Athens and Sparta
... of the times, it is hard for people to say anything nice about Sparta and the Spartans. Most textbooks state that the Spartans were "an armed camp," "brutal," "culturally stagnant," "economically stagnant," "politically stagnant," and other such things. The reality is however that Athens and Sparta represent two extremes in the way individuals relate to the state and also in the way the polis relates to other Greek city-states. The conflict between Athens and Sparta was caused by the cultural and ideological clash. The state and the military were the core of Spartan way of life. If children were weakly at birth, they were left on the hills to die. At the age of seven, every Spartan male was sent to an athletic and military school. This way they learnt from a very young age endurance, discipline and survival skills. At twenty, the young man became a soldier and lived most of his life with his fellow soldiers. The soldiers could marry, but most of them rarely saw their wives. At thirty, the Spartan became an “equal”, and was allowed to have his own house and family. The things Sparta focused on, order, self-denial and simplicity, have remained ideals in the Greek and Roman world. The Spartans saw civilization as a bringer of chaos. Spartan society, then, exercised a profound pull on the surrounding city-states who admired the minimalism, discipline, and order of Spartan life. In the sixth century BCE, the Spartans began to set military goal in conquering the surrounding states. However, they did not annex the lands and people, but rather come to an alliance. This proved to be an intelligent move as we can see in the end of the Peloponnesian war. The power of the alliance between Sparta and a large number of states in the Peloponnesus eclipsed that of even Athens, their powerful neighbor. In 461 BCE, Athens shifted its foreign affairs. After a long war with Persia, the Athenian policy began focusing on the relationship with Sparta. An immediate alliance with Argos, an arch enemy of Sparta, was formed. They later formed a coalition with Megara, the city that was in the path of the route to Sparta. Athens benefited from the taxes paid into the Delian League and began growing quite wealthy. The treasury was moved to Athens and the city began keeping one sixtieth of all the revenue. The Athenians began to grow especially wealthy and the League had become an Athenian...