The simple, rugged life of the Spartans, it appears, brought with it substantial political and diplomatic limitations. Spartan heavy-handedness angered other Greeks, leading to a crushing defeat by the Thebans at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC.Īristotle attributed the imperial failings of the Spartans to their having ‘practised no more fundamental skill than skill in war’. Note: The Plague of War is also available in several e-editions.
#Ancient wars sparta maps series#
But this predominance was not to last long. A volume in the Oxford series Ancient Warfare and Civilization, The Plague of War is a valuable read for any interested in ancient warfare, particularly the Peloponnesian War, and an essential one for the many pundits who invoke the Thucydides trap.
In its weekly edition of 25 September 1885, for example, The Times used it to describe food: ‘The fare is Spartan in its extreme frugality.’ ‘Spartan’ has been used to describe lightly furnished dwellings too, as well as plain, unlavish things more generally.įollowing its victory over Athens in the exhausting Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), Sparta gained hegemony over Greece. Subsequently, the term has retained the sense of stark simplicity. Sir Arthur Helps, in his 1847 book Friends in Council, referred to Spartan insensitivity, writing of ‘a man who could bear personal distress of any kind with Spartan indifference.’ The use of the term in the sense of simple or frugal appeared in the English brothers John and William Langhorne’s translation of Plutarch’s Life of Agis (1770): ‘He kept close to the Spartan simplicity.’ Key battles are indicated by an X and military campaigns are indicated as arrows.
The main powers of Athens, Sparta and their allies, as well as Achaemenid Persia and neutral states, are highlighted. The Spartans were well-known for their frugality, living simply with a minimum of comforts, and ‘spartan’ acquired the sense of extreme simplicity in lifestyle. Ancient Wars: Sparta is a real-time strategy game, controlled via a point and click interface, in which the primary goal on most maps is to build a strong enough army to defeat the opponent or opponents by destroying their settlement, or, on occasion, killing a specific unit in their army. Send to Google Classroom: This map shows Greece, Asia Minor and Sicily during the Peloponnesian Wars.