Quick questions on Geographical setting of Sparta: HSC Ancient History

Sparta's territory of around 8,500 square kilometres (Laconia plus Messenia) was the largest of any Greek polis, far exceeding Athens (around 2,500 square kilometres including Attica). Yet the citizen body of Spartiates remained small: estimates range from 8,000 to 10,000 adult male Spartiates in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, declining to perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 by the 4th century BC (oliganthropia).

The Eurotas valley and the Pamisos valley of Messenia produced grain and barley, olives, figs, and wine, enough to make Sparta self-sufficient in food, a rarity among major poleis (Athens, by contrast, depended on imported grain).

The forested slopes of Taygetus supplied timber and hunting grounds; hunting formed part of the training of young Spartiates.

Laconia held workable iron ore deposits (turned into weapons and tools largely by the Perioikoi), and the quarries at Krokeai, south of Sparta, yielded the green porphyry (lapis Lacedaemonius) that Pausanias (3.21.4) describes and Roman-era builders prized.

The Laconian Gulf coast supplied fish and murex shellfish for purple dye, another Perioikic industry centred on the coastal towns near Gytheion.

Mt Taygetus and Parnon provided natural defensive walls. Sparta had no city walls until the Hellenistic period (around 200 BC). Thucydides' observation that the visible city was unimpressive but the Spartan way of life was formidable became a cliche of Greek thought.

The Eurotas valley and Messenia produced grain, olives, and wine sufficient to support the Spartiate population without recourse to large-scale trade. This reduced Sparta's dependence on imports and its interest in maritime commerce.

Sparta had access to the Aegean at the harbour of Gytheion (around 40 km south on the Laconian Gulf), but never developed a substantial fleet until the late Peloponnesian War (after 412 BC, with Persian funding). The inland and mountain-bounded location oriented the polis toward land power.

Self-sufficiency behind mountain walls made cultural and diplomatic closure cheap, and Sparta institutionalised it: xenelasia, the periodic expulsion of foreigners, kept outsiders away from the Helot-worked countryside, and Spartan commanders were notoriously reluctant to campaign far or long from home. The fear was internal: after the earthquake of c. 464 BC, when the Messenian Helots revolted and fortified Mt Ithome, Sparta first summoned and then abruptly dismissed an Athenian relief force (Thucydides 1.102), preferring a diplomatic breach to foreign eyes on its servile system.

The conquered Helot majority required perpetual surveillance. Aristotle (Politics 1269a) attributes the militarisation of Spartan society to the need to control the Helot population. The Krypteia, the ephoral declaration of war on the Helots each year, and the agoge can all be read as institutional responses to the demographic ratio.