Paul Christesen | Session 3 of the Battle of Plataea Conference

Amompharetos and the Unruly Sparta at Plataia
Paul Christesen (Dartmouth College)
The Battle of Plataia brought the Spartiates en masse out of Lakonia and into the full view of large number of other Greeks for an extended period of time and involved them in an event that was remembered in some detail. As a result, Plataia gives us an invaluable glimpse of a fundamental dynamic in Sparta that is otherwise largely hidden. The dynamic in question is a tension between what I call a disciplinary Sparta, a place inhabited by a highly disciplined and highly unified group of Spartiates who put a special premium on obedience and subordinating personal interests to the well-being of the group as a whole, and an unruly Sparta, a place inhabited by a group Spartiates wont to dissolve into a mass of highly atomized, self-seeking individuals who were at best disobedient and at worst ungovernable. The unruly Sparta is particularly evident in Amompharetos’ behavior at Plataia, but it is also apparent in how Spartiates leaders, especially kings and regents, behaved and how they were treated. If our sources do not often show us the unruly Sparta, that is because Spartiates were adept at concealing it from the outside world, but that does not diminish its importance to our understanding of ancient Sparta.