Table of Contents
How did Alcibiades betray Athens?
The request was granted, but the night before they were due to set sail, the anxious Alcibiades strangely decided to settle his nerves by mutilating statues of Hermes in Athens. He now became a thorn in the side of his home city, giving the Spartans Athenian military secrets and encouraging Athens’s allies to revolt.
Who betrayed Leonidas in real life?
After Ephialtes (Epialtes) betrayed the Greeks, Leonidas knew that he and his men could no longer hold Thermopylae. Leonidas told those who wished to leave that they could do so, else they would surely die in the final battle.
Did Spartans really discard babies?
The ancient historian Plutarch claimed these “ill-born” Spartan babies were tossed into a chasm at the foot of Mount Taygetus, but most historians now dismiss this as a myth. If a Spartan baby was judged to be unfit for its future duty as a soldier, it was most likely abandoned on a nearby hillside.
What did Alcibiades do for Sparta?
Alcibiades, (born c. 450 bce, Athens [Greece]—died 404, Phrygia [now in Turkey]), brilliant but unscrupulous Athenian politician and military commander who provoked the sharp political antagonisms at Athens that were the main causes of Athens’ defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bce).
What was the relationship between Sparta and the helots?
The relationship of hatred and exploitation (the helots handed over half of their produce to Sparta) was the determining feature in Spartan internal life.
Why was the development of Sparta so difficult?
It was the Messenian factor above all that determined the peculiar development of Sparta, because it forced Spartans to adjust their institutions to deal with a permanently hostile subject population. Despite Sparta’s military prominence among Greek states, which is the primary fact about it, Sparta’s development is especially difficult to trace.
What did the rhetra say about the Spartan tribes?
The Rhetra purports to define the powers of the various Spartan groups and individuals just mentioned. It begins, however, by saying that the tribes must be “tribed” (or “retained”; the Greek is a kind of pun) and the obes (a word for a locality) must be “obed.”
How long has the Spartan tradition been around?
The Spartan tradition in European thought can be traced through the centuries up to modern times, though it has never amounted to a single easily definable set of ideas.