Essay代写：The Sparta－r51due

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文- The Sparta，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了。斯巴达是历史上最重要的城邦之一，它的名气与希腊的雅典并驾齐驱。雅典的特点是其文明和财富，而斯巴达则以其政治和军事力量著称。斯巴达人从小就开始接受军事训练，满20岁就可以正式成为军人了。而通过一系列的军事教育方法，斯巴达也变得越来越强大了。

Introduction

Sparta is one of the most important city-state in history, and its fame keep pace with Athens in Greece. If Athens is characterized by its civilization and wealth, however, Sparta is famous for its military power and is known for its political stability.

In this paper, I mainly argue that militarization is both the reason that Sparta rose and the reason it declined. I investigate the geographic position, major features and urban history of Sparta. Two maps are used to illustrate the transition and its internal layout at different times in this paper.

Location of Sparta

Sparta, capital of Laconia, city of ancient Greece, is seated in the region of Laconian plain of south-eastern Peloponnese. The Evrotas River as the main river of Laconia supplies enough water to the urban people and just due to this benefits, ancient Sparta was built on the banks of this river. Besides, the valley of the Evrotas provides a natural fortress for Sparta. The valley is bounded to the east by Mountain and to the west by Parnonwest of Mountain Taygetus. Moreover, Laconia is separated from Arcadia by hilly uplands in the north (Cartledge, 2013). These natural defenses (mountains, uplands) prevent Sparta from being sacked by the invaders. Though landlocked, on the Laconian Gulf, there had a harbor of Sparta--Gytheio.

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Map 1. The Location of Sparta

Source from：http://jpellegrino.com/teaching/backgrounds/classical-5.html

From Map 1, it clearly demonstrates the relative location of Sparta. Sparta is in the north of the Mediterranean Sea, also directly faces Italy across the Ionian Sea. The main settlement is on the bank of Eurotas River in Loconia near the city of Messenia and Arcadia. Sparta is also the southmost part of Greece next to Athens.

Map 2：The expansion of Sparta 8th -5th centuries BC

Source from：http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/Geography.html

Sparta is widely known for the military land-power dominant in ancient Greece. History of the city-state lasted from the end of seventh century BC to the 396 AD. Map 2 shows the expansion of Sparta and the specific routes of Messenian refugees and the routes of dissident Spartan colonists to Taras. The deepest pink area shows the homeland of Sparta in early 8th centuries BC after the expansion of territory by a number of wars. Firstly, Sparta conquered Laconia and made it capital in 9th centuries BC. In the middle of 8th century BC (from 735 BC to 715 BC), the social differentiation of Spartan and the increase of population became serious problems, in order to solve the shortage of soil, Spartans invaded Messenia-known as the first Messenian War. As a result, the Spartans occupied the whole Messenia and captured the residents as helots. After the conquering, Spartans marched towards the north Tegea and initiated the Dipaia War in 465 BC. However, Spartans were defeated in 669 BC and made alliance with the Arcadia state, Elis state and Corinth in 505 BC. Map 2 illustrates the expansion of Sparta and demonstrates the military concept and the deeply rooted conquer mind of Spartan history.

Major Features

A. Highly organized military community

Training ordinary citizens into tough soldiers was the objective of law in order to fight against potential enemies or revolted slaves. All the boys must join the army and took military trainings after seven-years old. This kind of education lead by state lasted until these children grow up to twenty (Lanni 2008). Through a series of education methods of military, Sparta became increasingly stronger. This political property determined the concentration on military sports of Spartan education (Kennell 1995). As a result, people of Greece suffered a rigid lifestyle which was unlike any seen in history. Arts and literature nearly stopped developing to make a way to military

At the same situation, Sparta was an aggressive nation of slavery. In fact, Spartan was the land of foreign conquerors. Therefore, the original inhabitants—Hilot, who had no political rights and even freedom, became slaves in Sparta (Fleck & Hanssen 2006). In a word, slavery was the results of cruel exploitation and oppression, it had created furious class struggles and frequent slave uprisings. In order to deal with slave revolting and riot, all men were recruited into the army without exception.

If a country wants to become stronger, only relying on military system without advanced theory as a guide is difficult to obtain success. Temporary achievement may make a short flourish but cannot be maintained for long time. Therefore, the role of ruling through ideology and culture was not as useless as Spartans thought. In terms of education, the Spartan ignored children education, especially education on culture scale. All the children were raised and fostered in military concept to guard the land, therefore, military knowledge was the only to learn.

B. Unequal commune under equality form

As an oligarchy, two hereditary kings who were from Agiad and Eurypontid families ruled Sparta, both supposedly descendants of Heracles and equal in authority. It seemed that the two kings would not always make agreement to some decisions and the equality was just on surface.

As the people in Spartan were not engaged in labor, the whole economy depended on the output of slaves. Slaves meant the unequal in society. Therefore, the Spartan made declaration of war every year on a regular basis to the neighboring countries. Then, the land and the slaves were continually obtained through war, and the land was evenly divided for each family, but the distribution was not average for the family requirements.

In the history, due to the influence of geographical environment, Sparta was always an agricultural country and had higher level than the Athens’. Sparta located in the south of the Greek peninsula Laconia plains. The fertile land and mild climate through north to south provided good conditions for agricultural development. The business was very poor, only excited in remote mountain areas and the coastal area where Peacey Ali people engaged in handicraft industry and commerce, but mainly for the production of weapons and equipment of the armed forces of the army.

A certain number of slaves were in charge of the land production. People attached to the land were called Helot. At the same time, the land could not be bought and sold in personal ways but used the iron currency as the official currency. It was a good example to illustrate that the city-state had limited the development of the city and laid a foundation of the military implementation and management.

Urban History

A. Prehistoric period

At first, Stone Age played an important role in Spartan history. Evidence showed that the earliest settlers came here in the Middle Neolithic period. They brought pottery which was found two kilometers southwest from Sparta (Hornblower 2011).

B. Dark Age

Seeing from archeology, the settlement on Sparta may begin from 1000 BC that nearly 2 century after the breakdown of Mycenaean civilization. The dual kingship may originate in the fusion of the first two villages. The breakdown of Mycenaean made a sharp decrease of population. After that, the population recovered and was really important to Sparta, as it was very important in this area. These reforms made the beginning of the history of Classical Sparta.

C. Proto-historic period

Before the Dorians built their own country, they planned to enlarge the frontiers of Spartan territory. There was evidence that Sparta was hard to reach because of the topography of the plain and that means there is no need to defend the plain (Buckler 2003).

The plain was shared by Sparta and Amyklai which lay to the south. Sparta survived from Mycaenean times and was likely to be a most formidable neighbor in the plain.

D. 7th century BC

It is true that the war to the Messenians led by Theopompus lasted 19 years. There are specialists suggest that the war occurred around late 8th century BC or the start of the 7th (Buckler 2003). People still doubt if the Second Messenian War really happened, as it was neither mentioned by Herodotus or Thucydides.

E. 5th century BC

In 464 BC, a serious earthquake nearly destroyed all the infrastructures of Sparta and the people were trapped in the lion's den. Through archaeological discoveries, the total number of death may be up to 20,000, though many scholars query the accuracy of the figure and think it is exaggerated (Hornblower 2011). But just due to this earthquake, a revolt of the helots was sparked. The helots were the slave class of Spartan society for a long time. During the revolt, many military conflicts were involved and the earthquake is then as a typical event leading to the First Peloponnesian War.

F. 4th century BC

The relationship between Sparta and Cyrus the Younger is very close because Sparta provides covert support for Cyrus the Younger to seize the Persian throne. However, Cyrus was killed during the Battle of Cunaxa. Then, reconciliation was achieved between Sparta and Artaxerxes, the Persian king. After 401 BC, in order to obtain sovereignty of several Ionian cities, Sparta decided to send an expedition to Anatolia under the banner of Greek liberty. But the failure of Sparta was broadly welcome by Greek cities in which most people thought Persian rule was less evil than Spartan rule (Rebenich 2014)

G. Post-classical periods

During the post-classical periods, a much smaller Spartan city was built. Under to pressure of raising so many people at that time, the city was finally abandoned. In the meanwhile, there existed some settlements by Proto-Slavic tribes. Up till the later 6th and 7th century, a matter of dispute was remained about the scale of the Slavic incursions (Powell 2002).

H. Modern Sparta

It may be familiar to us that the site of ancient Sparta full of ruins was occupied by a few thousand people in the modern times. Besides, the Palaiologos family also lived in Mystras, which was also referred to the last Byzantine Greek imperial dynasty. After the Greek War of Independence in 1834, Sparta was expanded as a city under the rule of King Otto of Greece (Clair 2008).

Conclusion

The two important characteristics of the city-state Sparta have profound impacts due to its cultural traditions and social fashion. As a military community, through military education, Sparta raised citizen warrior and suffered hardship to reinforce the state. In order to reproduce soldiers, it has given women more outdoor exercise and activities freedom so as to enable them got higher social status. As an inequality commune, it makes the power and the concentration of wealth in few hands through establishing a few aristocratic oligarchy dominant political systems. Actually, ordinary citizens have few chances in the assembly to express political views, so the Spartans are like the Athenians in talking, it just uses the army to conquer Greek.

Bibliography

Buckler, J. (2003). Aegean Greece in the fourth century BC. Brill.

In this book, the author explored the Greek history existed in the fourth century BC from many views. This book not only contains many ample historical sources about Greece, but also have many descriptions and discussions about the ancient Greek politics, culture, military and so on. Meanwhile, the author provided his typical opinions of ancient Greek civilization on the world development.

Cartledge, P. (2013). Sparta and Lakonia: A regional history 1300-362 BC. Routledge.

In this book, the regional history between Sparta and Lakonia form 1300 BC to 362 BC was studied. Due to the large time span, the author arranged the book with reasonably detailed descriptions and discussions about the involved history matters. Through analyzing the regional history, the author summarized many valuable conclusions about the relationship between Sparta and Lakonia.

Clair, W. S. (2008). That Greece might still be free: the Philhellenes in the War of Independence. Open Book Publishers.

In this book, the author explored the whether Greece was free or not in the war of independence for the Philhellenes. Different from some exiting works, the author provided a distinctive view about the war of independence. Some validated evidences were utilized to prove the author’s opinion.

Fleck, R. K., & Hanssen, F. A. (2006). The Origins of Democracy: A Model with Application to Ancient Greece. Journal of Law and Economics, 49(1), 115-146.

In this paper, the authors studied the democracy of ancient Greece. Wherein, a model related to the democracy was established, which demonstrated how exogenous economic conditions affected the incentives to build democratic institutions. Then, the developed model was applied to explore the origin of the democracy of ancient Greece.

Hanson, V. D. (2009). The western way of war: Infantry battle in classical Greece. Univ of California Press.

In this book, the author explored the way of war existed in classical Greece. Wherein, infantry battle as a critical way was discussed in detail with respect to its cause, historical background, functions and so on. Meanwhile, in order to vividly show the infantry battle, some pictures were presented in which the readers can learn how the infantry battle operates clearly.

Hornblower, S. (2011). The Greek World 479–323 BC. Routledge.

In this book, the author showed the readers about the history of Greece during 479-323 BC. More details about the Greek history in terms of politics, military, culture, education were analyzed.

Kennell, N. M. (1995). The gymnasium of virtue: education & culture in ancient Sparta. Univ of North Carolina Press.

In this book, the author focused on the explorations of the gymnasium of virtue exited in education and culture of ancient Sparta. In order to show how the education and culture system was formulated in ancient Sparta, the author listed many famous historic relics which represent the rise and prosperity of Sparta in terms of education and culture.

Lanni, A. (2008). The Laws of War in Ancient Greece. Law and History Review, 26(03), 469-489.

In this paper, the laws of war in ancient Greece were studied in detail. Some relevant questions were solved through the study. Wherein, the background and formulation of the laws of war were given. Besides, the functions of the laws of war were discussed as well.

Rebenich, S. (2014). Sparta in modern thought: politics, history and culture: Early Modern—Histoire Moderne. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 21(5), 758-760.

In this paper, the author discussed the history of Sparta in modern thought in terms of its politics, history, and culture. The lightspot of this paper is connecting the historical and modern views during the discussion of the history of Sparta.

Powell, A. (2002). Athens and Sparta: constructing Greek political and social history from 478 BC. Routledge.

In this book, the author did research on the history of Athens and Sparta from political views. The author listed many historical evidences to show that the effects brought by the two cities- Athens and Sparta on the social life and politics of ancient Greece.

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