In his introduction to Persian
Fire Tom Holland argues that “Sparta’s greatness…rested upon the merciless
exploitation of her neighbors.” The
sentence made me stumble. Is Holland truly unaware that the Peloponnesian
League at this point in history gave every city-state an equal vote in the
League Council? Is Holland unaware that some city-states in the League chose to
march north with Sparta to fight the Persians at Thermopylae and Plataea?
Since Holland goes on to contend that “to people who had
suffered under Spartan oppression for generations, Xerxes rule might almost
have felt like liberty." He apparently believes that the helots and perioikoi and other
Peloponnesians, who fought with the Spartans at Plataea, were all “mercilessly
oppressed” Spartan slaves fighting against their own best interests. One
wonders how 5,000 Spartans managed to keep 40,000 oppressed slaves under
control and prevented them from defecting to their Persian liberators, while
simultaneous defeating the Persians on the battlefield? Spartans must have been
truly superhuman indeed to succeed at such a feat!
It is a particularly notable feat when one considers that
the mere proximity of a potential liberator induced 20,000 Athenian slaves to
defect in 413. The freedom loving, benevolent and ever democratic Athenians
apparently didn’t treat their slaves as well as the “merciless oppressors” of
Sparta or 20,000 Athenian slaves would not have “voted with their feet” by
abandoning Athens for Sparta.
It also seems incredible that Sparta would have been elected
to supreme command of the Greek forces opposing the Persian invasion –
including Athens, if at that time it was widely perceived as a brutal oppressor
of its neighbors. Would the United
States at any time in its history have elected Nazi Germany to lead a
joint coalition? Would we have asked the Soviet Union to assume command of
joint NATO and Warsaw Pact forces to fight a common enemy? It tries my
imagination.
Whatever else one says about Sparta’s treatment of helots
(and I firmly believe they were far better off than chattel slaves in the rest
of Greece, not to mention Persian), to suggest that Sparta “mercilessly oppressed”
its neighbors as well is a gross distortion of the historical record.
