The Ancients - Origins of Sparta

Episode Date: December 2, 2023

Considered one of Athens' biggest rivals, and known for their bloodthirsty and brutal nature - there's a reason the Spartans have been immortalised in history. With longstanding mythological origins, little is known about the early days of Sparta. From rumoured descendants of Heracles, through to the mythical lawmaker Lycurgus, it can be hard to separate fact and fiction. So what do we actually know about the origins of Sparta? And is there any archaeological evidence to back these claims up?In the first episode of our new Sparta mini-series, Tristan welcomes historian and author Dr Andrew Bayliss to the podcast, to take a deep dive into Sparta's murky beginnings. Looking at the myths used to define Spartan society, the available archaeological sources, and examining how myth and history has combined - is it possible to discern how Sparta was founded? And more importantly, by who?You can buy Andrew's book here.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Sing, muses, sing to me a story of heroes and the deathless gods who govern earth, sea and sky. That is Tertius' quiet invocation as he holds weathered palms up to the campfire. He is not alone. Spartan soldiers are gathered about the fire too, cooking rations, boiling water, sharpening blades. They all labor with quiet intensity, keeping their eyes upon their work.

None dare look up, none dare look out, at the hundreds of other campfires that twinkle out there on the other side of the plain. A fledgling constellation, heralding the battle to come at daybreak. in constellation, heralding the battle to come at daybreak. But at Tertius' words, the soldiers turn to him with rapt attention. When the voice of Sparta speaks, all listen. He was a soldier once, like them. His shattered leg and missing eye speak to that profession.

Now he is a poet, a singer so sage that he shares counsel with generals and kings. They say it is the waiting that is worst, continues Tertius. His voice a creek, the branches of a great oak, all swaying in the wind. But we Spartans know what it is to wait. Tertius feels a hand on his shoulder, breath on his neck. A figure that none of the soldiers can see come to whisper in his ear. A sister of the Muses. Her words Tertius repeats, and the honeyed song of divinity bathes his voice until it carries clear far beyond the campfire.

We Spartans know what it is to bide our time, to keep faith with destiny. Ownership of all the Peloponnese, from Isthmus to Cape. That is the promise Zeus made to our forefather and his sons. A return for the Heraclides, the children of Heracles. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we're welcome to the beginning of our special mini-series this December all about Sparta. We've done Babylon, we've done Pompeii, now it's the turn of this extraordinary ancient Greek city-state. We're going to be covering various topics of Sparta over the next few weeks and today to kick it all off we're going back to the beginning. What do we know and what do the ancient

Greeks believe about the origins of Sparta? We're going to be looking at archaeology but also literature and mythology, famous names such as Menelaus, Helen, and of course, the very mysterious figure of Lycurgus. Now, to kick off this episode, we're going to be beginning with the retelling of a myth associated with Sparta's origins. And this myth is the return of the descendants of Heracles to the Peloponnese and how they ultimately made Sparta their home. This, in turn, led the royal line, the kings of Sparta, to claim descent from Heracles. It's a great myth and I really do hope you enjoy. And following that retelling,

we have an interview with Dr. Andrew Bayliss from the University of Birmingham. Now, I headed up to Brum a couple of weeks back to interview Andrew in person. It was really good fun and I know you're going to absolutely love it. We cover everything from Bronze Age Sparta and Mycenaean times all the way down to Lycurgus and the Spartan conquest of its neighbouring region Mycenae. I really do hope you enjoy. Here's the myth and then here's Andrew to talk all about the origins of Sparta. The muses' song for the Heracleide opens with screaming and the spilling of blood. But it is not upon the battlefield, it is upon the birthing bed.

Zeus has sired a son with Alcmene, granddaughter of Perseus. He plans for this child, Heracles, to hold the great kingdoms of the Peloponnese in the palm of his hand. Hera, queen of the gods, plans otherwise. One of Zeus' bastards holds such power. No, it is an insult she will not suffer. So she binds her husband to an oath. Only the next of Perseus' descendants to be born will seat the highest throne in the Peloponnese. ascendant to be born will seat the highest throne in the Peloponnese. It is a pledge Zeus should not have made. His talent for conception is legendary, but childbirth, that is Hera's domain. She ties a knot in the threads of fate, forcing Alcmene to labour for days, to wait there in the worst of it. And all the while Hera unspools the threads of another, Nykipi, till weak and premature,

her child is born first, sickly Eurystheus, now heir to the gleaming throne. Heracles' life is the candle that burns bright but brief. His labors are legendary, but Hera's enmity looms large over them all. Even after his death and his ascent to Olympus, her hostility remains. It is Heracles' son who is its subject now, Hylus, the next to wear the hide of the Nemean Lion. Driven out of the Peloponnese by sickly Eurystheus and his sons, Hylus has made his home among the Dorians. He has even become a ruler in his own right. Indebted to Heracles, the king of the Dorians has gifted Hylus a third of his kingdom and guardianship of his two sons, the Dorian princes Pamphilus and Demas. But it will never be enough for one who wears the lion's

hide. Hylus's birthright is to claim the Peloponnese, all of it. His first attempt meets with disaster. Like a rain of arrows, a plague lays low his army, before it can even cross the Isthmus to the Peloponnese. When they burn the bodies, it is not charred flesh, Eyeless smells, but lilies, Hera's sacred flower. The Queen of the Gods will frustrate any attempt to return. will frustrate any attempt to return. So Hylus does not head south. Instead, with the Dorian princes as his companions, he dons the lion's hide once more and heads north, to Delphi, to the Oracle. When they are ushered into her presence, the Oracle is seated, as ever, upon her sacred tripod. Her hands are already slick with the blood of Hylas's sacrifice, a great white heifer. She cocks her head, turning her attention, as if a figure that neither Hylus nor the princes can see, has come to whisper in her ear.

Three they are, three they stand, she recounts, a voice, a hiss, the reeds of a great salt marsh, all swaying in the wind. The tripod is stability, security, surety. If three crowns of the Peloponnese you desire, Argos, Messenia, and Sparta, three more blooms must you wait. Hylus nods then, grim but determined. Heracles waited a lifetime. His son can wait three years. And so, come the third spring, with Pamphilus and Demas as his generals,

Hylas leads an army of Dorians into the Peloponnese. But Hera, she laughs, a sudden thing that cuts like no bronze ever could. It is all Hylas can hear as his blood soaks into the dirt and the mud, a gaping spear wound in his chest. His army barely made it past the isthmus, and now the lion's hide is sodden and spoiled. That laughter comes to haunt each generation of the Heraclides. Hylus' son hears it years later, as his own army is smashed and rooted upon the Peloponnese. He escapes, but Hera's delight taunts him the rest of his short life. Then there is his son, Hylus's grandson. That campaign is longer, true, but it ends the same way. Fatal mirth, a gash to his leg festers, and in the fevered hallucinations that follow, every sound blurs into a woman's cackle. But what of Delphi? Did the oracle lie? Was she mistaken? No. You see, in Hylus's eagerness, he neglected the nature of prophecy.

The truth, as deathless gods see it, is singular and severe, incomprehensible to mortal minds. So it must be robed in rebus and riddle. Those blooms the Oracle spoke of, they were not turns of the earth, but the Heraclides themselves, three further generations, till it is Heracles' great, great grandchildren who stand before the Oracle's sacred tripod once more three they are three they stand three blooms they have waited three crowns they will now have argos messenia. Sparta, this feels like a topic more shrouded in more mystery than much of Sparta's story. Absolutely. To be honest, as a proper historian, it takes me out of my comfort zone

because we're very much in the world of myth rather than history. But if we think of it as myth history, that keeps me happy. Okay, we'll think of it as myth history then, my friend. But there will be some mythical names that we will talk about. Well, let's set the scene and look at the background first of all. Where are we talking? Let's discuss the topography of Sparta in southern Greece. Okay, so we're in the Peloponnese, which is the island of Pelops, a big quasi-island linked to the mainland by the instruments of Corinth. We then go into the south of that. Sparta is in Laconia, which is a big rift valley with the Eurytaphs River running through it. And Sparta is sort of in the middle of that valley.

And that valley, is it almost like a natural amphitheatre? Is it surrounded by high ranges of mountains? It is, absolutely. So it's got the Taigatos mountain range to the west, the Panon mountain range to the east. It's got the mountains of Arcadia to the north. So it's like it's locked in and very safe, very protected. All of the primary sources refer to Sparta as hollow because of that valley. And how important was the river Eurotas for settlement in that valley? It's vital for life. It's one of the few rivers in mainland Greece which flows all year round.

It's long, 82 kilometres or thereabouts. It's very fertile territory. It has two harvests a year in modern times. It would be dangerous to speculate whether it could have two harvests a year in ancient times, but it gives you a sense of how fertile it is. And also roughly, how large is this great plain that Sparta was based on? The Eurotas Valley is about 800 square kilometres. And so if we look at the earlier story of Sparta, you mentioned how there is quite a bit of mythology. It kind of gives a hint of the answer to my next question when asking what kinds of sources we have available to try and learn more about this. We've got lots of myth. So the earliest surviving references to the city of

Sparta appear in the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. So that's the city where Helen and Menelaus are. But that's not our only mythical traditions, and it's not necessarily matching the archaeological reality. So that's also where you hint there. So there is also archaeological evidence when trying to learn more about Sparta's very early stages. Yeah, absolutely. So we've got the city of Sparta, which we know where it was in the classical period. We have occupation of that region from the Neolithic period. There are Bronze Age settlements, which is what you would be thinking of as in the reality of Helen and Menelaus, scattered throughout the Eurotas Valley. One of the key sites is the Menelaion, which is a couple of kilometres southeast of Sparta, where there was a Mycenaean mansion, as it's known by the archaeologists. There was cult activity from the Bronze Age through to the Classical period as well.

There are Bronze Age Mycenaean tholos tombs around Laconia as well. So archaeologists have always been wanting to find where Helena Menelaus' city was rather than where the city of Sparta that we know in the Classical period was because there's not enough evidence to suggest that there was a Mycenaean site there. Do we have any idea if we're going into the Bronze Age and we've got this great scatter of Mycenaean archaeology, do we have any rough idea as to when settlement really begins in this area? Well it goes right back to the Neolithic period so even 6000 BC that kind of thing but there are obviously major sites in the Bronze Age. There is the Menelaean that I mentioned. There is evidence that there was burials very, very close to ancient Sparta

at a site called Sycico. They've found various burial goods, the best bit being fragments of a helmet, like described in the Iliad. There's the Tholos tombs at Polarna, where an archaeologist claimed he'd found the site of Menelaus's palace. There's Tholos tombs at Vafio, which is adjacent to the classical period Spartan village of Amiclae, which would be again a great site to have a Mycenaean palace. But in the last decade or so, archaeologists have been fixating very much on Aeas Vassilius, which is about 13 kilometres south of Sparta, where there is evidence of a large Bronze Age courtyard. There have been found all sorts of fineware and, crucially, Linear B tablets. There's about 100 fragments of Linear B tablets there. So

it's not quite enough to say for sure that's the Mycenaean major palatial centre, but the evidence is very strong. I didn't really realise that, but this almost feels like an equivalent to, let's say, archaeologists trying to find the lost tomb of Alexander the Great today. It's also trying to locate, on the the Greek mainland the Palace of Menelaus. This is, I can imagine, for so many archaeologists, if they can find it one day and can confirm it,

that's huge. That will be on all the newspapers. I think it would. I think it will still be the Palace of Menelaus in inverted commas. But I think there's been so much excitement

to try and find it. And I think this will be the, my guess is this will be the closest that anyone will ever get. The closest that anyone will ever get. And it's so interesting that you always say that there are linear B tablets there, all this incredible Mycenaean archaeology. Do we have any idea what happens to Bronze Age Sparta, to the Mycenaean presence at Sparta when we reach the end of the Bronze Age? Okay, so there is clearly a very strong Mycenaean presence in Laconia, and there are mentionings of the Lacedaemonian and the son of the Lacedaemonian, and Lacedaemon is another name for Sparta, in Theban Linear B

tablets. So clearly there was a big individual in what we would think of as Sparta or adjacent to Sparta. All of the major sites throughout the major Mausoleum sites throughout the Greek mainland, there is a disruption and the sites of Sparta itself. There's reoccupation, if not continuing occupation of sites like Amaklai and Palana, all those other sites that I've mentioned. But it's a bit vague, and it relies on what evidence there actually is. So when I was a student, there was always a sense there was this huge disruption in Sparta but actually archaeologists are finding more and more connections to sort of show that maybe there was actually continuous occupation from the Bronze Age right through to the classical period but how those people identified themselves and who they understood themselves to be appears to have changed rather than it being suddenly new people there. Because we sometimes get this perception that Bronze Age Sparta

and then the Classical Sparta are two very, very different things. Is it fair to completely differentiate the two? I think it's increasingly becoming difficult to say there is no connection. And throughout the Greek world, sites are being re-examined, further excavations are starting to reveal more and more continual occupation from the Bronze Age or continual usage from the Bronze Age right through into the Classical period. So there used to be this idea of serious disruption which matched the mythical stories, but actually the evidence is starting to really disprove the myths.

All right, we're gone then. You hinted at it there. What are these mythical stories hinting at disruption? Well, the mythical story is, the obvious one is the Dorian invasion, as the Dorian Greeks from northern Greece swept down into southern Greece and took over. And so the archaeological evidence seemed to match that. So it looked like there were destructions of sites. There was change in pottery styles. It was this sudden, much less elaborate handmade pottery that was sometimes called barbarian ware, which gives it that really other kind of message. There were new types of burial practices. Housing seemed to be radically different. There were suddenly new types of burial practices housing seemed to be radically different there were

suddenly different types of swords that were very similar to swords that were found in Germany so it certainly seemed like barbarians from the north coming down there were even different types of clothing pins which suggested long cloaks which made people think all cold climates outsiders coming in. And then the myths talked about the Dorians coming as well. So it all seemed to make perfect sense. But the housing changes, the evidence is starting to suggest otherwise. The swords, there's actually connecting types of swords, which make it seem less like it's outsiders. The pottery, actually, that sort of barbarian wear

was found earlier on. The type of housing changes, actually, pre-Mycenaean sites looked a lot like the post-Mycenaean sites. So the evidence started to unravel. And when you look at the myth, it's way less simple than you would want it to be as well. Frustrating, but also really exciting at the same time. I mean, OK, we've talked about Menelaus and Helen and the Trojan War. Let's also briefly talk about the figure of Heracles too, because he also seems to have a role in the great founding of Sparta, at least in ancient Greek beliefs.

Absolutely. And I talked about the Dorian invasion, but the Dorian invasion myths are really actually not about the Dorians. The Dorian invasion myths are about the return of the descendants of Heracles to the Peloponnese. So the backstory is that Heracles was meant to be the king of the Argyllid. He was meant to succeed his great-grandfather Perseus, but he was the son of Zeus, not by Zeus's official wife Hera, the queen of the gods. So she decided to ensure that Zeus didn't get what he wanted, asked her daughter, who was the goddess of childbirth, to delay the birth of Heracles

so that one of his kin would become king instead of him, Eurystheus. And then Eurystheus persecuted Heracles, forced him to perform the 12 labours. After Heracles died and became a god, he continued to persecute his children. They had to flee the Peloponnese altogether. And when they tried to come back, the gods basically decreed that they had returned too early and needed to come back three generations later. So when they return, so it's Heracles' great-great-grandson's return, that's when the Dorians come with them and conquer all of the Peloponnese, including Sparta.

It's interesting that you mentioned how a scene of this hostility to Heracles and his children is the Argolid territory. I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but I know Argos and Sparta, they don't have the best of relationships in later history. Is this almost sometimes a source sometimes of the tension between the two? The stories of the return of the children of Heracles, well, in fact, great-great-grandchildren of Heracles do often provide mythical explanations of the hostility in the classical period. So the eldest son, Temenos, gets Argos. The next eldest son, Cresfontes, gets Messenia. And the sons of Aristoteles, who died just before they returned, they get Sparta.

And they all supposedly are going to rule forever. They all exchange oaths that they will defend each other if they're ever attacked by their populace, but they will also intervene to protect the populace if any of the kings do anything wrong. So by the classical period, Argos no longer has kings. The Spartans conquer the Mycenaeans. And the Spartan message is always, well, we did the right thing because we were fulfilling those oaths to protect either the ancestors or the people. So it sort of explains why Spartan becomes dominant, but gives it a nice mythical but divine sort of explanation. Well, we'll get to that shortly. Very interesting how Sparta is using its mythological

foundations to justify its imperialistic actions. Well, if we go into the Iron Age, and you talked about it briefly earlier, but if we can explore it a little bit more, if we're talking about, let's say, the first couple of centuries in the first millennium BC, a bit of a sometimes labelled a dark age in ancient Greek history, but do we know much about Sparta in that period? We have to play off the very small amount of archaeological evidence we have with a very convoluted myth tradition. But what we can say for sure is that in the classical period, the city of Sparta was made up of four villages known as Obai in ancient Greek, of four villages known as Obai in ancient Greek around the Spartan Acropolis and a fifth Oba, Amaklai, five kilometres down the road. At some point in, say, the 10th to 8th centuries,

those five villages unified to form a city. And the distance between Amaklai and the rest of the city would explain why there's no circuit wall notoriously around Sparta. Also combined with the fact that that hollow location that's protected. So those two things together explain why Sparta doesn't actually need circuit walls. It would be impractical and unnecessary in equal measure. So they unify. And at some point in the following century or so, they grow their power throughout the Eurotas Valley. And so if they were outsiders,

they would be conquering the indigenous inhabitants of Laconia. If they're not outsiders, they start to remember themselves as outsiders who conquer the original inhabitants. Because that is something we sometimes overlook, isn't it? We look at Sparta now and we think that was the dominant city in ancient Laconia. But at this early stage, it was just one of many different peoples. And actually, it wasn't always going to be that Sparta was going to become the dominant power in the region of Laconia. No, and it takes quite some time for Sparta to really dominate its own region, let alone the wider Peloponnese.

You mentioned Argos before. Argos was the big city until Sparta took over, essentially. And with Sparta, of course, we have to talk about its unique reputation, quite militaristic reputation. Do you have any idea when this starts to develop, or at least the ancient Greeks believed that it starts to develop? If you trust the later mythical tradition, it's developed right from the very beginning, but the later mythical tradition is extremely unreliable. When I was an undergraduate, all of the scholarship was connecting Sparta's military orientation, as it appears to be presented, with the conquest of their neighbours and cousins in Bersenia. But increasingly, modern scholars are starting to push this image of a militaristic-seeming,

austere Sparta much, much, much more recently in our time, so even down to the late 6th century, so way after Sparta has absorbed the rest of Laconia and conquered the Mycenaeans. And the very question of Sparta's military nature is very much debated by modern scholars. There is an increasing understanding that the message that we've been getting about Sparta is not quite matching reality, and that what looks like a military lifestyle is much more like a gentlemanly lifestyle, where they devote themselves to sport and leisure, as well as being able to fight when required. This is the so-called Spartan mirage, is it? Absolutely, yes. So how much of the image of the Spartans that the primary sources present as being

very other sources that are by and large Athenian, the enemies of the Spartans presenting them as the weird bad guys rather than actually sort of reflecting reality. How much of it is a projection from these detractors and admirers of Sparta is a question that modern scholars are grappling with more and more. Well, talking about one key source who is very much an admirer of Sparta, writing much later, and includes a biography of the next figure that we're going to be talking about. You're nodding your head viciously there, Andrew. Come on, let's explore the story of a man called Lycurgus. First off, who supposedly was Lycurgus? Well, Lycurgus is the Spartan lawgiver. He is the man to whom all of Sparta's military institutions are attributed. He is meant to have taken a city-state that was the worst governed of all of Greece

and turned it into the best governed of all of Greece in the course of his lifetime. And he wasn't even king. He was a regent ruling on behalf of his nephew and he just sorted Sparta out. He came up with the constitution. He did everything. That's the myth. That's the way it's projected in the sources. But it's a lot more questionable than that. If you can indulge me reading from Plutarch's life of Lycurgus, his biography of Lycurgus, he begins by saying, generally speaking, it is impossible to make any undisputed statement about Lycurgus the lawgiver

since conflicting accounts have been given of his ancestry, his travels, his death, and above all, his activity with respect to his laws and government. So Plutarch writing in the second century common era was pulling together all of these primary sources and he couldn't be confident about pretty much anything about Lycurgus. He lived around 900 or 800, or he participated at the very first Olympic Games, which was 776, or he actually dated right back to the time of Helen and Menelaus, or he didn't exist,

or there was some guy called Lycurgus who later tradition had as sort of responsible for everything. Do we think at the end of the day, is it more probable than not that he was a real figure? Or is the jury still out on that? I get very upset when my students present Lycurgus as actually existing. I very much want them to use the word mythical lawgiver. But I think it would be strong to say there was never someone called lycurgus there might have been a lycurgus he may have done some sort of reforming of sparta and

then later on more and more traditions got thrown at him as the solver of all of sparta's problems but the what he supposedly did according to plut, it would be very hard to justify much of anything that's in that life. It kind of leads me to my next question. If we've got figures like Plutarch, who's certainly not a Spartan, I mean, do you have any Spartan sources, literary sources, and from that earlier time period to try and learn a bit more about sorting fact from fiction? The only real unambiguous Spartan sources we have, and even then I say it's a question mark, is the Spartan poets Teteus and Alciman, who were writing in the 7th century BCE. And I say Spartan, later tradition had it that neither of those were

Spartan, because spartans were militarized weirdos so they couldn't possibly have produced a quality poet so therefore these spartan poets get turned into foreigners who went to sparta and solved various of their problems so teteus taught the spartans how to be brave and other poets traveled to sparta and solved plagues and things like that or set up new religious festivals. So Sparta ends up developing this reputation and outsiders have to come in and help fix it. But then later tradition has Lycurgus having fixed everything. So there's clearly a rewriting of the rules at various points in time. But Tertius is a very useful source for looking at what might have

happened, what the Spartans believed happened, and the fact that he's talking about the conquest of Mycenae after Lycurgus has supposedly made Lyconia a wonderful, happy, perfectly governed region. None of the fragments of Tertius mention Lycurgus. The heroes of his story are the kings Theopompus and Polydorus who conquered Mycenae. Now, it's dangerous to make an argument from silence in saying so. It's possible that there are lost fragments of Tetaeus that mention Lycurgus, but the fact that none of the surviving fragments mention him is always a bit of an alarm bell for modern scholars about the reality of Lycurgus. How could Tertius have not mentioned Lycurgus if at that time he was believed

to have been the lawgiver that later generations thought he was? That certainly makes you wonder, doesn't it? I must admit. But you also mentioned something interesting there, something that is also associated with Sparta and its almost uniqueness, at least in southern Greece, this use of kings. Now, do we have any idea what the origins is of the Spartans having two kings? Two kings is a thing that I never cease to be baffled by. And every year I say to my students, when we're looking at the question about how normal or abnormal Sparta is, I say, name another diarchy. And I live in desperate hope that at some point in time,

someone's going to name another diarchy for me. Two royal houses, there is no obvious explanation in terms of reality. The mythical tradition was that they were the two sons of Aristodemus who reclaimed their ancestral birthright. There were twin boys. The mother wouldn't say which one was the eldest. And so they chose to have them as both as kings and therefore had two royal houses. There's been all sorts of other suggestions. Maybe it's the incorporation of

Amicli into the Spartan state. Was there a ruling family there and a ruling family in Sparta and they agreed to power share? There's even a hint that it might be down to that mythical belief that the Spartans were Dorians, but they were also original Achaean Greeks and that maybe there was one of the royal houses was the Dorians and the other one was the Achaeans. None of it makes a lot of sense but clearly at some point in time there was some sort of arrangement where kingship evolved into a dual kingship. But they claimed they were descended from Heracles, but they could also claim that they weren't. So there's an odd episode in Herodotus' history where the Spartan king Cleomenes tries to make a sacrifice on the Athenian Acropolis.

And he's told it will be illegal for a Dorian to make a sacrifice there. And he says, I'm not a Dorian, I'm an Achaean. So he's claiming that Achaean ancestry as well, but the reality behind that would be much more questionable. It's really, really interesting indeed. I mean, I guess also archaeologists would want to search for a palace of the Iron Age times as well for the kings, right? Not just think for the Mycenaean palace, but looking for a palace of classical Sparta for those famous names, like whether it's Cleomenes or Archidamus or someone like that.

Absolutely. And the problem with trying to find classical Sparta is so much of it is under modern Sparti. So the Spartan Acropolis is just to the north of modern Sparti. From what we're told by Pausanias, who visited Spartaarta the tombs of the Spartan kings should be somewhere in that region but they're under olive groves archaeology works in Greece when landowners are happy for things to be dug up and so Sparti is much more complicated that way in terms of just so much of it is under the city so they're not it's only when there is a happen starts that something will actually be excavated these days. Just before we go on to Messenia, which you've mentioned a couple of times already,

I'd like to go back to the conquest of Laconia and Sparta becoming dominant in this region. Do we know how the Spartans treat those fellow Laconians who they will ultimately conquer. Do they look down on them as a second class almost? What do we know about that relationship? What we know is that in the classical period, people living around the Spartans were in two different categories. There's the so-called perioikoi, which literally means the people living around. They are free, but not wholly free.

They live in their own communities. They share the label Lacedaemonian with their Spartan overlords. They don't have independent foreign policy, but they do have independent trade possibilities, things like that, and even certain diplomatic arrangements, certainly in the later periods. There are also the Helots, who, according to the myths, are descended from the community of Helos in the very southern Eurotas Valley, right near the sea, who refused to accept Spartan overlordship, rose up and then got conquered and then got turned into helots. That's what the myths say. The problem is helots aren't actually helots. They are really high low tie and it has an E-I vowel in it and helos just has an E. So it's a sort of,

it's an ancient attempted etymology which doesn't actually work. But it shows you that in the classical period and later, no one really knew when and how these arrangements came about. So they came up with a neat solution. So the Spartans have people who live alongside them who they use as a sort of a buffer zone, exploit militarily and treat comparatively well. And then they have people who, for whatever way you want to put it, are unfree labourers who work for them. And that

allows them to sort of sit at the top and ultimately develop their gentlemanly lifestyle, which relies on the exploitation of others. Exactly. You've perfectly highlighted it right there. I don't need to wrap that up anymore. That was also really interesting because when someone mentions the word helots, I immediately think of not the region of Laconia, but the region of Messenia. Let's explore this now. First of all, Andrew, what is Messenia? Okay. Messenia is the rift valley on the other side of Mount Taigatos, extremely fertile territory. The Pamasos River is quite a bit shorter than the Eurotas, but has a huge fluvial delta. There's amazing quality land there, which all of the primary sources emphasize how arable the land is. Tetaeus describes it as wide and good

to plow, which makes it clear what attracted the Spartans to Mycenae. And it has been, according to the myth tradition, ruled by the descendants of Cresfontes, the uncle of the sons of Aristodemus, who became the kings of Sparta. And the mythical story was that Crescentes cheated them out of Mycenae, that when the descendants of Heracles returned, it was understood that Temenus as the elder would rule Argos, and the rest would be divided up by lot. And they threw tokens into a pitcher of water and drew them out. And there's different versions of the story, but all of them involve Crescente's rigging the ballot so he got Messenia because it was better.

And this is sort of the origins of the hatred between the Spartans and the Messenians, even though they're cousins and therefore shouldn't be. But the stories of the mythical hatred actually go back to even earlier times. The Castor and Pollux, the brothers of Helen of Sparta, had a run-in with Mycenaean princes, and the princes died, and one of the brothers who was mortal died as well. And so the brothers of Helen share the immortality, and they actually are believed by the Spartans to be

present on alternate days where the Menelaion is. So they're sort of there in Spartan territory as gods, sort of omnipresent in that way, but on alternate days because they share this gift of immortality. So there's this long mythical hatred between the Mycenaeans and the Spartans. Long mythical hatred that develops into a historical war or set of wars. So come on then, what do we know about the Spartan conquest of Mycenae? Well, we know they conquered Mycenae. Tertius says it took 19 years, which seems a very long time. It's sort of like suspiciously like twice the trojan war which makes it seem bigger and better than the trojan war and at some point in time they rebelled and needed to be properly conquered which is actually the context of teteus's poetry that

was written to encourage the spartans to brave acts to defeat the Messenians proper, and then properly enslave them so that they will not cause problems again. I'd love to say there are reliable accounts of this, but all of the narratives that we have actually date to after the liberation of the Mycenaeans in 369. So there are newly freed people telling a story of their past. So most of the accounts have their questionable moments. And it's obvious, our most detailed source is Pausanias, who was a Roman period geographer, who described the whole of mainland Greece. And when he describes Athens, he spends two-thirds of his time describing the monuments and buildings and just the landscape in Athens, and then a third of his time describing the history. And he does the same for Sparta. So he

describes two-thirds or three-quarters of his account as the monuments, and then this tiny little bit of narrative history. When he gets to Mycenae, he's describing a city that didn't exist until 369. So it's actually the other way around. It's only a quarter of his work is describing the monuments and the lie of the land, and the rest of it is telling the mythical past. So it's questionable at best, but he does quote Tertius and other lost authors, which makes him a very useful source. A very useful source, but I can imagine it's also quite frustrating that you have this limited knowledge to try and figure out, okay, maybe this isn't the origins of Sparta anymore, but at least the rise of Sparta into how it becomes so powerful

in the southern Peloponnese, which ultimately leads to it becoming one of the dominant forces in the whole of the Greek mainland. Yeah, it would be wonderful to know actually what happened. But what we get is stirring stories of heroism from the Mycenaeans, and where they, despite being quite amazing, they just somehow managed to lose. And so there are two great war leaders. The first war, it's not the kings because the king has died. It's Aristodamus. They're all sort of glorious stories of leading the Spartans, leading to battle against the Spartans and the Spartans running away against their bravery. But they still managed to lose. But there's one absolutely over-the-top absurd story. The Mycenaeans are told by the Oracle at Delphi, the god Apollo says you'll win if you sacrifice the daughter

of one of the Mycenaean royal house. And so they all draw lots and one daughter is selected. And then the seer says, oh, no, she's actually an illegitimate. She's not actually a royal at all. She's a substitute. And then the mother has to say oh yeah my baby died so I actually substituted someone in and so then Aristodamus volunteers to sacrifice his daughter and then the man who was betrothed to her is so desperate he lies and

says that she's she's not a virgin she's pregnant with his child. So Aristodemus just happily sacrifices his daughter to prove that she's a virgin. So he cuts her open to reveal that she's not actually pregnant. And then the seer says, well, actually, that's not a proper sacrifice, so we need to sacrifice anyone. And then eventually this is agreed that this sacrifice will do. So there's all sorts of ridiculous stories like that. And in the story of the counter rising and the putting down of the Messenians by the Spartans, there's this great hero Aristomenes.

And the stories are over the top, to say the least. Pliny the Elder, Roman period naturalist, says that when the Spartans captured him they cut him open and they found that his heart was hairy and that this was why he was so brave, that he had a hairy heart. But he seems to get captured and escape a lot. So he's wounded but manages to either convince one of the women who's guarding him to let him go, or as she put it, no, he burned his bonds in the fire. I definitely didn't fall in love with him. And there's another one where he's captured and a girl whose house he has kept in before he's been taken back to Sparta the night before had a dream that a lion had been brought before her by some wolves,

and that the lion's claws had been cut off and that she restored his claws to him and that he killed the wolves and escaped. And when Aristomenes is brought to her, she realises, oh, he's the lion. So she gets the guards drunk and it gives him a knife and he kills the guards and escapes. the best one is when he's captured he's going to be thrown into the kayadas which is a pit where the spartans put criminals and they throw him off with all of his men who've been captured and all the men die but ariston and he's just floats to the bottom of the valley either because he's rescued by eagles, which sounds all very Lord of the Rings, or he floats down on his shield and he just arrives at the bottom safe

and sound and he thinks, well, I'm doomed now. And then he sees a fox and thinks, oh, this impenetrable chasm has a fox in it. There must be a way out. So he grabs a hold of the fox's tail, wraps a cloak around his arm so the fox can't bite him, and just gets dragged out of the ravine by a fox. Now, these stories are absolutely absurd, but they show you the sort of the quality of the story, but also why you wouldn't want to trust them if you're trying to get to reality there. These are, the Mycenaeans really were brave and wonderful, and it was just unfortunate that they were defeated by the Spartans rather than the grim reality of it

that they were conquered and enslaved for centuries Well, I'm glad that we're able to explore that figure of Aristomenes I think I remember interviewing Philip Ogden a long time ago but he was talking about the hairy heart, maybe one of these earliest werewolves that you hear about

in antiquity, which is really, really interesting in its own right. Before we completely wrap up, we've covered Messenia, we've had a look at Bronze Age Sparta and early Sparta. You did mention in passing, and we didn't really focus on that much detail, the Mount Taitos range.

Now, the great heights of the mountains, I must ask about religion. I mean, was this almost the Spartan equivalent of Mount Olympus? Did they believe that there were gods up there or any kind of religious significance of Mount Tahitos? Mount Tahitos, there are cult sites on it, and there is a road that dates back to the Mycenaean period that runs over Tahitos that leads into Mycenae. I can't help but feel when i'm standing in sparta that the location has an impact on them as humans it's sort of i they have a reputation in the classical period

for being absurdly pious taking account of the gods more than others do herodotus just says they count the affairs of gods more important than those of men. They react to divine portents more obviously than others do. If there's an earthquake, it's a sign that Poseidon is saying no. So a Spartan army will get to the edge of Spartan territory. They're ready to do something. There's an earthquake. That's it. We come home. And I can't help but feel that the location, the setting of Sparta has some impact on that. It feels a bit like when you go to Delphi. You go to Delphi, you can think, yes, I understand why the ancient Greeks thought this was the navel of the earth and that Apollo was there, because the landscape just has that aura about it. And on a

certain level, when you're standing in Sparta and just looking at the Taigatos range, you just feel that aura. Lastly, but certainly not least, we did talk earlier about Lycurgus, but of course Sparta is associated first and foremost, rightly or wrongly, with this very militaristic society. According to the mythology, what are these militaristic reforms that Lycurgus brought into early Sparta? It's interesting you use the term militaristic because I Lycurgus brought into early Sparta? Well, it's interesting you use the term militaristic because I think of them as very much socioeconomic, but that then leads to what could be deemed militaristic. So Lycurgus reputedly organized everything in Sparta and did set up the basic military unit, the Enemotia, the sworn band that all Spartan citizens would have to join. But what he most obviously did to change Sparta reputedly was redistribute the land in

Sparta. So when Sparta was that worst governed place, there were hideous problems of monetary nature and there were poor Spartans desperately wanting him to fix things so he reputedly redistributed the land of Laconia into equal plots which then allowed all Spartans to be quite wealthy and therefore have their wonderful gentlemanly lifestyle the question I would ask is why did they need to conquer Messene if Lycurgus had already redistributed the land of Laconia? Because Tetaeus' poetry is cited by Aristotle as indicating there were hideous problems in Sparta with poor people saying they wanted reform. So if Lycurgus had already done it, why did they need to conquer the Mycenaeans and steal their land? I'm glad we

covered that later then, after the conquest of Mycenae, it gives a bit more context and actually a bit more on that economic side and the resources side. Because Athens, it's got arable land, but it's also got the silver mines of larium, doesn't it? Did the Spartans have many natural resources that they traded alongside agriculture of the Eurotas Valley? There are good natural resources in Sparta. So there is one place where there is actually iron. But it's not the Spartans themselves exploiting it. It's more the Perioeci doing that. But Sparta has the reputation of being much more of an agrarian

economy that way. But it has 8,500 square kilometres as polis territory, whereas Athens is 2,500. So it's a mega state. It's bigger than the vast majority of ancient city-states. In the Greek world, the two-thirds of the poleis are less than 100 square kilometres. So Sparta is 85 times larger, at least, than the vast majority of the ancient Greek poleis. So it gives you a sense of the resources they have available to them. Well, Andrew, this has been brilliant. We've done a whistle-stop tour of very early Sparta. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book all about the Spartans, which is cool. The Spartans, a very short introduction for Oxford University Press. Brilliant. And it just goes to me to say thank you so much for

taking the time to come on the podcast today. Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed it. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Andrew Bayliss talking all things the origins of Sparta, kicking off our special

Sparta miniseries this December. And what a miniseries it promises to be. I've now just finished recording all of the episodes for it. You're going to love them. We've got some amazing guests, awesome topics, and they are coming to the ancients in the following week.

So stay tuned for them. Now the story, the retelling of the myth at the beginning of this episode, it was written by Andrew Hulse. It was narrated by Wilfred Duggan. The producer for the whole episode was Elena Guthrie. It was written by Andrew Hulse. It was narrated by Wilfred Duggan. The producer for the whole episode was Elena Guthrie. The assistant producer was Annie Colo. And it was edited brilliantly, mixed all together by Aidan Lonergan.

Thank you for making this episode a reality. One last note from me to say that if you want extra bonus content, well, the Ancients are now going to start releasing an extra third episode once in a while, exclusive to our subscribers. You can subscribe via the Apple app. If you're listening on Spotify or elsewhere, make sure to click the link in the description. Oh, and if you are listening on Spotify, do make sure to click the follow button too,

so you never miss out when we drop a new episode. That's enough from me, and I'll see you in the next episode.