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A passage in Suetonius reveals that the Spartans were clients of the powerful patrician clan of the Claudii. Octavians's wife Livia was a member of the Claudii which might explain why Sparta was one of the few Greek cities that backed Octavian first in the war against Brutus and Cassius in 42 BC then in the war against Mark Antony in 30 BC. [143]
The Spartans used the same typical hoplite equipment as their other Greek neighbors; the only distinctive Spartan features were the crimson tunic (chitōn) and cloak (himation), [38] as well as long hair, which the Spartans retained to a far later date than most Greeks. To the Spartans, long hair kept its older Archaic meaning as the symbol of ...
The Spartans had conquered the southern Peloponnese and incorporated the territory into the enlarged Sparta state. Spartan society functioned within three classes: homoioi or spartiates, perioeci, and the helots. The helots were captives of war and were state-owned slaves of Sparta. [1]
The defeat of the pro-Athens forces and the triumph of Sparta in the preceding Corinthian War (394–386 BC) was especially disastrous to Thebes, as the general settlement of 387 BC, called the Peace of Antalcidas or "King's Peace", stipulated the complete autonomy of all Greek towns and so withdrew the other Boeotians from the political control of Thebes.
Sparta's agriculture consisted mainly of barley, wine, cheese, grain, and figs. These items were grown locally on each Spartan citizen's kleros and were tended to by helots. Spartan citizens were required to donate a certain amount of what they yielded from their kleros to their syssitia, or mess.
Despite the majority of the Spartan army campaigning in Crete, the remaining Spartans were able to mount a defence led by the Spartan Crown Prince Acrotatus. The Spartans were able to withstand the Epiriote assaults until the arrival of the main Spartan army, led by King Areus I, and Macedonian reinforcements, prompting Pyrrhus to abandon the ...
The famous Spartan fear of the helots is shown by a special clause providing that allies had to assist Sparta in case of a slave-revolt and must not offer citizenship to Messenians, because the Arcadians assisted the latter during the Spartan conquest of Messenia. [21] This clause was activated in the 460s during the Third Messenian War. [22]
The Spartans were of the view that, with the liberation of mainland Greece, and the Greek cities of Asia Minor, the war's purpose had already been reached. There was also perhaps a feeling that obtaining long-term security for the Asian Greeks would prove impossible. [46]