The geographical setting and natural features of Sparta, including the Eurotas valley, Mt Taygetus, the territory of Laconia and Messenia, and the relationship of geography to Spartan economy and military strategy

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe the physical geography of Sparta, the territories of Laconia and Messenia, and explain how this geography shaped the distinctive features of Spartan society (the Helot system, the militarised citizen body, the inland orientation away from naval trade).

The answer

The physical setting

Sparta lay in the south-east of the Peloponnese, on the west bank of the Eurotas River, around 40 km inland from the Aegean coast. The city occupied the fertile Eurotas valley between two mountain ranges: Mt Taygetus (rising to 2,407 m) to the west, and the Parnon range (peaks above 1,900 m) to the east.

The city itself was distinctive in not being a single fortified centre. Thucydides (1.10.2) records: "Sparta is not built on a strict plan and contains no temples or buildings of any great cost. It is rather a collection of villages, as the ancient settlements of Greece used to be." The five villages (komai) were Pitana, Limnai, Mesoa, Kynosoura, and Amyklai (Amyklai was integrated into the polis only in the 8th century BC).

Laconia and Messenia

Sparta controlled two regional units.

Laconia was the immediate hinterland of Sparta, the Eurotas valley and the surrounding agricultural land. Laconia had Spartan citizens (Spartiates) and the dependent populations of the Perioikoi (free non-citizens in the outlying towns, around 70 to 100 towns) and Helots (state-owned serfs working the land).

Messenia lay west of Mt Taygetus. The Messenians were conquered in two wars: the First Messenian War (c. 740 to 720 BC) and the Second Messenian War (c. 670 to 650 BC). The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus wrote war poetry encouraging the Spartiates during the Second War. The conquered Messenian population was enslaved as Helots and made to work the land for absent Spartiate masters.

Messenia was vital. Its fertile plains roughly doubled Sparta's productive land. The Spartan economy depended on Helot agricultural labour, and the Helot population (mostly Messenian) outnumbered the Spartiates by perhaps seven to one. The military pressure of policing this enslaved majority shaped every other Spartan institution.

Geography and the Spartan way of life

Defence by terrain. 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.

Agricultural self-sufficiency. 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.

Maritime weakness. 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.

The Helot threat. 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.

Sparta in relation to other Greek poleis

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).

Ancient sources

Thucydides (History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.10) describes the unwalled, modest physical settlement.

Pausanias (Description of Greece, Book 3, 2nd century AD) describes the sites of Laconia and the surviving monuments.

Tyrtaeus (7th century BC) wrote war poetry on the Second Messenian War.

Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus, 1st to 2nd century AD) describes the geography of Laconia through the lens of Lycurgan reform.

Modern historians

Paul Cartledge (Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300-362 BC, 1979, 2nd ed. 2002) is the canonical regional study.

Stephen Hodkinson (Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta, 2000) has revised the picture of Spartan economic and social life, emphasising the role of land tenure.

Geography of Sparta at a glance

How to read a source on this topic

Section II sources on Spartan geography typically include extracts from Thucydides 1.10, Pausanias, Tyrtaeus, or modern maps of the Peloponnese. Three reading habits.

First, distinguish description from praise or criticism. Thucydides 1.10 is observation; Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus is moralising. Both are useful, but for different purposes.

Second, read scale carefully. Sparta controlled the largest territory but had a small citizen body. The Spartiate:Helot ratio (perhaps 1:7) is the key demographic fact.

Third, integrate geography with institutions. The Krypteia, the agoge, and the Helot system are all responses to the demographic and geographical situation. Use geography to explain institutions, not just to set the scene.

Common exam traps

Treating Sparta as a fortified city. It had no walls until the Hellenistic period. Thucydides' description is the standard source.

Confusing Laconia and Messenia. Laconia is the Eurotas valley around Sparta itself; Messenia is the conquered plain west of Mt Taygetus.

Forgetting Tyrtaeus. His poetry is contemporary (7th century BC) and survives in fragments. He is the closest ancient witness to the Messenian Wars.

Overstating Spartan naval power. Sparta was a land power. The naval phase began only with Persian funding in 412 BC.

In one sentence

Sparta's geographical setting, on the inland west bank of the Eurotas River between Mt Taygetus and Parnon in south-east Peloponnese, with the conquered Messenian plain providing fertile land worked by an enslaved Helot population outnumbering the Spartiates by roughly seven to one, shaped every distinctive feature of Spartan society, as Thucydides observed and as Cartledge and Hodkinson have analysed in modern scholarship.