Most individuals with a familiarity of the ancient Hellenes think first of Athenai and Sparte. Yet these two states were the least typical Hellenic states.
Athenai, and its territory of Attika, was large for a central Hellenic state. More, it was the leading commercial city of the region, with a huge population and a relatively large citizenry. It was the dominant maritime power, and twice in its long history it rose to empire by controlling the Aegean Sea. Yet it was ostensibly a democratic state, though that democracy was quite narrow and restricted. And it was old, with a history extending back through the Dark Age to the Mycenaean era, perhaps back past the Hellenes to the aboriginal Pelasgians.
Sparte, and its Lakonian lands, was as distinctive. Led by dual kings (from the Agiadai and the Eurypontidai clans), the state was ruled by a senate, the gerousia, elected for life and by the board of five ephors elected annually. The ruling class or citizens were Spartiates, numbering 8,000 in 480 BC and less than 1,500 in 370, until finally reduced to about 750 in the late Fourth Century BC. As wealth concentrated over several centuries of intermarriage, fewer individuals qualified for full citizenship.
The Spartiates were dedicated to serving the state. Specially raised and trained from age 7 to age 20, they then joined the military service as professional hoplites for ten years. Thereafter, until age 60, they could and were often drafted for campaigns.
Their professionalism rested on the shoulders of the numerous helots (slaves) who tilled the land on behalf of the Spartiates. In addition to Spartiates and helots, the population of Lakedaimonia included periokoi, "dwellers around", who had not been members of the five villages that formed Sparte.
While Spartiates declined in number, the army included those who had fallen below the property standard and the periokoi, but they were not the full-time professionals. The manpower crisis grew so severe that some helots were enfranchised (neodamodeis) to fill out the army.
These two atypical states, Athenai and Sparte, were the chief opponents in the long atypical Peloponnesian war. A war that ground on and on, changing the rules of honor that defined classical hoplite battle. By the conclusion of the war, the assumptions and behaviors of earlier generations were gone. War was now fought to the bitter end and nearly any means were legitimate. The rise of mercenary armies, such as lason of Pherai's or that of the Phokians during the Third Sacred War, further changed the mode of warfare.
Hoplites vs. Phalanx
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