The General Who Ended the Myth of Spartan Invincibility
In 378 BC, war broke out between the ancient Greek city states of Thebes and Sparta. The Thebans had their work cut out for them. Other Greek city states staffed their phalanxes with citizen soldiers – civilians who temporarily took up arms in wartime. By contrast, Sparta’s citizens were professional soldiers. They began to prepare for a lifelong martial career at age seven in a brutal military academy, and spent the rest of their lives training for war. Sparta could afford that because of massive slavery. As seen above, the Spartans had conquered their Messenian neighbors in the eighth century BC, then turned the entire Messenian population into state slaves known as Helots.
To control the Helots, who outnumbered the Spartan citizens ten to one, Sparta became a military state and society. It also became a police state, with a secret security force known as the Krypteia that terrorized the Helots, and killed any who seemed restive or showed leadership potential. It was lebensraum writ small – the Nazis actually drew upon Sparta when they planned their conquest of Eastern Europe: the locals were to be enslaved to toil for the “Master Race”. The deck seemed to be stacked overwhelmingly in favor of the Spartans. Fortunately for the Thebans, they had a great general, Epaminondas (died 362 BC). As seen below, he countered Spartan superiority with the invention of basic battlefield maneuver tactics.