The Rise of Sparta Trivia Quiz

Answer: 950 BC

Sparta has traditionally and academically been established as being founded around 950 BC. This would have been approximately 50-150 years after the Dorian migration into the Peloponnese. The Dorians displaced or doricized the native Achaeans of the Late Bronze Age. If he existed historically, Homer's King Menelaus of Sparta, husband of Helen, was an Achaean.

Answer: Heracles

The twins Procles and Eurysthenes, great-grandsons of Heracles, founders of the two Spartan dynastic families(the Agiads and Eurypontids), were said to have had leadership roles, at some point, in the Dorian migration(around 1000 BC) into the Peloponnese.

This foundational story of the Return of the Heraclidae played a key role in the way the Spartans thought of themselves and related to other Greeks.

Answer: True

Unlike Athens, situated on the Attica peninsula with relatively poor soil, Sparta was located in the Eurotas River Valley, between the Tageytus Mountains to the west and the Parnon Range to the east. Though the land is somewhat hilly, the soil was excellent for cereals, figs, grapevines and olive trees.

Answer: Limnai, Mesoa, Pitane, Cynosura

It appears that these villages were absorbed almost immediately by the Dorians and the peoples became Doric Greek speakers; the population may also have simply emigrated. Thucydides stated migration was very common around this time. Amyklai, a fifth village added later, was independent, it appears, somewhat longer and remained more Achaean than Doric, with a somewhat distinctive religious practice in the Hyacynthius. Eventually, it and all of Laconia too would be made a part of Sparta.

Answer: Argos

Argos was located in the furthest northeast quandrant of the Peloponnese from Sparta and its main rival within the peninsula for nearly 500 years. It was Doric in origin also and, with the occupation of Cynouria along the eastern coast and the port of Gythion in the extreme south of the Peloponnese, seemed intent on boxing in the aggressive Spartans in the second half of the eighth century BC.

The Spartans would spend nearly 250 years trying to breakout of this Argive box. They beat the Argives at the Battle of Thryeatis around 547 BC and the balance of power shifted to the Spartans for nearly 200 years.

Answer: The Messenians

Messenia was the land to the west of the Tageytus Mountains. It was not an easy place for the Spartans to get to, and many historians believe that Sparta moved north past the Tageytus Range, then turned west and then south into the rich Steynokleros Plain of Messenia.

The war was bitterly fought and lasted until around 724 BC. With the conquest of Messenia, the Spartans came to control an excellent agricultural area, better than the Eurotas River Valley. The Messenians were turned into helots (basically sharecroppers, perhaps slaves of some sort, with no rights, with the state owning the land and the helots). Thucydides said that if you want to understand Sparta and its system, one had to understand the Spartan relationship with the Messenian helots.

Answer: Crete

In some traditions Lycurgas actually went to Crete after being expelled from Sparta. G.L. Huxley argues that Lycurgas may have received the reforms through the influence of Cretan priests at Delphi, where Lycurgas was well received, sometime around 678 BC.

There are so many stories about Lycurgas that Plutarch nearly gave up writing a biography of him. What the truth is about him is educated guesswork. But late seventh century Crete was, in some ways, the birthplace of a form of constitutionalism with some sort of representative government.

Answer: Kleros

After victory in the First Messenian War (743-724 BC), there was a massive increase in farm land. As part of the Lycurgan reforms, Spartan land, in Laconia and Messenia, was divided into 9000 units of land ("kleroi"). A Spartiate was expected to farm this land, through the use of helot labor, so as to provide for the common mess in the military barracks (syssitia)to which he was required to contribute, enabling him to train for war on a full-time basis.

It also meant that Sparta would avoid the overpopulation/land shortage problem of other Greek cities and would have to send relatively few citizens abroad to form colonies.

Answer: Tyrtaeus

When it comes to Sparta's view of itself, it is difficult to overstate the importance of Tyrtaeus. The tradition is that the Second Messenian War was not going well for the Spartans and they sent a delegation to Delphi for advice. The Delphic Pythia advised that the Spartans should send for a new commander from Athens.

The Athenians, out of spite or as a joke, so the story goes, sent them a lame school teacher. What Athens did was send the man who would turn out to be the greatest poet, propagandist and ideologue in Spartan history.

He would be instrumental in shaping how Spartans thought of themselves. He would also be important in helping historians understand how Sparta became Sparta. His poetry was war-like, patriotic and state-oriented.

Answer: Argos

By 669, things were going well for Sparta in the Peloponnese. Then matters went south. First, the Spartans suffered a lesser setback in Arcadia (a mountainous area to the north of Laconia). Second, the Argive army defeated the Spartans at Hysiae. This would prompt, according to Huxley, a second costly war with the Messenians, who were looking to take advantage of Spartan troubles, and that took another 14 years of hard fighting before a Spartan victory.

Answer: A three to nine day religious festival to Apollo in early July

The Spartans requested that Thaletas of Gortyn (in Crete)come to Sparta. Thaletas was a renowned poet, musician and statesman. His presence was requested, pursuant to a Delphi oracle. The Gymnopaedia was the result. It was a nine day festival of rhythmic dancing by naked young male Spartans as well as gymnastics and music competitions.

The Spartans, per Paul Cartledge, were an extremely religious people. If things were not going well for them, the gods, as they saw it, had to be appeased. The Gymnopaedia was a means to do that. The Carnea and Hyacinthius were the other major Spartan festivals. All of them were for the worship of Apollo.

Answer: False

Culturally, before the end of the sixth century BC, Sparta could hold its own. Terpander of Lesbos and Thaletas of Gortyn established two separate schools of music. The poetry of Tyrtaeus and Alcman was well known, and the latter wrote as beautifully of nature as the former wrote profoundly of courage. Music, singing and dance were extremely important to Spartans, male and female, for cultural and religious reasons. Economically, Spartan black-figured pottery and bronzes dating from before the end of the sixth century were found from Asia Minor to what is now southern France and represented something of a golden age in these spheres.

Answer: Pylos

"City" is used advisedly, because by the late seventh century there was little there and the area was sparsely populated. But there were some people in the area and, in response to Spartan expansionism, the Pylians and Monothaians abandoned it and moved west somewhere.

The Spartans moved the Nauplians, who had been ejected from the Argolid by Argos, into the region. The Spartans had essentially rounded out their territory in south central and south western Peloponnese. Beginning with the end of the seventh century BC, the Spartans would start to eye territory to the north-- to Arcadia.

Answer: The rise of the Hoplite

The rise of the Hoplite was the rise of the heavy infantryman with aspis or hoplon (heavy round shield), spear, short sword, grieves, bronze or leather cuirass with a heavy bronze helmet. The hoplites were used in a massed formation called a phalanx, eight deep. Since in most Greek cities the soldier was usually a private citizen, only those that could afford this panoply could be a hoplite. That usually meant a middle class farmer. Aristotle believed that the rise of the hoplite led to the rise of the polis and the political reforms that weakened the political hold of the aristocracy.
In Sparta, the rise of the hoplite was virtually co-extensive with the Lycurgan reforms and surely played some part in the radical land reform that occurred after the First Messenian War. As for Sparta's mastery of hoplite warfare, Tyrtaeus wrote movingly of Spartan hoplite combat:

Rise up, warriors, take your stand at one another's sides,
our feet set wide and rooted like oaks in the ground.
Then bide your time, biting your lip, for you were born
from the blook of Heracles, unbeatable by mortal men,
and the god of gods has never turned his back on you...

Answer: Tegea

The Pythia apparently gave an ambiguous oracle to the Spartans, saying to them that they would be able "to measure the line." The Spartans thought that this meant that they would be able to lay out their property in kleroi near Tegea and took measuring rods for the land and fetters for the Tegeans they would enslave.

Instead the Tegeans defeated the Spartans and put them in their own fetters. Tegea would prove a particularly prickly opponent for Sparta (they had once captured a Spartan king in an earlier conflict).

But the whole affair demonstrates the religiosity of the Spartans, with their consultation of Delphi before making a strategic move.

Answer: He was King Menaleus' nephew/ the bones were a good omen

Menelaus was the legendary King of Sparta during the Trojan War. He was married to Helen. His brother was King Agamemnon of Mycenea. He was married to Clytemnestra. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's son was Orestes. Orestes took revenge on his mother Clytemnestra and her lover after they killed his father. Orestes' Bones were therefore special because of their connection, through Menelaus, to Sparta's pre-Dorian Homeric past. Orestes may also have been king of pre-Dorian Sparta at sometime. After the Tegeans defeated the Spartans at the Battle of the Fetters, the latter went back to Delphi for more advice.

It advised the Spartans to obtain Orestes' Bones from Arcadia, which they did. As a result, at least according to Herodotus, Sparta continued to battle away at Tegea, which was the gateway into Arcadia, and finally prevailed sometime around mid-sixth century BC.

The result was a treaty which made Tegean foreign policy subservient to Spartan wishes.

Answer: An alliance was formed between two sides

The war had been a hard fought one. Rather than treat them like the Messenians, the Spartans basically forced them into a defensive alliance-- the first in Greek history-- in which Arcadian foreign policy was subservient to Spartan policy. This opened up the Spartan passage through and influence north into Achaea along the northern shore of the Peloponnese, allowed them a safer passage into Messenia (their flank had always been threatened by Tegea in transit) and gave them a buffer between themselves and Argos.

It also flanked an area of Cynouria (Thryeatis) along the east coast under the control of Argos, which Sparta disputed and desired. The treaty between Sparta and Tegea would lay the foundation for the formation of the Peloponnesian League.

Answer: Chilon

The Spartan ephorate had steadily gained power at the expense of the monarchy since the Lycurgan constitutional reforms. Chilon leveraged that expanding power into a policy in which Sparta would decide the internal political structure used by many cities in the Peloponnese and beyond.

It was for this reason that in the late sixth century, Sparta would be called the most powerful and influential of all Greek cities. Sparta would oppose tyrants in Sicyon, the island of Euboea, Ambracia, the island of Naxos, Athens and on the island of Samos. Note the islands, which indicates a growing Spartan navy.

Answer: Athens

Athens was not some Peloponnesian backwater, but a great and growing cultural and commercial city. Sparta was obviously the most powerful city in Greece now to take on such a role. The intervention "worked" in that Hippias was deposed. But Cleomenes had intervened on the side Cleisthenes of the Alcmaeonidae family, which turned out to be mistake, as the Spartans soon saw it, when he began to institute a democracy.

Answer: It was the early Peloponnesian League in action

The Peloponnesian League (or Spartan Alliance)was a relatively loose alliance that had been gathering strength since Sparta's defeats of Tegea in Arcadia and then Argos at Thryeatis, which seem to have been the catalyst events. By the end of the sixth century BC, all Peloponnesian cities, except Argos, were under Sparta's influence to some degree, the first known such league in Greek history. Sparta demanded no taxes, but required troops upon request and that the other cities follow Spartan foreign policy. Sparta was also using its influence outside the Peloponnese and across the Aegean.

The League would be a model for the Hellenic League, which would be instrumental in the Greeks' war with Persia. The League would keep Sparta at the top of the Greek political world for 140 years.