Spartan Mora regiments at Battle of Plataea

[Paullus Scipio]

Paralus/Michael wrote:

The first thing is that the “unwashed” classes of citizenry that appear in the Cinadon story were unknown in Thucydides’ army (and he seemed to know eough about Sparta) or Herodotus. Bastards will always have been about; foreigners (like Xenophon's sons) likely not at this early stage; and one doesn’t suspect a large amount of “defaulters” based on land aggregation: the sheer number of Spartiates (if the figure is near reliable) militates against it. In any case, it seems that the numbers indicate that these groups likely did not form part of the Spartiate levy at this time: Herodotus describes the Lacedaemonian army as 10,000 hoplites, a figure franked by the 5,000 homoioi and 5,000 perioicoi ordered out to meet them. Nothing would suggest anything other than 5,000 homoioi of the 8,000 available?

Given that the 'Homioi' were the 'aristocracy' of Sparta - landowners who had no trade other than professional soldier ( see e.g. Agesilaus famous anecdote of asking the potters, butchers etc to stand up ), it rather begs the question of who performed all the myriad other trades and professions in Sparta. Clearly overall manpower in Sparta itself consisted at all times of rather more than the 'Homioi'.......Nor is the fact that Herodotus uses the word 'Spartiates' of them conclusive that they were all, in fact, 'Homioi' - even at this early date it is possible that some were 'Hypomeiones', but that the secretive Spartiates wished it believed that there were 8,000 of them - which by comparison with Athens seems unlikely, for the Hoplite forces of each were roughly the same size and Athens did not have anything like 8,000 landowners equivalent to 'Homioi'.

In any event, giving a breakdown of a national army of a 'poleis' is not the norm in either Herodotus or Thucydides.....for example,we are not told how many of Athens Hoplite force are from each class/strata of society - 'Hippeis', 'zeugitae' and so on, and notably in Athensthe amount of 'landholding' to qualify as a Hoplite, and thus be on 'the List'/Katalogos to qualify as a fully enfranchised citizen ( c.f. Homioi ) was set about twice as high as necessary . Thus there were plenty of 'Thetes' ( loosely equivqlent to 'Hypomeiones'? ) lower in society who did not qualify as Athens 'Hoplite Class', but who nevertheless served as 'Hoplites' ( Socrates was one such). Sparta was surely no different in drawing on its manpower - all the way down to 'Helots' as we have seen, when necessary. If Herodotus and Thucydides did not feel it necessary to explain the internal make-up of Athens or other state's armies by 'class', why should they have done so in Sparta's case ? ( even if they knew, unlikely in any event)