05-06-2008, 11:24 PM
Gentlemen, I fear we are in danger of being a little too pedantic here! I doubt very much if the lot of a serf/helot in Lakonia working for an absentee Master differed significantly from that of a peasant crippled with debt working for an absentee landlord in Attica....they both worked from sun-up to sun-down for someone else!
(Just a minute, so do most of us!!?! )
If Sparta did not degrade human beings in the way that Athens did in the mines at Laurion, I would suggest it was largely because there was no silver in Lakonia !
Epaminondas' strategy for curbing Spartan power by creating twin 'fetters' in the form of a self-governing independent Messenia ( thus depriving Sparta of over half it's wealth/economy), and founding Megalopolis were certainly effective - Sparta's prospects for Pan-Hellenic hegemony would never recover. In that sense, Leuktra (hurrah! ...back on-topic
) proved to be a real watershed in Spartan history.
Alas, even the genius of Epaminondas could not overcome the flaws and bitter rivalries of Greece's polis(city state) system, as the fact of Mantinea showed.
It is a sobering thought that a mere 27 years after Epaminondas' premature death, Thebes would be wiped off the face of the Earth by Alexander.......
(Just a minute, so do most of us!!?! )
If Sparta did not degrade human beings in the way that Athens did in the mines at Laurion, I would suggest it was largely because there was no silver in Lakonia !
Epaminondas' strategy for curbing Spartan power by creating twin 'fetters' in the form of a self-governing independent Messenia ( thus depriving Sparta of over half it's wealth/economy), and founding Megalopolis were certainly effective - Sparta's prospects for Pan-Hellenic hegemony would never recover. In that sense, Leuktra (hurrah! ...back on-topic
) proved to be a real watershed in Spartan history.Alas, even the genius of Epaminondas could not overcome the flaws and bitter rivalries of Greece's polis(city state) system, as the fact of Mantinea showed.
It is a sobering thought that a mere 27 years after Epaminondas' premature death, Thebes would be wiped off the face of the Earth by Alexander.......
"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori " - Horace
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
(It is a sweet and proper thing to die for ones country)
"No son-of-a-bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country" - George C Scott as General George S. Patton
Paul McDonnell-Staff
