Athens and Sparta Comparison

Athens and Sparta

Athens and Sparta were the two largest Greek city-states of the Ancient world. They were the biggest of rivals, two towering cities at their peak, the most influential cultural, military, and trade powers of western civilization in the first millennium B.C. They are sharply contrasting yet strikingly similar, setting the stage for the Peloponnesian War. Their differences were the effect of geographical isolation but they began with the same base of ideas on which to build. The Peloponnesian War was between the two over Sparta's fear of Athens' growth of power, and especially the Megarian Decree, an Athenian economic sanction against the Spartan ally Megara. This sanction against the state would prove disastrous for its economy without the wealth of the Athenian economy to augment their trade, forcing Sparta's war machine to spring to life. Ultimately the Peloponnesian War was over the ideological and cultural rivalry between Athens and Sparta.

Ancient Athens was a powerful city-state, the leading city of ancient Greece in the first millennium B.C. and a renowned center for learning. It has the longest history of any city in Europe; it has been inhabited continuously for over 3000 years. Originally ruled by a king, it was like many of the other city-states surrounding it, but the power of the king receded to that of a council below him, composed of nobles, called the Areopagus. The Areopagus got their power from the lucrative cash crops of wine and oil which required money to get started too. This led to an unhealthy cycle of the wealthy Athenians controlling the government and the poor ones selling themselves and their families into slavery. This was stopped by the tyrant Solon whose reforms led to a government based on 4 tiers of social classes with hints of democracy. The rise of another tyrant, Peisistratus, led to more reform that was focused on cultural improvements. After his son lost power, Cleisthenes began a series of major reforms that would produce Athenian democracy. Of these reforms the declaration of all free Athenian/Attican men to be citizens, the establishment of a council whose members were elected by Athenian citizens, and the law that only the Athenian Assembly could declare war. The final part of democracy was ostracism, which disabled would-be tyrants from seizing power by exiling them before they gained to much power. Athens had something the other poleis did not, which was its harbor, allowing it to trade with the other city-states located on the water and other nations in the Aegean Sea easily. The birthplace of democracy, Athens' achievements in cultural and political reform are said to have laid the foundation for the development of western civilization.

Sparta was the largest military power of all the ancient Greek city-states. It was a primitive polis, or city-state. Culture, politics, and the economy were all stagnant. Its early history was heavily dominated with invasion of neighboring poleis in search of land and resources to support its dramatically increasing population. It invaded a fertile plain in a nearby mountain valley, the city-state of Messenia, whose valley could easily produce the resources needed to fuel both of the poleis. The Messenians were upset over their loss of independence and revolted, almost wiping out Sparta altogether, but they failed to free themselves of Spartan rule. At the end of the Messenian revolt, the Spartans were outnumbered 10 to 1 but were still in a position of authority, and were left with the problem of how to control a population that greatly outnumbered them. The Spartan solution was to invent a new political system as revolutionary as the Athenian's democracy in the north; to become a military state. The result of this was to force the Messenians into slavery. They were called helots, members of the slave class in Sparta that grew produce for the master of the estate (a Spartan) and kept the rest of the crops for himself and his family. This was a miserable life, work was long and the amount of food inadequate. The amount of food that they had to pay tribute to the landowner always put the helots on borderline subsistence. Spartan society itself changed after its transition tot a military state. The center of Spartan life was the military and the polis. Children were systematically determined at birth whether they were weak or strong and left to die of exposure if deemed unfit to serve the state's army. This had been performed before in Greece, but the state institutionalized it and made it a common practice. At the age of seven the Spartan male was sent to military and athletic school. There they were taught survival skills, endurance of pain, discipline, and toughness. This continued for 13 years when the Spartan was 20 and became a soldier. A soldier would live in his barracks with fellow soldiers, eat with his fellow