this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Spartans were kind of shit at war.
Now, the Theban Sacred Band? THEY were good at war and smashing ass
I think that view is an overcorrection to their inflated reputation. They, like every other Classical Greek state, had their comparative times of strength and weakness.
They as a polity had times of strength and weakness, but their reputation as peerless warriors doesn't really hold up under battlefield conditions, and their rigid caste system made all except the Spartiates perform relatively poorly on the battlefield. They traded on reputation (and terror) and an economic ability to wage war at any time (as Spartan citizen-nobility had no other significant functions other than repressing helots), not actual battlefield performance.
This collection is a really good breakdown of how the reputation of Spartan society did a lot to carry them through most battles, and how the actual Spartan society absolutely sucked for everyone. One of the things that really stood out to me in regards to how their reputation carried them was that in hoplite battle, you arranged your army by strength from right to left, meaning the right side of your army is facing the left side of your enemy. Essentially the goal of the left side of your army was to survive while the right side of your army was destroying the left side of theirs. Because of the Spartan reputation, it was common for the left side aligned to face their forces in combat would flee before even engaging, leaving an opportunity for the Spartans to flank their enemies and destroy their armies. So Spartans won a lot of battles not because of their immense military capabilities, but because their enemies would allow them to flank based on reputation.