecking order. But after Salamis, all that changed. The oarsmen who had endured the sweat, stench and terror of the triremes had won a historic victory and now they wanted their say. Athenian democracy was galvanised.
Pericles
The champion of the Athenian oarsmen was Pericles. He was a wealthy
aristocrat, exactly the sort who had run the so-called 'democracy' in
Athens for generations. But he was shrewd enough to sense that things
were no longer the same and ambitious enough to put himself at the head
of that change.
Pericles could see that, to secure power, he needed to distance himself from the nobles, play to the gallery, ingratiate himself with the people. A formidable orator, his powers of argument and speech won them over. But it wasn't just what he said that impressed the citizens of Athens. He designed a massive civic building programme that, in effect, would be a job-creation scheme for the city's poor. He said:
All kinds of enterprises and demands will be created, which will provide inspiration for every art, find employment for every hand and transform the whole people into wage earners, so that the city will decorate and maintain herself at the same time.
True to his word, Pericles opened the coffers of Athens to pay for public festivals and grandiose monuments such as the Parthenon. But most significantly of all, he introduced state salaries for jury duty and war service. Now the oarsmen could trade in their rowing benches for seats of power in the city. For the first time in Athens, democracy was truly coming to mean government by the people.
New thinking
It was in the Athenian agora where the people's voice was heard.
If the Acropolis was the soul of Athens, the agora was its beating
heart. It was there that the day-to-day life of the city took place. Artisans
and lawyers, shopkeepers and philosophers – men from all walks of
life rubbed shoulders there, creating the buzz and bustle of the most
democratic city-state in Greece.
Official posts were open to every man, irrespective of wealth and status. Everyone was expected to pull his weight and participate. On days when speeches and debates were heard, all the exits to the agora were closed, apart from the one that led up to the pnyx, where the Athenian assembly sat. Slaves with ropes dipped in red paint would chivvy citizens up the slope, marking out for a fine any who dragged their feet or tried to slip away. In Athens, democracy was enforced as rigorously as military discipline was in Sparta.
But it wasn't just Athenian political life that had been revolutionised after the defeat of Persia. Everything from commerce to culture received an infusion of energy and new thinking.
Athenian walls
Although the Greek alliance had emerged victorious from the war, Persia
remained a constant threat. The city-states of Greece needed a leader
to carry on the fight against the enemy from the east. Sparta had no desire
for the job so, while it turned its attentions inwards, Athens took the
helm and set its course in a different direction.
Unlike Sparta, happily land-locked in the Peloponnese, Athens had always been half in love with the sea. With the defeat of the Persians, that love affair was formalised when the city was physically linked to the port of Piraeus by defensive walls. The Athenians devoured their own city to build their walls, scavenging raw material from public monuments and even using headstones from graveyards. The result was 12 miles of imposing fortifications erected in record time.
The walls meant that Athens was now officially a sea power, with all that implied in terms of trade, the movement of people and the potential for empire building. As a statement of intent, it also packed quite a punch – a defensive shield designed to keep the wealth of Athens in and unwanted busybodies from neighbouring states out.
Athens became the policeman of the eastern Mediterranean. Its allies were expected to toe the line and foot the bill. If any objected, they would soon find an Athenian fleet in their harbour. It was trireme diplomacy.
Sparta unbound
This shift in the balance of power could hardly have been missed by
Sparta. The burgeoning Athenian fleet was evidence enough, but when Sparta
discovered that Athens had been building walls, there was even more cause
for concern.
The Spartans disliked walls because walls defined cities. Cities, if you weren't careful, encouraged other things ... like democracy. And if there was one thing Sparta distrusted more than walls, it was democracy.
Sparta famously had no walls. The Spartans said that their city's walls were its young men and its borders the tips of their spears. For the Spartans, it wasn't laws or walls or magnificent public buildings that made a city – it was their own ideals. In essence, Sparta was a city of the head and the heart, and it existed, in its purest form, in the disciplined march of a hoplite phalanx on its way to war.
Different ways of being
Athens and Sparta represented two radically different ways of being.
Choosing between them would seem to present no difficulties for the Greeks.
Sparta was militaristic and xenophobic. Athens was dynamic and open to
the world.
But, of course, things are never that simple. Athens could be imperialist, arrogant and aggressive, and its democracy excluded women, foreigners and slaves. Its politics were volatile and that posed a threat to the Greeks' cherished value of eunomia, or good order.
The 5th-century poet Pindar called eunomia the 'secure foundation stone of cities'. The Greeks knew from bitter experience what happened when this foundation was threatened: civil war between the haves and the have-nots, fields left unharvested, blood in the streets.
The Spartan system, on the other hand, with its peculiar blend of equality and élitism, held many attractions for some Greeks. Its emphasis on the common good, duty and cohesion seemed to guarantee good order. But for others, good order in Sparta was compromised by its extraordinary attitude to sexual politics – because, when it came to women, conservative Sparta was positively radical.
Women of Athens
If you were a woman in 5th-century Athens, life probably wasn't a
lot of fun. The city may have been at the cutting edge of all that was
good in art, architecture and democracy – but these were strictly
for the consumption of men. In public and in private, the sexes were segregated.
In fact, in most of ancient Greece, women were expected not to be seen or heard. The historian Xenophon recommended that they stay indoors, and for the orator Pericles, it was shameful if they were even mentioned in public.
Athenian women led a very sheltered existence. Apart from training for domestic duties, they were given as little education as possible. In a society where women had no say, education must have seemed, at best, pointless and, at worst, dangerous. As one comic poet put it:
Teach women letters? A serious mistake!
Like giving extra venom to a terrifying snake.
An Athenian girl could be married off as young as 12, to a man chosen for her. She would be taken away from her family and disappear into her husband's house. A woman's role was to manage the family and do the chores – grinding corn, washing or baking bread. Rich women, who had slaves to take care of this drudgery, would spin and sew. There would be the occasional sortie outside – to attend to domestic matters, or go to a religious ceremony – but life was basically confined within four walls.
The land of beautiful women
In Sparta, by contrast, women were everywhere. For a start, there
were more girls than boys, because they weren't victims of the state programme
of infanticide. And if men weren't away fighting or training, they were
relaxing with their male colleagues in the common messes. Women would
have dominated the day-to-day life of the city-state.
Homer called Sparta Kalligynaika – 'the land of beautiful women'. The beauty of Helen of Troy – originally Helen of Sparta – was legendary. Of course, not every Spartan woman could have lived up to Helen's standards, but they were uniquely fit.
Spartan girls had an upbringing unparalleled anywhere else in Greece. For starters, they were fed the same rations as boys and allowed to drink wine. The state taught them how to sing and dance, wrestle, throw the javelin and discus. And they were encouraged to be every bit as competitive as the boys.
Girls and boys would exercise naked, but there was nothing immodest about it. Nudity was the norm because it was thought to banish prudery and encourage fitness. It paid off. Physically, all young Spartans were outstanding.
In the comedy Lysistrata by the Athenian playwright Aristophanes, a group of Athenian women crowd round a Spartan woman called Lampito. 'What a gorgeous creature,' they say. 'What healthy skin, what firmness of physique.' And one of them adds, 'I've never seen a pair of breasts like that.' To which Lampito proudly responds, 'I go to the gym. I make my buttocks hard.'
Spartan 'thigh-flashers'
The simple visibility of Spartan women made them objects of fear and
fascination to non-Spartan men. When you see – in the Sparta museum
today – the lead votive offerings depicting dancers, you can understand
why Spartan women were subject to such lurid speculation among Athenian
men. One of the most important virtues for Athenian women was soprhosyne
– 'wise restraint'. However, in these uninhibited dancers, even after
thousands of years, you can sense the energy and almost smell the sweat.
Spartan dances were famous for their vitality. In one particularly athletic version, women had to jump up and drum their buttocks with their heels as many times as possible. It was incredibly difficult, but most importantly for the ancients, it revealed a large amount of naked thigh. This is probably where Spartan girls earned their nickname: 'thigh-flashers.'
As part of their state education, the thigh-flashers would go down to the banks of the Eurotas river for what one poet described as the 'nichta di ambrosias' – the ambrosial nights. The poet goes on to evoke scenes of ritual ecstatic dances and choral contests – the girls singing to each other of limb-loosening desire, tossing their long hair, being ridden like horses and exhausted by love.
It's no surprise that Sparta was one of the few ancient cities that had the reputation for encouraging girl-on-girl sex. Women and men there were used to living separate lives.
Marriage by capture
At the age of seven, boys would be sent away to the agoge –
the tough, uncompromising Spartan system where they would be schooled
in the art of war. Male bonding wasn't just encouraged; it was compulsory.
At the age of 12, a boy was paired with an older man, usually one of the
unmarried warriors, aged between 20 and 30.
This man would have been responsible not only for the conduct of the boy, but also for providing for him materially. He was a surrogate mother, father, teacher and mentor. But he was also a lover, for institutionalised pederasty was a part and parcel of life for the Spartan warriors. These intimate relationships seem to have had lasting psychological and emotional effects on the men.
When the time came for them to get married, it must have been a difficult adjustment to make. But the pragmatic Spartans came up with an unusual way to help them through their wedding night. They practised a custom called 'marriage by capture'. On her wedding night, a bride would have her head shaved, like a small boy in the agoge. She would be dressed in a man's cloak and sandals and left alone in a dark room.
Meanwhile, her husband would quietly leave the common mess, come to her, lay her down on a straw palette, have sex with her and then slip back to sleep with his comrades as usual. This wasn't just a quaint wedding-night ritual. It could carry on for months or even years.
There has been much debate about the significance of this bizarre ritual. However, it seems obvious that it was a piece of sexual theatre, designed to acclimatise men to the presence of women when, until then, their only experience of sex had been with other men.
The priority of babies
Yet, however hard the Spartans tried to make marriage more palatable
to their young men, it seems that persuading them to do their duty was
sometimes problematic. According to one story – which is probably
exaggerated, but too good not to repeat – Spartan women would beat
men about the head and then drag them round an altar to get them to commit.
There's another more credible account. In the middle of winter, unmarried men were stripped naked and forced to march round the marketplace, singing a humiliating song about how their punishment was just and fair because they had flouted the laws. Sparta was no place for a confirmed bachelor.
The treatment meted out to these men may seem extreme, but its severity stemmed from a very real need – to produce the next generation of warriors. The obsession with competition and physical fitness for girls reflected the same anxiety. Women were well fed and well treated because healthy women were more likely to produce healthy babies.
A fragment of a sculpture of Eilythea, the goddess of childbirth, shows her in labour – spirits either side of her clutch her belly, helping her to get through the terrible pain. Spartan women would have paid this image a lot of respect, because of the constant pressure on them to keep producing sturdy male children.
It was a huge priority for the Spartans to keep the numbers of their warrior élite high. There were never that many of them – at most 10,000, a number that steadily declined throughout the 5th century. One reason was that Spartan women didn't get married until they were 18 and men until they were 28 or 29, incredibly late by Greek standards.
A state run by women
Spartan women weren't just baby makers. At a time when Greek women
were expected to be invisible, they had power and responsibility in their
own right. In fact, they were so cocksure that they dared to take on the
men: in politics, on the streets and even in that most sacred bastion
– the sporting arena.
It wasn't only Spartan women's physicality that shocked the outside world. Their freedom was equally notorious. Aristotle described Sparta as a gyneocratia – a state run by women – and he didn't mean it as a compliment.
In Athens and other Greek city-states, women were not allowed to own land or control large amounts of wealth. Heiresses and widows married according to the wishes of fathers or brothers – usually to cousins or uncles, to keep the wealth in the family. And with the exception of travelling in carriages to weddings and funerals, riding would have been out of the question.
But in Sparta, women held the keys to the coffers. They could be land-owners, and property holders in their own right. They could inherit estates, and even seem to have had the right to choose who or even whether to marry.
Sporting legend
Whereas, in Athens, laws were drawn up to restrict women's visibility
in public, some Spartan women actually achieved the unthinkable –
they became celebrities. The most famous example was Kyniska, a Spartan
princess and, in her day, a sporting legend.
Kyniska means 'little hound', and she was obviously a tomboy from a sporty family. The names of her female relations translate as 'well horsed', 'flash of lightning', 'she who leads from the front'. But it would be Kyniska who would go down in history as the owner of a champion chariot team.
She was an expert equestrian and very wealthy, the perfect qualifications for a successful trainer. She didn't race herself, but employed men to drive, and she made no secret of her ambition. She entered her team at the Olympic games – the showcase for outstanding athletes from all over the Greek world. The team won, and the men were astounded. Four years later, she entered again. She won again.
The bitter irony is that Kyniska probably didn't see her victories. At Olympia, the usual men-only rules applied. But she made certain that the world wouldn't ignore her success. She dedicated a monument to herself right in the heart of the Olympic sanctuary. The inscription read:
I, KYNISKA, VICTORIOUS WITH A CHARIOT OF SWIFT-FOOTED HORSES, HAVE ERECTED THIS STATUE AND DECLARE I AM THE ONLY WOMAN IN ALL OF GREECE TO HAVE WON THIS CROWN.
Rough justice
Spartan women weren't only powerful in the sporting arena. They also
played a role in the political life of the city. They were trained to
speak in public, and although they had no official role in the decision-making
process, they made sure their opinions were heard.
And it was the women who seemed to have been the most vociferous when it came to enforcing the warrior ethic. Sparta's unwritten laws were policed at street level by a kind of community-based rough justice. Women were in the forefront, praising the brave and insulting cowards as they passed. We know what they called out from a collection called The Sayings of the Spartan Women.
In Athens, silence was a mark of breeding, but Spartan girls were positively lippy. They were masters in the art of laconic speaking – named after Lakonia, the heartland of Sparta. Deployed properly, a laconic phrase could draw blood from even the most armour-plated warrior.
When a warrior was describing the brave death of his comrade, a woman said: 'Such a noble journey ... Shouldn't you have gone too?' When a man complained that his sword was too short, his mother replied: 'Take a step forward and it will be long enough.'
More Nazi than nurture
However, although Spartan women enjoyed freedom of speech and financial
liberty, it would be a mistake to paint a picture of Sparta as a kind
of feminist wonderland. We should think of Spartan women as regimental
wives, the backbone of the system – breeding sons and then surrendering
them to the agoge when they turned seven.
Because Sparta was constantly anxious about its declining birth rate, every Spartan boy must have been the apple of his mother's eye. Helots were there to do the domestic chores, and there was plenty of time to dote on little Leonidas. But when the time came to send them off to the agoge, though it must have been a wrench, it was done without hesitation. This was Sparta, and maternal instincts came a poor second to the interests of the state.
Our concept of motherhood is of a gentle, supportive relationship between mother and child. But in Sparta, there was no room for sentimentality. In a state where unswerving obedience to the warrior code was rated more highly than life itself, mothers wanted to make absolutely sure that sons did their duty.
Their approach was more Nazi than nurture. When a son left for battle, his mother would issue a traditional farewell: 'With your shield or on it' – in other words, either come back victorious or come back dead. If a son failed to live up to this injunction, he could expect little sympathy from his mother. One story goes that a Spartan mother, confronting her runaway son, hitched up her skirts and asked him if he intended to crawl back where he had come from.
Following the defeat of Persia, there had been few opportunities for Spartan men to make their mothers proud. But that was about to change.
The helots revolt
Since the Persian invasion, Sparta and Athens had co-existed peacefully,
and against all the odds, the alliance had held firm. But given the huge
ideological differences between the two Greek powers, it was almost inevitable
that, at some point, mutual mistrust would boil over into outright conflict.
In 465 BC, a series of massive earthquakes hit Sparta. The consequences were devastating and the loss of life immense. However, the earthquakes presented a golden opportunity to Sparta's 'enemy within': the huge population of helots, whose slave labour propped up the Spartan system. In the aftermath of the disaster, the helots seized their chance and revolted.
The rebel slaves came to Mount Ithome, at the heart of Messenia, the homeland that had been taken from them by the Spartans. They fortified the position and waited for the Spartans to come. But for all their fearsome reputation, the latter failed to put down the revolt.
As the conflict dragged on, Sparta was forced to appeal to Athens and its other allies for assistance. Some city-states sent troops to help put down the revolt, and the Athenians brought in siege equipment, technology not developed by the hide-bound Spartans.
It was then that the Spartans began to fret. The enslavement of the Messenians had always been a slightly sticky issue. The Greeks had absolutely no problem with slavery, but they found less easy to swallow the subjugation of an entire native Greek population. The Spartans knew this, and their paranoia grew. What would happen if the Athenians sided with the rebels? Or, even worse, spread the virus of democracy among Spartan citizens themselves? It was not a risk worth taking, and they sent the Athenians home.
Athens took serious offence at its dismissal by the Spartans. Being summarily sent home with no explanation was not the treatment they expected from an ally whom they had only been trying to help.
They tore up the old treaty of allegiance and began to collude with Sparta's enemies. And, to add insult to injury, they even helped the rebels who had managed to escape, by setting them up in a new city. It was the beginning of open hostilities.
Now it was only a matter of time before Sparta and Athens would be at war again – this time with each other.
The Peloponnesian War
When the war between Sparta and Athens finally came, many things could
be said to have caused it. However, the simple truth was that, over a
period of 50 years, Sparta had allowed Athens to become so powerful that
its own sphere of influence in the Peloponnese was now under threat.
In 431 BC, seizing on a rather flimsy pretext, Sparta declared war and sent troops to invade Athenian territory. They forced their way to within seven miles of the hated city walls of Athens itself.
The Athenian victims of the first year of the war were given a ceremonial burial in a graveyard outside the city. Here, in their honour, Pericles delivered an impassioned speech to the crowd.
Pericles' funeral oration has gone down in history as one of the all-time great war speeches. It was based on a simple and satisfying proposition: everything we, the Athenians, do is right and everything our enemies, the Spartans, do is wrong.
The Spartans, from their earliest boyhood, are submitted to the most laborious training in courage. We pass our lives without all these restrictions, and yet are just as ready to face the same dangers as they are ... We meet danger voluntarily, with natural rather than with state-induced courage.
Pericles' speech is a rallying cry in defence of a way of life – a call to arms against an enemy whose social system, politics and even character were so alien as to make peaceful co-existence impossible. It set the tone for an all-out war that, at that time, was unprecedented in its scale and savagery. History would know it as the Peloponnesian War, but in fact it would rage from Sicily in the west to the Hellespont in the east – and would last more than two decades.
The Athenian plague
It quickly became a stalemate, with Sparta dominant on land and Athens
at sea, with neither side able to deliver the killer blow.
Every year for five years, Spartan armies laid waste to Athenian territory, burning farms and destroying crops. The countryside was abandoned as the Athenians withdrew behind the walls that connected their city to the port of Piraeus. They became, in effect, islanders, reliant on their fleet to keep them supplied.
Within a year, plague came to the overcrowded city. Corpses were piled high in the streets, and almost a third of the population of Athens was wiped out. The historian Thucydides, who was an eye-witness to much of the war, described the sufferings of the Athenian plague victims as 'almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure'. Wealth and power were certainly no protection. Pericles himself succumbed to the virulent disease.
For Sparta, the plague was proof that the gods were on their side. But gods can be fickle.
Trapped at Pylos
Thucydides later wrote that nothing shocked the Greeks as much as
what happened on an island in Sparta's own backyard.
Pylos was a port on the west coast of the Peloponnese and of major strategic importance to the Spartans. In 425 BC, it was seized by the Athenian army, helped by the former slaves who had revolted against Sparta after the earthquake. The Spartans could not stomach this provocation and sent an army to retake Pylos.
They laid siege to the Athenians in the town and set up a smaller unit on the mile and a half of rock that stretches across Pylos bay – the island of Sphacteria. Their plan was to blockade the Athenians by land and water. But they seem to have forgotten whom they were dealing with.
The Athenians were totally at home on the sea. Within a few days, they had sent a large fleet into Pylos bay and seized control. The tables were turned – Sparta was forced to withdraw, leaving behind the 400 or so troops who had been posted on the island of Sphacteria. They were trapped, and for 72 days there was a stand-off.
Surrender of the Spartans
The stalemate was finally broken when the Spartans scored a spectacular
own goal. A group of soldiers stupidly let a campfire get out of control.
It raged across the island, burning away all the protective cover. The
Spartans had nowhere to hide. The Athenians could now see exactly how
many they were and where.
The Athenians decided to try and take the island with 800 archers and 800 lightly armed troops. They landed but refused to fight the Spartans at close quarters. Instead, they picked them off with javelins and arrows and rocks. Whenever the Spartan phalanx advanced, the Athenians retreated.
Soon it was the Spartans who were backing off, leaving behind 300 dead as the survivors headed for a defensive position at the north end of the island. But an Athenian commander sent a detachment of archers to cut them off from behind. The Spartans were surrounded in what looked like a mini-Thermopylae in the making.
Over 50 years before, King Leonidas and his 300 hand-picked troops had sacrificed their lives for the glory of Sparta at the battle of Thermopylae. For the Spartans on Sphacteria, there was no higher ideal to aspire to. Hopelessly outnumbered by the Athenians, this was their chance to emulate the heroics of their grandfathers and bring honour to the state. They knew exactly what was expected of them – a heroic struggle, a beautiful death, the final test passed.
But that wasn't what happened. The Athenians were far too clever. They held back for a while, and then politely sent over a herald to ask if the Spartans would like to surrender. And, unbelievably, that's exactly what the Spartans did.
Hostages in Athens
If it had been anyone other than Spartans, surrender wouldn't have
been a surprise. After all, these half-starved men had been trapped on
the island for more than two months and were being used by the Athenian
archers for target practice. But these were Spartans. They had
spent their lives preparing to die fighting. Surrender should not have
been an option.
Perhaps Pericles had been right in his famous speech, with its mockery of the Spartans' 'state-induced courage'. On this occasion, it had been undermined by the Athenians' tactics and mind-games. First, they had refused to give the Spartans what they had wanted – a stand-up fight. Then they had given them something they had never expected – an opt-out clause from their death-or-glory contract.
The myth of Spartan invincibility had been comprehensively shattered. For Athens, it was a victory to savour.
There is a remarkable relic from that shocking defeat in Athens – a shield probably taken from one of the hoplites who had thrown in the towel. Judging from its condition, whoever it belonged to must have been put through the mill. You can just about make out an inscription on its battered surface, which would have been punched in at a later date. It simply reads: 'TAKEN BY THE ATHENIANS FROM THE LAKONIANS AT PYLOS.'
Along with this trophy, 120 Spartans were brought to Athens as hostages: if Sparta made so much as a move on Athenian territory, they were to be executed. They were objects of fascination in the city, where they were displayed in public like exotic animals.
Thucydides tells us that one of the crowd asked mockingly if the 'real' Spartans had died on the island. 'Spindles would be worth a great deal,' came the Spartan reply, 'if they could mark out brave men from cowards.' 'Spindles' was the Spartan word for arrows, a weapon they considered wimpy and womanish because they killed from a distance. This was meant to be a crushing response, delivered in true laconic style – but it comes across as just plain sulky.
Suing for peace
Sparta was so rattled by the events on Sphacteria that it immediately
sued for peace. But Athens was in no mood to be generous. It capitalised
on its advantage and held out for better terms.
It would be five years before the Spartan hostages saw their home again. When they returned, they suffered none of the punishments usually meted out to so-called 'tremblers'. They were not stripped of their citizenship, they were not forbidden to walk around with cheerful faces and they were not beaten up in the streets. For once, the women kept their cutting comments to themselves.
Spartan society was pole-axed, but before long the laughter and mockery of the Athenians would be silenced, as the final act of the bloody war was played out.
