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How was Spartan Strategy after the Persian Wars geared towards preventing a helot revolt?

Just because this question is concerned with such a narrow period should by no means suggest that this was the only time when Spartan policy was geared towards preventing a major helot revolt. On the contrary, Sparta had been dealing with this problem since she conquered Messenia in the 8th century BC. The Spartans had taken the Messenian’s land for her own citizens and reduced the former inhabitants to the helot status, which they were to endure for generations. This may have seemed good for Sparta on the surface but underneath ancient sources suggest that Spartan citizens were now outnumbered 10 to 1 by their own slaves. This meant that the helots were in a constant state of readiness if the opportunity arose to revolt against their repressive rulers. The first major incident of helot revolt came in around 665BC, just after the Spartans had suffered a major defeat at the hands of Argos at the Battle of Hysiae. The 2nd Messenian War, as the revolt has become known, took almost 20 years to curb, and when Sparta finally put the revolt down she emerged a battle hardened fighting machine. Over the next 75 years the Spartans went on a conquering spree, which gave them control over most of Peloponnese.

However she rarely tried to extend her influence further than that as she couldn’t afford to leave the helots unguarded. In fact during the period after 550BC up until the end of the Persian Wars there are only three accounts of major Spartan force acting outside the Peloponnese. In around 525BC the Spartans attacked Samos to get rid of the Polycrates, the tyrant of the island, but she didn’t garrison the island nor did she stay for very long due the need to keep as many Spartan troops in Laconia as possible. The only other instances of a Spartan force abroad pre-478BC came in the face of the Persian advance into Greece. Despite not sending any help to Athens at Marathon, she did send an army of 300 Spartans under King Leonidas to fight at Thermopylae, and a more substantial force of hoplites to Plataea under Pausanias to finally remove the Persian threat to mainland Greece. However she refused to back up this victory by not sending any hoplites to Mycale. This was the state of Sparta and her policy before 478BC. It definitely seems geared towards “taking precautions against the helots” but did it continue after the Persian defeat at Mycale? The answer, as always with history, is two sided. Sparta recalled her small compliment of the force that won at Mycale but almost straight she sent one of her kings, Pausanias, to Cyprus and then to Byzantium. Unfortunately the risk of sending Spartans abroad failed. Pausanias began acting like a Persian tyrant and was recalled in disgrace.

It was around this time that Athens sent diplomats to all corners of Greece asking them to join in a ‘confederation’ against Persia. Sparta refused to join primarily because it might have involved sending a large contingent of hoplites abroad for long periods of time and that could give the helots an opportunity to revolt. This snub inadvertently made Athens leader of the alliance and ironically doomed Sparta to a long conflict 40 years later. Even when Athens began to coerce and then force other nations to join the League, such as Naxos and Thasos, the Spartans sat back and allowed them to do so, because they feared a prolonged conflict.

The Spartans fail to take an active part in fighting abroad when she doesn’t send any help with Cimon when he leads a ‘confederate’ force against the Persians at the Battle of Eurymedon. This again showed the Spartan misgivings about travelling long distances as Eurymedon is on the south of Asia Minor, a long way from Laconia. However, about 4 years after eurymedon, in 464, the Spartan fears seem to be borne out as after an earthquake in the Eurotas valley the largest helot revolt took place. It was so large that even the ‘invincible’ Spartan hoplites couldn’t defeat it completely. The helots fortified Mount Ithome and stayed there while the Spartans laid siege. It would take over 5 years for the siege to end when both sides agreed a truce. Times got so desperate that the Spartans even asked the Athenians, who were adept at siege warfare, to help but then turned them down when they arrived. In revenge for this snub the Athenians took the helots from Mount Ithome and settled them at Naupactus on the Corinthian Gulf.

In 457BC we see a change to Spartan strategy. They send an expedition to Phocis and Boeotia to win back the freedom of a small Doric town, which had been taken over by the Phocians, and to ensure Thebes was strong enough to keep Athens out of Boeotia. After achieving these aims the Spartans were on their way back to Laconia when they met an Athenian force at Tanagra. They fought a battle and after both sides incurred heavy losses, the Spartans emerged victorious. Again, however, they didn’t capitalise on this triumph. Instead of invading Attica and subduing Athens, the Spartans quickly hurried home as they had been away for too long. After this missed opportunity, the Spartans again spectated as Athens defeated a combined Boeotian force at Oenophtya and took control of the area.

Spartan eagerness to avoid a large-scale conflict with Athens or any other nation is never more evident as during the year’s 451BC and 445BC. They jumped at the chance for a 5-year truce with the Athenians and are even happier to sign a 30 years peace with the Argives. In 449BC they put their signature to a Peace with Persia but even more importantly they agree to a 30 years peace with Athens. All of these truces and peace treaties show that Sparta wanted to withdraw somewhat from the limelight so she could look after her own internal affairs and she did so for almost 12 years.

While Sparta was in seclusion, Athens was busy extending her influence and control over many parts of Greece. It was this continuing Athenian growth that stirred the Spartan giant into action. However, this action didn’t include immediate military involvement, only the threat that she would take up arms. This is evident in the Corcyran incident where the Athenians answered a call for help from Corcyra, who was fighting her mother city Corinth. The Spartans openly denounced the defensive alliance between Athens and Corcyra but didn’t do anything physical about it, as Athens hadn’t broken the 30 years peace.

In 432BC things got a bit uglier as Athens was involved in a siege with one of her subordinates, Potidaea. Sparta promised the Potidaeans that if Athens did not withdraw from the region then she would invade Attica. However, when the Athenians continued their siege, the Spartans pleaded a religious festival and stayed at home. It was only after the infamous ‘Megaraian Decree’ issued by Pericles that Sparta decided it was time for action. After much debating and persuading by her allies, especially Corinth, both the Spartan Assembly and the Peloponnesian League came to the conclusion that Athens had broken the 30 years peace and war was declared.

Even though Sparta had determined to go to war with Athens, neither side immediately attacked the other. The first act of the Peloponnesian War was a surprise Theban attack on Plataea in 431BC. With open warfare now in effect Sparta, uncharacteristically, took the initiative by invading Attica. These invasions were aimed at drawing the Athenians out from behind the Long Walls into a pitched battle in the hope of ending the war quickly. When this failed the Spartans turned without delay and hightailed it back to the safety of Laconia. In the first seven years of the war the Spartans invaded Attica five times; each time they ended up ransacking the countryside after failing to draw the Athenians out to battle. However, this increased willingness to commit to a foreign invasion shows us that Sparta thought that Athenian power had become a bigger threat than a helot revolt.

In 429BC, one of the years in which Sparta didn’t invade Attica, they sent an army to Boeotia to bolster the siege of Plataea. These forces were originally meant to go to Attica but had been diverted because of the plague that had arisen in Athens. The second occasion was in 426BC, when she had already deployed a number of troops to a conflict in Ambracia. These forces were subsequently out-manoeuvred by the Athenian general Demosthenes. To prevent losing a large number of the 3000 hoplites involved the Spartans sued for a truce, which was granted, allowing them to return to the Peloponnese, but leaving their Ambraciot allies to be slaughtered. Again this shows a reluctance, on the Spartan behalf, to lose many troops in combat, further influencing their policy when it came to that possibility (a seemingly un-Spartan course of action).

The annual invasions ended after 425BC because 120 Spartans were taken prisoner on Sphacteria, a small island off the west coast of the Peloponnese near Pylos, and were being held in Athens. The Athenians threatened to kill the prisoners if the Spartans invaded again; so for the sake of 120 hoplites the Spartans changed their strategy that was, in essence, working. This again showed an over-protectiveness of Spartan citizens because they couldn’t afford to lose any as they were already severely outnumbered by the helots.

Now that they couldn’t invade Attica the Spartans were forced to look further afield to put pressure on the Athenians. They ended up sending their best general, Brasidas, to Thrace. This might seem adventurous but he was sent with limited support so he had to achieve everything he did by inciting revolts and making new allies. Even with Brasidas’ successes in the north the Spartans agreed to a truce in 423BC. However, Brasidas wasn’t ready to stop and then fought a battle with the Athenian general Cleon in which both leaders were killed. Again even after the victories at Amphipolis and the continued revolt of the Chalcidian towns from Athenian rule the Spartans accepted the Peace of Nicias in 421BC and went as far as to join in a defensive alliance with Athens the following year.

This alliance turned out to be an Athenian attempt to recharge her batteries, and almost before the ink had dried on the treaty she had gone back on her word and formed a new alliance with some of the supposed neutral states on the Peloponnese including Sparta’s mortal enemy Argos. The Spartans realised the threat this was to their internal security as both Argos and Mantinea were very to Laconia itself. The Spartan response to this was to send an army to Mantinea, where they defeated a force of Eleans, Mantineans, Argives and Athenians. This could have been seen as an adventurous step by the Spartans, but in hindsight it was just another way to stave off another danger to the internal security of Laconia. The Battle of Mantinea also had a great effect on how people viewed Sparta. As J.B. Bury put it

The public opinion of Greece had pronounced Sparta to be stupid and inert: it now began to reconsider its judgement

The period after Mantinea shows a new Spartan confidence on going abroad. This is evident with the sending of Gylippus to Sicily to help the Syrcusans and the renewal of the Attic invasions followed by the fortification, on the advice of the turncoat Alcibiades, of the town of Decelea in northern Attica. Out of these two, the sending of Gylippus was by far the more successful as he aided Hermocrates in annihilating the Athenians at the Battle of the Great Syracusan Harbour. The Spartans continued their offensive by openly inciting revolt in the Athenian allies and even more importantly taking her first steps as a naval power.


The first Spartan-led naval victory was at Syme in 411BC and although it was followed by a defeat at Cynossema the same year it showed that the Spartans no longer had any inhibitions about fighting abroad. Again she must now have viewed that victory over Athens was important than the helot problem. Another naval defeat at Cyzicus in 410BC was overshadowed by the recovery of Pylos, the source of a large threat to Spartan internal security as it was situated on the coast of Messenia and therefore a perfect place to invade or to incite a helot revolt from.

With the Peloponnese now totally secure the Spartans threw all their resources into the naval conflict that was now under the control of Lysander. In 406BC a great victory at Notion was followed by a narrow defeat at Arginusae. This was but a minor setback for Lysander whose finest hour came when he annihilated the entire Athenian fleet at Aegospotami. With no ships to protect the Piraeus the Athenians were powerless to stop Lysander blockading the harbour, and with the Spartan army at the walls of Athens the Athenians had no choice but to surrender. And so ended what Thucydides called

A great war and more worth writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past

In conclusion I go back to my statement about how the answer to the question had two sides. In the period after the Spartans conquered Messenia in the 8th century BC until the Battle of Mantinea in 418BC we see the contention that ‘Spartan policy was about taking precautions against the helots’ was totally borne out with only a few notable exceptions: Thermopylae, Plataea and the Attic invasions. After 418BC we see the emergence of a more adventurous Sparta who was willing to meet Athens at every turn including at sea. This shows, as I have already said, that Sparta thought that to prevent an internal war they first had to eliminate the external one. This shows that at the crux of all Spartan moves was the possible threat of the helots. She would then do whatever she thought was best to prevent such an uprising. This proves that all Spartan policy was governed at least to some degree by the necessity of taking adequate precautions against the threat of internal strife.



Bibliography

Primary Sources
Thucydides: The History of the Peloponnesian war

Secondary Sources
Crawford and Whitehead: Archaic and Classical Greece
W.R. Connor: Thucydides
Pamela Bradley: An Illustrated History of Greece
J.B. Bury and R. Meiggs: A History Of Greece

How was Spartan Strategy after the Persian Wars geared towards preventing a helot revolt?