The Traditions Of Ancient Athens and Sparta

Like the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian and Thracian civilizations that preceded and influenced them, early Greece was a collection of isolated city-states. On the Peloponnesian peninsula in southern Greece one such region known as Laconia, had an area of five villages bound together which became the city of Sparta. Strategically located in an easily defended mountain valley, a feature that was prized by the early Dorian colonizers, Sparta began to dominate the surrounding lands.

As early masters of martial expansion and conquest, the warlike Dorians established their roots in Laconia. They became the townspeople of Sparta, while the native population, the enslaved Helots, performed menial and agricultural duties. Freemen craftsmen and tradesmen occupied a third tier of the social structure.

To the northwest, the region known as Attica was inhabited by the descendants of the old Helladic civilization, which included a blend of indigenous peoples. Not blessed with particularly arable agricultural land, the early settlers found that wealth could be accumulated by trading with other cities, and established Athens as one of the eventual great commercial centers of the known world.

Like their Spartan countrymen, the Athenians had three economic and social classes. The Eupatrids were the wealthy landowners and townspeop

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