Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

The People 125
do not know whether every citizen possessed a klêros or holding
assigned to him by the state at birth, most of the population must
have been roughly at the same point on the economic scale. The
only Spartans who had the opportunity to enrich themselves were
the generals, who, once they were abroad and off the leash, turned
out to be as grasping as anyone, though we may suspect that the
charge of accepting bribes from the enemy that was regularly leveled
against them in the field was, in many instances, politically
motivated.
Conclusion
Sparta was not the only polis that put a high premium on military
discipline, but it was the one that did so to an extreme degree.
How the Spartans occupied themselves when they were not either
exercising or fighting remains a mystery. Perhaps they were simply
too exhausted to bother. From the sixth century b.c.e. onward,
they seem to have had little interest in cultivating the arts, though
the image of Sparta as a complete cultural backwater, as painted
by Perikles in the Funeral Speech, is no doubt an exaggeration.
Clearly, however, the pursuit of happiness was not a recognized
Spartan ideal. It is, of course, the austerity of their lifestyle that
gives us our adjective spartan. Faced with the choice of living
either in Athens or in Sparta, few of us would have any hesitation
in opting for Athens, given its vibrant cultural life, its openness
to novelty, and its engagement with ideas. Hardly surprisingly,
the Spartans also had a reputation for extreme economy in the
use of language, and the adjective laconic derives from the Spartan
aversion to long speeches. In the hands of the Spartans, however,
brevity could be put to good effect. When Philip II of Macedon
sent the Spartans a letter threatening to raze Sparta if he captured
the city, the ephors are said to have sent him back just one word
in reply: If.
There is one last point to note that has profound implications
for our understanding of daily life. Although the population of
mainland Greece reached its peak in the fourth century b.c.e. , in
that same period, Sparta was experiencing a sharp demographic
decline. Herodotus (7.234.2) claims that, in 480 b.c.e., Sparta
had 8,000 hoplites. By the time Aristotle was writing The Politics
around the middle of the fourth century b.c.e. , the number had
dwindled to 1,000. Aristotle (1270a29–34) plausibly states that this
decline was the reason for Sparta’s military and political demise,