Spartans in Roman army - Printable Version +- RomanArmyTalk (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat) +-- Forum: Research Arena (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forumdisplay.php?fid=4) +--- Forum: Roman Military History & Archaeology (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forumdisplay.php?fid=8) +--- Thread: Spartans in Roman army (/showthread.php?tid=11564) Pages:
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Re: Spartans in Roman army - PMBardunias - 01-23-2008 Thanks Ross. How long were clava? Do we know they were one handed weapons? I have seen the reinforced clubs of the Parthians and Sassanids themselves and they appear to be about the size of a baseball or cricket bat, but those were for use on horseback. Would they be long enough for use by infantry? I recently saw a clip on youtube from a Czech movie about the hussite wars- watching Imperial knights beaten comically by peasants with morgenstern maces. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE-ghxHN ... re=related Re: Spartans in Roman army - Magnus - 01-24-2008 Bad question...but when did Sparta fall? Did it collapse with the Roman empire? Re: Spartans in Roman army - Marcus Julius - 01-24-2008 Quote:I was reading Osprey's Elite 155 "Roman Battle Tactics 109 BC - AD 313" and in page 19 I saw a picture of a gravestone with a caption saying: "Gravestone of Aurelius Alexys, a heavy infantryman of an elite cohort of Spartans, who may have been killed at Nisibis in AS 217." hock:The book, is Osprey's "Elite" series (other similar series include: warrior, soldier, or men-at-arms) I would be willing to bet, had that same sentence you quoted appeared within the warrior series, It would have said "... a heavy infantryman of a cohort of Spartan warriors." It's a way that editors and publishers try to keep the subject matter on line with the THEME of the book. Re: Spartans in Roman army - hoplite14gr - 01-24-2008 Quote:Bad question...but when did Sparta fall? Did it collapse with the Roman empire? Sparta was "burned off" militarilly after Eapmeinondas reinstated the Messenians and made Skiritis independent in mid 4th century B.C. All attempts of later Spartan king to increase the land and hence the warrior number through conquest failed. Sparta fell to the Romans by thew time of Nabis late (Hellenistic period) Romans created later the KOINON ELEFTHEROLAKONON = commonwealth of free Laconians. Perhaps as a source to raise auxiliary troops. Romans were recruiting Greeks in the Imperial armies and Spartans were no exception. The area become unimportant militarily in the late Roman and Byzantine period until the 13th century when Romanian Franks reruited naval crews in Monemvasia and Byzantines recruioted light troops (Tsakones-Miliggoi) in the ancient Skiritis area. The Turks failed to conquer Mani (ince upon a time Mora of Limnatis) and an Evzoni unitt was raised for the Royal Guard of the modern Greek state. So in a sense Sparta never fell :!: Kind regards Re: Spartans in Roman army - Ross Cowan - 01-24-2008 Quote:Thanks Ross. Good point. Like the clubmen on Trajan's column, Alexys also has a shield so it would appear the club was to be wielded single-handed. Libanius' account of Singara states that the Roman clubman would hit the head of Persian cataphract as he passed. That may suggest a club longer than the weapons depicted on Trajan's column and Alexys' gravestone. Cheers, R Re: Spartans in Roman army - PMBardunias - 01-24-2008 Quote:Bad question...but when did Sparta fall? Did it collapse with the Roman empire? Not at all a bad question, but one that is not so easy to answer. I recently summarized the fate of Sparta on another site, so I'll cut and paste here: The Thebans put an end to Spartan Hegemony and "free" the helots of Messenia (those in Laconia remain). Sparta now consists of Laconian alone, but the governing system is unchanged. The Spartans decline to join Alexander's merry band. In conjunction with Persian naval elements, they lead an ill-fated war against the Macedonian Hegemony while Alexander is somewhere between Issus and Guagamela. They take over Crete and much of the Peloponnese before meeting the macedonian governor at the "Battle of mice" and losing. Sparta is left essentially unchanged, though humbled once again. Had they won we would remember Alexander the pretty good, conqueror of Anatolia. In the time of the successors Sparta remains one of the more powerful second-tier states. She loses a battle to Demetrios, but the "besieger" fails to besiege her. Between around 300BC and 250BC she lets her Agoge system falter, becoming more like the rest of greece. Areus in this period is the first Spartan king to put his face on coins in imitation of the other great kings. Sparta is still a source for great mercenary generals in this century. A notable figure early in the century is Cleonymus, a Spartiate and mercenary who fights for Pyrrus of Epirus to good effect in macedonia. Later as Pyrrus' fortunes wane, he convinces him to besiege the city of Sparta. The Spartan men are off in Crete fighting, presumably earning money, when the attack comes and the Pyrrus is defeated by the old and young men. The men then show up and they chase follow his retreat to Argos where he is killed in street fighting- by an old woman throwing a roof tile! The most famous Spartan mercenary general hails from this period, when Xanthippus leads a losing Carthaginian army to defeat the invading Romans under Regulus, changing the course of the first Punic war. Hannibal had as a tutor a Lakedaimonian as well, who wrote a now lost history of his wars. The Spartans are interesting in the mid to late 200s BC because a King, Agis, tries to undo all of their social problems by recreating the original Lycurgan system. The plan starts off well, but is sabotaged and Agis is executed. Many disenfranchised greeks in other states looked at this example favorably- their upper classes were not pleased. In the middle of the 3rd C BC, the Achean league under Aratus throw out the Macedonians from the Peloponnese. All of Greece was free of a reeling macedon at this time, it was the last, missed, opportunity for autonomy. In an odd twist of history, the murdered reformer King Agis' wife married the son of the man who did him in. She or simple political strategy lead him to attempt the same reforms. He, Cleomenes III, is very successful but brutal, casting out the other blood-line of kings and the Ephors and essentially becoming a tyrant (for good, so he says). His program is very popular with the underclasses in other cities and he threatens to topple the Achean league, the power that balances against Sparta. The Aetolians invade and take a huge number of helots as slaves, a weakened and fractious Sparta cannot stop them. Aratus and the Acheans call in the Macedonians for help at the price of giving up all the gains they made in kicking them out earlier! Cleomenes builds a large army with subsidies from Ptolemy against Antigonas of Macedon and by freeing Helots who can afford to buy their freedom- many can. They meet at Sellasia on the road to Sparta and after a truly horrific and close battle, Antigonas wins. He makes a show of returning Sparta to its ancestral ways- returning the Ephors after kicking out the tyrant Cleomenes, but Sparta never truly recovers her ancestral ways. The next few decades are marked by a series of Tyrants who build up armies of mercenaries and freed helots, but they all fall. The last, Nabis, who claims kingship through a tie to the long exiled Damaratus who accompanied the Persian invasion, makes sweeping "reforms"- exiling many Spartiates and enfranchising rich helots. In the end he is undone by his own Aetolian mercenaries. Sparta's independant hsitory ends here at the hands of a fellow greek, Philipoemen who "frees" Sparta from tyrrany and this time force her to become a member of the Achean league after recalling the exiles and kicking out the new helot citizens (selling many into slavery). Eventually the Romans step in, but they confirm Sparta as a member of the Achean league. Sparta flourishes under the Romans, with a number of senators coming from her citizens. She also becomes a bit of a farce, a theme park for rich romans to pretend to enjoy what the ancient Sparta was. A Spartan admiral, Eurycles, son of a Kytherian pirate, on the side of Octavius chases Cleopatra and Anthony's ship and their treasure ship after Actium. Although Eurycles makes a great show of confronting Anthony across the bows, for Anthony had his pirate father killed, in the end these spartans, unlike their forefathers, opt to take the treasure ship. Eurycles becomes a roman citizen and de facto leader of Sparta, whose boundaries are altered by Agustus. He seems to have gone on some sort of mission to Judea and intrigued there with Herod. He ends up being exiled for a time due to the protests at rome of no less a family than that of Brasidas, but ends his days in honor. His children hold high positions and his grandson is a made a Roman senator. Sparta is eventually sacked by the Goths in the 4th c AD, with many citizens fleeing south to more remote and mountainous regions of laconia. The peoponnese is heavily settles by Slavic tribes in the early Byzantine period, at least one of which, the Melingi, keeps its tribal identity into the time of the Latin conquest. Villehardoiun, after the 4th crusade, holds sway over laconia and builds or rebuilds a series of castles to keep out the slavs and unhappy greeks. The region later becomes Venetian, then Turkish, though it falls to the turks after Constantinople and for a time the Byzantine nobility flees there. The people of the Mani peninsula in southern Laconia in particular, claim to be spartans and are addressed as such even by leaders even as late as Napoleon- who oddly had as a godfather an expatriate Maniate in Corsica. The revolt from the Turks starts in the Mani, so it could be claimed that the "Spartans" once again defeated the Eastern menace to Greek Independence. Re: Spartans in Roman army - Gaius Julius Caesar - 01-26-2008 Quote:Hi Paul, So where is the referene for Eurycles Ross? Re: Spartans in Roman army - Ross Cowan - 01-26-2008 Quote:So where is the referene for Eurycles Ross? Plutarch, Life of Antony 67.2-4. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... tony*.html R Re: Spartans in Roman army - Gaius Julius Caesar - 01-26-2008 Thanks Ross, that will be an interesting read! Re: Spartans in Roman army - PMBardunias - 01-27-2008 I have a series of papers on Spartans under Rome, the Euryclids, etc. If anyone would like .pdfs, just send me an email and I'll return. Re: Spartans in Roman army - Timotheus - 02-04-2008 This is so far past any sort of Spartan heyday that it really would mean nothing at all. Consider it propoganda at best and at worst merely a distinction being used to show the units home. Think of it this way. If the Italian army decided one day to rename all of its division legions would everyone start to shake in their boots? Re: Spartans in Roman army - Celtic505 - 02-04-2008 Good point Timotheus, but names can sometimes make a slight difference or psychological impact upon some. The most tiny of advantages is better than none I guess. |