Among all the city-states of Classical Greece, the most
famous are certainly Athens
and Sparta.
Sometimes allies, often enemies, despite their shared language and culture, these
two could not have been more different. So in the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, who ultimately emerged
the winner?
In the 5th century BCE,
the dominant city-state was Sparta.
It was hierarchical, authoritarian and ruled by tyrannical kings and
aristocrats. It’s greatest cultural values were discipline and conformity, and the
kings of this highly militaristic state were also its generals. Sparta was incredibly
effective at concentrating its resources to conquer a chosen goal – the phrase
“the tip of the spear” could have been invented for them. As a result, Spartans
were feared in battle across the Greek world, and Sparta was able to impose its military will
on its neighbors.
But then, Athens
began to rise to prominence and oppose the hegemony of Sparta. It became a famous center of
creativity in the arts, learning and philosophy, home to Plato's Academy and
Aristotle's Lyceum. Athens
also gave the ancient world Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles and many more
philosophers, writers and politicians. Its schools and forums were often
lively, open-air marketplaces for competing ideas. It thrived on chaos. Even
more remarkable were its experiments in democracy that included a unique combination
of direct and representative democracy: everybody was expected to participate
in and contribute to Athenian civic life. In stark contrast to Sparta’s general-kings, Athens elected its generals according to the
needs of each war.
For a century, Athens
and Sparta were
in almost constant conflict for dominance of the Greek world, pausing
occasionally and briefly to unite against a common enemy. Finally, in 404BCE, Athens was defeated for
good and fell under Spartan rule. So did this mean that Sparta had won? Not exactly: Sparta’s dominance was short-lived. Neither
Athens nor Sparta ever fully recovered from the costs and destruction of their
wars, which impoverished most of the Greek world and ushered in the end of
Greek pre-eminence.
So if both Sparta
and Athens
lost, who won? While Sparta
and Athens were
exhausting themselves in civil war, far to the west a small village called Rome was growing into a
regional power. Rome
was something strange and new: it borrowed many ideas from the Greeks, but had no
real artistic culture of it’s own. Its sculpture, painting and poetry were second-rate derivations,
sometimes even direct copies, of the works of the Greeks. It contributed no
significant advances in mathematics or science, and barely anything to
philosophy. Even the gods that the Romans claimed to worship were obvious
imitations of the Greek pantheon. And yet, the Romans were exceptional engineers, great builders and
implementers of others’ ideas. While the Greeks declined, Rome conquered a vast empire, convincing
native populations almost everywhere that it was in their best interests to
assimilate into Roman ways.
In the end, neither Sparta
nor Athens won:
both lost to Rome.
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