Although we know very little about Leonidas during the period of his
life described in this second book of the trilogy, we know that he
married Gorgo – a woman described even by non-Spartans as particularly
clever. We also know he was later elected to lead a coalition
of Greek forces against the Persians in 481. These two facts
tell us significant things about what kind of man Leonidas was, and so
provide hints about what was happening in this stage of his life,
against the background of his society and historical developments
generally.
Turning first to Leonidas’ election to lead the coalition
against Persia: this fact has far too often been interpreted as simply
a tribute to Sparta’s position as the leading military power
of the age. Such an interpretation ignores the fact that just
two years after Leonidas’ death, the same coalition preferred
Athenian leadership to that of Leonidas’ successor Pausanias
– and Pausanias had just led the coalition to a spectacular victory at
Plataea! Sparta was no less powerful in 478 than she had been in 480,
and her reputation in arms was greater. If simply being
Spartan was all that mattered to the allies, the coalition would have
either accepted Pausanias or asked Sparta to send another Spartan
general to replace him; it did neither. Just as Pausanias was
not elected in 478, Leonidas was elected in 480 – not because he was
Spartan, but because of who he was.
With respect to Gorgo, we know that Leonidas married her before he
became king. We also know that at his death Gorgo was still
of childbearing age. But if Leonidas was, as Herodotus
claims, born only “shortly” after his brother
Dorieus, he would have been roughly sixty years old at Thermopylae.
There are two reasons why I believe this is unlikely.
First, his performance at Thermopylae, in the forefront of
one of the most bitterly fought phalanx battles in history, is
improbable for a man of sixty. Hoplite fighting was grueling,
even if it lasted only a few hours on a single day. Second,
it would mean that he married a woman young enough to be his daughter,
which was not Spartan custom. Based on these facts, I have
hypothesized that Leonidas could not have been much more than
forty-five at Thermopylae: forty-five being the age after which Spartan
reservists were no longer called up for front-line service.
Likewise, I believe Herodotus intentionally underestimated
Gorgo’s age in his depiction of her encounter with
Aristagoras in order to discredit Cleomenes, and because
girls’ ages were unimportant to other Greeks. By
lowering the age conventionally given to Leonidas by a decade and
increasing Gorgo’s by half that, I have made the age
difference between them consistent with their relationship as suggested
by the evidence, and more compatible with Spartan custom.
Even with this adjustment, Leonidas would almost certainly have been
married once before his marriage with Gorgo, because Leonidas would
still have reached the age of thirty before Gorgo reached a
marriageable age in Sparta. Bachelors over the age of thirty
faced severe sanctions in Sparta – and Leonidas was, if nothing else, a
law-abiding Spartan citizen. I have therefore hypothesized a
first marriage and widowhood to make Leonidas free to marry Gorgo when
she comes of age.
The key historical events incorporated into this novel are the scene
between Gorgo, her father, and Aristagoras, and the Battle of Sepeia
between Sparta and Argos. The fact that Mycenae and Tiryns
escaped Argive dominance and were briefly independent members of the
Peloponnesian League is another, often overlooked, consequence of the
defeat of Argos at Sepeia. It reinforces Sparta’s
deserved reputation for sophisticated diplomacy, which left cities
(except, notably, Messenia) their independence. While there is no
historical evidence for Leonidas’ playing a role either in
the battle or in this diplomatic coup, I think the fact that he was
later elected leader of all the Greeks opposed to Persia suggests he
had a reputation, for both military competence and fair treatment of
allies, that justified such trust. These events seemed a
likely means for him to have earned that trust.
Cleomenes’ campaigns against Athens and the successful
Corinthian challenge to Sparta, which resulted in a significant change
in the character of the Peloponnesian League, are also historical
fact. The significance of the alteration of League voting
rules can hardly be overstated. Equally important is that
members of the League did not owe Sparta tribute. These are
key features that made the Peloponnesian League less oppressive than
Athens’ Delian League would later be.
The Ionian revolt, the Athenian support for that uprising, and the
defeat of the combined rebel fleet were also historical events.
Although touched on only tangentially in this novel, these
are the events that ultimately led to the Persian invasions of 490 and
480.
The main focus of this novel, however, has been character development
and descriptions of society, rather than events. As in A
Boy of the Agoge and my other novels set in
Sparta, the Spartan society I describe is based on both research and
common sense. I have drawn heavily on Conrad Stibbe and his
depiction of archaic Sparta and on Thomas Figueira, who effectively
refutes allegations that the Spartan population was already declining
in the second half of the sixth century BC. Until the
earthquake of 465, Spartiate population was increasing and causing
significant social pressures and problems, such as those described in
this novel.
Altogether, the depiction of Sparta in this novel differs from many
stereotypes of Sparta not because I am ignorant of the usual
allegations of pederasty, brutality, ignorance, humorlessness, and
boorishness, but because analysis of the evidence decisively refutes
these stereotypes and I consciously wanted to portray a Sparta that is
closer to the historical Sparta based on the breadth of information
available to us today. Let me address some of the most
glaring misconceptions about Sparta common to many works of fiction and
nonfiction alike.
Art and Culture:
Even if Spartan sculpture and architecture never attained the heights
known in Athens, Sparta was anything but a city without art, culture,
or notable architecture. Sparta had a highly developed
pottery industry that was not eclipsed by that of Athens until the
fifth century. Its bronzeworks were coveted and exported
throughout the known world, particularly in the sixth century
BC. Its sculptors received commissions in Olympia and
Delphi. Its dance and music were considered so superior that
they attracted mass tourism, and artists from other parts of Greece
competed for the honor of participating in Spartan musical festivals.
The city itself was different from other Greek cities, but it
was not just a collection of villages, nor was it lacking any of the
features that characterized Greek cities – agora, theater, fountains,
gymnasia, palaestra, temples, shrines, memorials – except walls.
The Roman commentator Pausanias, who claims to have recorded
only the “most significant sites,” describes 100
shrines, 46 temples, and many other war memorials, graves, and statues
in his description of Sparta in the second century AD. For a
more detailed description of what Sparta was like in the age of
Leonidas, see my articles The Land of Leonidas
and In Search of Sparta
(published in"Sparta: Journal of Ancient Spartan and
Greek History" ).
Dress and
Grooming: Some modern depictions of Spartans show them as
shaggy, unkempt men with scrawny, chest-long beards and wild, tangled
hair hanging around their shoulders. Other novelists have
described them as stinking, filthy, and slovenly. These
images contradict the historical record and existing archaeological
evidence. Herodotus makes a great point of how the Spartans
groomed themselves before Thermopylae. A statue fragment
found in the heart of Sparta and dating from the early fifth century
(commonly – or affectionately – referred to as Leonidas) shows a man
with a clipped beard and neat hair. Earlier archaic artwork
unanimously shows men with short beards and long, but very neat,
“locks” of hair. Whether these locks were
in fact braided or plaited in some way it is not possible to tell from
the stylized nature of the evidence. However, it is
physically impossible to keep long hair neat and in orderly strands
when engaged in sports and other strenuous activities unless it is
carefully confined in some way. Thus, practical modern
experience suggests that Spartan men did braid their hair, something
that is consistent with if not definitively proved by the
archaeological evidence. Braiding has the added advantage of
being something that can be done quickly and alone if necessary, or
done elaborately with the help – as every Spartan would have had – of an
attendant. This would have been a way for men to express
individual taste and personality within the rigid limits of
Sparta’s code about not displaying wealth, and again
consistent with remarks attributed to Lycurgus about long hair making
an ugly man uglier and a handsome one handsomer.
As for Spartan women, there is no reason to believe that they, any more
than women anywhere in the world in any period of history, were immune
to the fundamental vice of vanity. On the contrary,
contemporary plays depicting Spartan women (such as Andromache by
Euripides) stress rather the reverse: that Spartan women were
luxury-loving and excessively vain. Aristotle accuses Spartan
women of pathological greed and portrays them as completely
self-indulgent. More significantly, jewelry has been found in
archaeological finds in Laconia. The fact that
Sparta’s lawgiver Lycurgus is credited with prohibiting the
use of gold and silver as currency is not the same thing as prohibiting
women from adorning themselves with these metals, much less with other
decorative items. I have opted to show Sparta as a society in
transition, where some women still wear jewelry, particularly the
queens, but where a faction is becoming radicalized and scorns
traditional forms of female adornment.
Illiteracy:
Spartans could not have commanded the respect of the ancient world,
engaged in complicated diplomatic maneuverings, or attracted the sons
of intellectuals like Xenophon to their public school if they had been
as illiterate and uneducated as some modern writers like to portray
them. Clearly Spartans knew their laws very well, they could
debate in international forums, and their sayings were considered so
witty that they were collected by their contemporaries.
Furthermore, Sparta is known to have entertained leading
philosophers and to have had a high appreciation of poetry, as
evidenced by her many contests and festivals for poetry in the form of
lyrics. The abundant inscriptions and dedications found in
Sparta are clear testimony to a literate society; one does not brag
about one’s achievements in stone if no one in your society
can read! Likewise, Sparta sent written orders to its
commanders, and anecdotal evidence suggests that mothers and sons
exchanged letters.
Institutionalized
Pederasty: There is absolutely no evidence of pederasty in
Spartan society during the age of Leonidas or in the centuries
before. Herodotus tells several tales of Spartan men showing
loyalty to and affection for their wives, and of men being sexually
attracted to other men’s wives or young maidens, but tells
not one tale of Spartan homosexual lovers. Xenophon, the only
historian with firsthand experience of the agoge, states explicitly:
“… [Lycurgus] … laid down that in
Sparta, lovers should refrain from molesting boys just as much as
parents avoid having intercourse with their children or brothers with
their sisters.” It is hard to find a more
definitive statement than this, and from the most credible
source. To dismiss this evidence simply because it does not
suit preconceived ideas is arrogant.
Xenophon goes on to add: “It does not surprise me, however,
that some people do not believe this, since in many cities the laws do
not oppose lusting after boys.” And this is the
crux of the matter. All of our written sources on Sparta come
from those other cities, where pederasty was rampant. In
short, the bulk of the written record on Sparta comes from men who
could not imagine a world without pederasty. But then,
neither could they imagine women who were educated, physically fit, and
economically powerful who were not also licentious and lewd.
Modern readers ought to be more open-minded and admit that pederasty is
not inherent in society — particularly not in a society where
women are well integrated. My thesis is supported by another
ancient authority, Aristotle, who blamed all of Sparta’s ills
(from his point of view) on the fact that the women were in control of
things, a fact that he in turn attributed to the lack of homosexuality
in Spartan society. In this, Aristotle exhibits an
astonishing appreciation of psychology, which modern research
conclusively supports. We now know that male victims of child
abuse grow up into misogynous men. The status of women in
Athens fits this description perfectly, while the status of women in
Sparta completely contradicts – indeed, refutes – the thesis that
Spartan men were systematically subjected to sexual abuse by their
elders.
Finally, I would like to call on the archaeological evidence.
To date — in sharp contrast to the case of other Greek cities
— no Spartan homoerotic artwork has been found. Since the
Spartan legacy of artifacts is somewhat less plentiful than that of
Athens, Corinth, or other cities, maybe something will still turn up;
but until that happens, the evidence is against institutionalized
pederasty in the agoge of the archaic and early classical periods – and
against widespread homosexuality among adult Spartans as well.
Kryptea:
The kryptea was a secret organization within a secretive society, and
contemporary observers knew very little about it — meaning
that we know even less. Allegedly it was composed of young
Spartans who by night murdered innocent helots deemed dangerous to the
Spartan state. In the late fifth century it was responsible
for a couple of credibly recorded incidents in which helots were
“disappeared.” However, the origins of
the organization — although attributed by Aristotle to
Lycurgus — are unknown, and there is good reason to doubt
that it was a fundamental feature of Spartan society throughout Spartan
history. First, the murder of helots without any form of due
process would have been disruptive to an economy based on helot labor,
and many Spartiate landowners would have been outraged to have their
best workers murdered. Second, it is not plausible that a
population terrorized by the constant threat of arbitrary murder would
have rendered the good service that Spartan helots did throughout the
archaic period, and through Thermopylae itself.
In my earlier novel Are
They Singing in Sparta?, I hypothesized that the
kryptea was initially an irregular military unit used for conducting
guerrilla operations during the Second Messenian War. I
suggested that at that time it killed only helots who were in rebellion
against the Spartan state, and none that were peacefully working on
estates. I further suggested that after the conclusion of the
Messenian war, the kryptea evolved into a kind of secret police charged
with eliminating “traitors” — not on a
whim but when ordered by someone in authority, whether ephors, kings,
or Gerousia. It was this concept of the kryptea that I also
employed in Spartan Slave, Spartan Queen and
in The
Olympic Charioteer.
However, Dr. Nic Fields recently noted that there is in fact no
evidence that the kryptea existed prior to the helot revolt of 465.
This is a very significant observation, as it suggests that
the kryptea may in fact have been created as a response to that revolt.
Such a theory would be completely consistent with the
evidence of a stable society in which art and trade flourished
throughout the archaic period, followed by a society in crisis and
decay following the earthquake and revolt. The kryptea is an
organization that fits well in a society that has become paranoid and
xenophobic, but is incomprehensible in a stable, well-functioning
society such as archaic Sparta. Thus, I have removed all
reference to the kryptea from this novel.
Marriage Customs:
Spartan marriage customs were viewed as peculiar even in ancient
times—as was almost everything about Spartan women.
Because all our sources on marriage are foreign, however, everything we
are told about the alleged customs is highly suspect. In
fact, almost everything said about Spartan marriage customs is
contradicted somewhere else. For example, Lycurgus allegedly
prohibited women from having dowries so that young men would select
their brides for their virtues rather than their possessions; but we
know for a fact that women inherited property and controlled vast
fortunes, and that women (Lysander’s daughters) lost
prospective husbands because of inadequate dowries. It is
impossible to legislate against greed. Another example is
Plutarch’s description on one page of how girls and women
engaged in sports and danced nude “with the young men looking
on,” only to claim a few pages later that Spartan husbands
often had children before they saw their wives by daylight—as
if the girls who danced, raced, and swam nude in public
weren’t the same girls who became their wives.
Certainly, we know absolutely nothing about the reasons why Spartans
apparently took their brides by stealth, rather than in a public
festival as in most of the ancient world. Modern speculation
about cross-dressing rituals and the need to accustom homosexual men to
heterosexual sex are pure speculation and mostly nonsensical. (See note
on institutionalized pederasty above.)
It is also important to keep in mind that despite the alleged ritual of
a bridegroom coming for his bride by stealth, every reliable source on
Sparta makes it clear that Spartan fathers, no less than fathers
elsewhere, chose their daughters’ husbands; and in the case
of orphaned heiresses, the kings controlled the marriage.
Furthermore, there is every indication that a marriage contract of some
kind was made between the families of the bride and groom before the
staged abduction. As far as can be determined today, the
contract whether verbal or written, not the consummation, was what made
a marriage legally binding.
Oppression of
Helots: The status of helots in Sparta was significantly
better than that of chattel slaves in the rest of Greece.
Helots could not be bought and sold – chattel slaves
could. Helots retained as much as 50 per cent of the fruits
of their labor – chattel slaves, nothing. Helots had functioning family
groups – chattel slaves were completely cut off from their families,
and often did not know the names or locations of their parents,
siblings, or children. Helots could marry and have children –
chattel slaves were usually locked up in separate accommodations to
prevent any intercourse between slaves, but could be sexually abused by
their masters and their masters’ friends at will.
Any child born to a chattel slave was the master’s
property to expose (kill), sell, or retain for personal service.
The better status of helots is underlined by the fact that
20,000 Athenian slaves ran away to join the Spartans in 413 BC, when a
Spartan army was close enough to Athens to give them prospects of
successfully escaping pursuit by their masters.
The prevalence of chattel slavery in the rest of the Greek world means
that in all probability, the perioikoi and certainly travelers to
Sparta would have had such slaves. A slave retained his or
her unfree status unless explicitly emancipated; thus, human beings who
had been sold as slaves in distant markets would still be
slaves in Sparta. Ambiguous references in ancient
sources suggest that Spartiates occasionally acquired these slaves.
Since helot labor was predominantly agricultural, and helots
could not be bought or sold outside of Lacedaemon, Spartiates may have
purchased specialist labor abroad as needed; and they would, of course,
have occasionally acquired slaves through capture or because parents
sold their children into slavery – something that is still done in some
parts of the world today.
It is also important for readers to distinguish (as ancient historians
singularly fail to do) between the helots of Laconia and the helots of
Messenia. The Laconian helots were probably not of Greek
origin, and may have been the descendants of the original inhabitants,
conquered by the Achaeans as early as 1200 BC. By the time of
the Dorian invasion, they were already in a subordinate status and
appear to have harbored no memories of an age of
independence. These helots furthermore appear to have been,
on the whole, completely reconciled to their status, and as such were
reliable and trusted, albeit second-class, members of Spartan society.
They provided the labor that kept the economy going and
provided essential support troops for the army. The helots of
Messenia, in contrast, had been conquered in the seventh or eighth
century BC by the Spartans themselves. They retained a
collective memory of being free, and this made them more resentful of
their status as helots. The irony is that when other Greeks
conquered other cities – as in Athens’ victory over Melos in
416 – it was common to slaughter the men and then carry off all the
women and children as chattel slaves, sending out settlers to take over
the conquered land. The Spartans’ comparatively
humane treatment of the Messenians, which enabled them to retain their
identity, created a constant threat and earned them a modern reputation
for brutality that ignores the alternative: Athens’ method of
outright slaughter, rape, pillage, and chattel slavery.
Finally, historical sources that describe the rounding up and killing
of rebellious and potentially rebellious helots date from a period
later than that of this novel, and they describe isolated incidents –
not a continuous pattern, as modern writers too often impute.
They occurred after a devastating earthquake that killed an estimated
twenty thousand people – and after a significant revolt by the
Messenian helots, who sought to exploit Sparta’s weakness
following the earthquake. The Spartan attitude toward helots
after the traumatic effect of the double blow of earthquake and revolt
is comparable to the impact of the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001 upon the American psyche. Sparta’s attitude
toward its subject population turned radically intolerant following the
shocks of 465-460 BC.
Xenophobia:
Throughout the archaic and into the classical period, Sparta was not a
xenophobic society. It welcomed poets, musicians, and
philosophers from around the world, and these not only came to but
often spent years in Sparta – as did, for example, the poets Alkman and
Tyrtaios and the philosopher Pythagoras. Lesser-known
foreigners came yearly as tourists to see Sparta’s famous
festivals, particularly the Gymnopaedia and the Hyacinthia.
Meanwhile, Spartan athletes competed at the pan-Hellenic games in
Olympia, Delphi, and Corinth. Sparta maintained permanent
representatives in Delphi, and sent envoys more than once to the court
of the Persian king.
Furthermore, while Sparta itself was landlocked, Lacedaemon had ports
that gave access to the Laconian and Messenian Gulfs and directly to
both the Ionian and Aegean Seas. These ports facilitated
trade with the rest of the ancient world, an activity that inherently
led to contact and exchange. Sparta did not depend in the
same way that Athens and Corinth did on imported materials
(particularly grain), and its citizens did not live from trade.
Nevertheless, Spartans were not inherently insular, paranoid, and
xenophobic, as too many modern writers suggest. Spartans did
not need to trade or become craftsmen themselves in order to enjoy and
benefit from trade and manufacturing, because they could rely on the
perioikoi to do the trading and manufacturing for them. The
perioikoi, in turn, benefited significantly from a monopoly on trade
and manufacturing in one of the largest and most fertile territories in
Greece, which accounts for their loyalty to Sparta until
Sparta’s decadence and decline in the fourth century.
However, following the shock of the earthquake and helot revolt of the
early fifth century, Sparta was drawn into a bitter war with Athens.
The Peloponnesian War became a further drain on
Sparta’s dwindling manpower, and contributed to a
“siege mentality” that had already been sparked by
the double blow of the earthquake and the helot revolt. This
was reflected in a variety of ways, from increased secrecy and
xenophobia to declining production of exportable artifacts.
In short, the long-drawn-out war between Sparta and Athens undermined
the foundations of both societies. The Peloponnesian War
turned both
Sparta and Athens into brutal imperialist tyrannies, and a shortage of
manpower in Sparta led to a sustained crisis that ultimately led to
Sparta’s military and moral defeat. By then,
however, Sparta had long since ceased to be the nation Leonidas would
have recognized.
