THE FALL OF SPARTA
Once the dominant power in Ancient Greece, this legendary city state met its end at the hands of its powerful Mediterranean neighbour
How this legendary city state met its end, and the biggest Spartan myths debunked
When the Spartans and their allies made their defiant and most famous stand against the Persians at Thermopylae, Rome was nothing more than a simple settlement straddling the Tiber River. When Philip of Macedon claimed hegemony over the Greek city states and his son Alexander marched his army to the edge of the known world, Rome had just begun to prove itself as a regional power in central Italy. But by the turn of the 3rd century BCE Sparta had fallen from its near-mythical pedestal and Alexander’s empire had fragmented – yet the Romans had kept on conquering.
Over several centuries, the city of Rome had ascended from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic and become sovereign over most of the Italian peninsula. The war-mongering Romans spent the middle of the 3rd century BCE mostly occupied with their first war against Carthage – a rich North African trading city on the southern side of the Mediterranean – over control of the island of Sicily. It was a hard-fought campaign that spanned over two decades, but the grit of the Romans eventually paid off; they claimed not only victory but also their first overseas territory. With most of
Italy, the bulk of Sicily and Sardinia now firmly under their control, they were free to turn their attention east for the first time.
Their immediate concern was with Illyria, which sat north of mainland Greece and separated the Macedonians from the Adriatic Sea. The Illyrians had been plaguing Roman trade, and so with their veteran navy the Romans sailed across the water and delivered over 20,000 legionnaries on their enemy’s shores. Despite the best preparations from their queen, Teuta, the disorganised and amateur Illyrians were no match for Roman legions and they were easily dispatched.
The Romans had, at this stage, no desire to remain permanently on the other side of the Adriatic, but their presence would not go unnoticed. The chief antagonist to the
Roman appearance in Illyria was King Philip V of Macedon, at this point still a virile young man hoping to expand his empire. So when the Carthaginians came back to fight Rome a second time – this time with an exceptional general named Hannibal in their ranks – Philip jumped at the chance to expand his own territory and kick the battered Romans while he did so.
Hannibal had recently won three crushing victories over the Romans, culminating in the Battle of Cannae, where over 50,000 Roman legionnaries lost their lives. Hearing of this success, Philip eagerly offered to attack the Romans’ Illyrian footholds and, if possible, invade Italy and help the African general beat the Romans once and for all.
Unfortunately for Philip, the other Greek states were wary of allowing the ambitious Macedonian too much power, and it didn’t take much convincing for them to rise up in armed resistance. The Romans were engaged on multiple fronts, but they still sent ships and a small ground force to Greece to form diplomatic ties with the natives. Their efforts were a considerable success as many states were eager to form a coalition to tackle Philip. During the First Macedonian War the Romans were required to do very little fighting on land themselves, as their allies took to the field to combat the Macedonian threat. This task mainly fell to the Aetolian League, who signed the first formal treaty between Rome and a Greek power, but other states soon signed up, including Athens and Sparta. Philip was not without his own supporters in Greece, however, and nearly every significant power in the region was eventually dragged into the conflict on one side or the other.
“ROME HAD ASCENDED FROM A MONARCHY TO AN OLIGARCHIC REPUBLIC AND BECOME SOVEREIGN OVER MOST OF THE PENINSULA”
Throughout the protracted campaign, cities, towns and fortifications would change hands but neither side would be definitively defeated, and the war would eventually fizzle out to a lacklustre conclusion for both sides. The Aetolians had grown tired of fighting at Rome’s behest, Philip had issues with barbarians at his northern border, and Rome wanted to conclude its conflict with Carthage. Peace was duly declared and Philip was left with a lingering hunger to win a subsequent war. He perhaps did not fully appreciate that almost all of Rome’s attention had been on Hannibal and Carthage, and what he had faced was but a fraction of its power. He had been granted a stay of execution, but both powers knew future conflict would be inevitable.
The Romans, for their part, hadn’t left a great first impression on many Greeks. Throughout this period of war the Romans were careful to declare themselves as friends and liberators of Greece, there to save the proud city states from an oppressive Macedonian king. What ground troops they did deploy, though, were especially savage. The Greeks thought of them as a barbaric people, and they affirmed this by their treatment of certain Greek cities such as Oreus and Dyme. Valuable metals, paintings and sculptures were all seized by the marauding legions. But the greatest commodity to capture was people – the Romans sold many inhabitants of Dyme into slavery and made a mint in the process. We can’t attribute all of their abhorrent behaviour to the pursuit of profit, however, as Roman soldiers were not above raping, pillaging and burning settlements to the ground as their blood ran hot after battle.
Despite the Greeks’ disgusted reaction to the Roman way, they themselves had engaged in similar practices in their recent history. Nevertheless, Roman behaviour left a sour taste in the mouths of the Greeks. What sort of liberators, and self-proclaimed protectors of Greek liberty, would sack their own protectorates? The hypocrisy was clear.
Philip did not pause for long before initiating aggressive action once more. He turned his attention to the Greek islands and began to storm and capture them with impunity.