Athens and Sparta

​Main ideas

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1. The Spartans built a military society to provide security and protection.

2. The Athenians admired the mind and the arts in addition to physical abilities.

3. Sparta and Athens fought over who should have power and influence in Greece.

​Spartan life was dominated by the army. The city-state of Sparta’s social system was created by a man named Lycurgus (ly-kuhr-guhs) after a slave revolt. He increased the military’s role. Courage and strength were the highest values. Boys who were healthy at birth were trained from an early age to be soldiers. Boys ran, jumped, swam, and threw javelins to increase their strength. Men between the ages of 20 and 30 lived in army barracks and only occasionally visited their families. Spartan men stayed in the army until they turned 60.

​Spartan men were often away at war, so Spartan women had more rights than other Greek women. Women owned much of the land in Sparta and ran their households. Women also learned how to run, jump, wrestle, and throw javelins. Spartans believed this would help women bear healthy children.

​Sparta was ruled by two kings who jointly led the army. Elected officials ran Sparta’s day-today activities and handled dealings between Sparta and other city-states. Slaves grew the city’s crops and did many other jobs. Fear of the army kept slaves from rebelling.

​Sparta’s main rival in Greece was Athens. Although Athens had a powerful military and valued physical training, the Athenians also prized education, clear thinking, and the arts. They believed that educated men made the best citizens.

​Many Athenian students learned to read, write, and count as well as sing and play musical instruments. Boys from rich families often had private tutors who taught them philosophy, geometry, astronomy, and public speaking. Boys from poor families, however, did not receive much education, and very few girls were educated. Despite Athens’s reputation for freedom and democracy, Athenian women had almost no rights at all.

​After the Persian Wars, many Greek city-states joined an alliance to help defend one another and protect trade. With its navy protecting the islands, Athens was the most powerful member of the league. Soon Athenians began to treat other city-states as their subjects.

​In 431 BC, Sparta and other cities formed the Delian League and declared war on Athens. In the long Peloponnesian War that followed, the Athenians won at first but were forced to surrender in 404 BC. For about the next 30 years, the Spartans controlled nearly all of Greece, but from other city-states led to a long period of war that weakened all of Greece and left it open to attack from outside.