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At 9.85 Herodotus states that after the Battle of Plataia, the Lakedaimonians buried their dead in three separate graves: one for the ἱρέες, one for the rest of the Spartiates, and one for helots. Taken together with 9.71, this passage suggests that all of the Spartiates decorated for bravery at Plataia were priests, which seems prima facie improba...
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The ancient state of the Lakedaimonians was composed of Spartiates – citizens of Sparta with full citizenship rights – and the so-called perioikoi (literally: ‘those who dwell around’), who lived in small, self-governing towns around Sparta. The perioikoi were personally free but lacked the ability to autonomously decide matters of foreign or military policy. Spartiates and (elite) perioikoi were fellow, if unequal, citizens: they fought side by side, worshipped the same gods and upheld the same conservative values. To the outside Greek world, all alike shared in the legendary military glory of Lakedaimon, but inside their home state, the perioikoi were second-class citizens. Even so, only very few perioikic poleis attempted to shake off Spartiate overlordship during their centuries of shared history. This essay seeks to determine the costs and the rewards of unfreedom, and to answer the question of why some poleis chose the risky course of revolt when so many did not.
Pode-se dizer que, desde ao menos a segunda metade do século XIX, a pólis foi a unidade básica de análise da história da Grécia antiga. Entretanto, em muitos casos é evidente que a tentativa de adequar as pólis gregas a cidades-Estado prototípicas do Estado moderno produziu ressonâncias longevas, que até hoje condicionam nossa compreensão das relações sociopolíticas entre vários grupos que compunham as pólis. Portanto, o objetivo desse artigo é demonstrar como as raízes dessa historiografia baseada na pólis condicionaram uma compreensão errônea da relação entre Esparta e as comunidades periecas da Lacônia e Messênia durante o Período Clássico. Isso será feito por meio da comparação dessa relação com aquela mantida por outras pólis com seus respectivos periecos – mais especificamente Élis e as pólis tessálias. Veremos que, ao invés de um Estado unificado e com funcionamentos análogos aos de sua versão moderna, a soma de Esparta e seus vizinhos compunha uma comunidade politicamente muito menos hierárquica e rígida do que se tende a pensar. Isso, por sua vez, nos permite aproximar Esparta de fenômenos análogos contemporâneos a ela, os mesmos que, apesar das respectivas especificidades, ainda apontam para a inexistência de uma pólis-Estado que englobasse cidadãos de uma cidade central e seus periecos.
This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the typology and topography of Spartan burials that is founded on archaeological evidence. Our knowledge of Spartan burial practices has long been based almost entirely on textual sources – excavations conducted in Sparta between 1906 and 1994 uncovered fewer than 20 pre-Roman graves. The absence of pre-Roman cemeteries led scholars to conclude that, as long as the Lycurgan customs were in effect, all burials in Sparta were intracommunal and that few tombs had been found because they had been destroyed by later building activity. Burial practices have, as a result, been seen as one of many ways in which Sparta was an outlier. The aforementioned recently published graves offer a different picture of Spartan burial practices. It is now clear that there was at least one extracommunal cemetery in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. What would normally be described as extramural burials did, therefore, take place, but intracommunal burials of adults continued to be made in Sparta throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Those burials were concentrated along important roads and on the slopes of hills. The emergent understanding of Spartan burial practices takes on added significance when placed in a wider context. Burial practices in Sparta align closely with those found in Argos and Corinth. Indeed, burial practices in Sparta, rather than being exceptional, are notably similar to those of its most important Peloponnesian neighbours; a key issue is that in all three poleis intracommunal burials continued to take place through the Hellenistic period. The finding that adults were buried both extracommunally and intracommunally in Sparta, Argos and Corinth after the Geometric period calls into question the standard narrative of the development of Greek burial practices in the post-Mycenaean period.
