City States of Ancient Greece Term Paper

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At the top were the native Spartans who could trace their ancestry back to the original inhabitants of the city. These were the individuals who could serve within the army and enjoyed the full political and legal rights of the state. The second class of citizens was the perieici, who were foreign people who worked within the city and for the Spartans and served as a buffer to the Helots. These individuals acted as the commercial class within Athenian society, running the majority of trade and shops within the city. They were granted a great deal of liberty within the Spartan system and also received the protection of the Spartan military. The final class was the conquered Messenians or Helot class. This class lived as virtual slaves and they farmed the lands for the Spartan military class. Exploitation within this arena was taken the extreme level as the majority of Helots lived on the edge of starvation their entire lives.

The Spartan society was the direct contrast to Athenian democracy and other forms of city-state governance. Athens relied upon a forum of citizens to democratically legislate on the affairs of the city. Sparta's warrior system took away virtually all autonomy from Spartan citizens and enforced values upon them at a very early age. In contrast the majority of Greek city-states at the time were either monarchies or democracies, with elements of oligarchy.

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None of them took the extreme rout of centralizing their entire society on the concept of warfare. As a result, this government often was volatile and evolved with passing generations. However, the people of other city-states also had substantially more liberty than individuals within the Spartan city-state. The enforcement of timocracy created "politically stagnant society" that was completely stable, but wholly despondent to the changing and evolving times. Sparta was in effect, a very dogmatic system that relied upon the strength of their military to defend their status. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=W._G._Forest&action=editW. G. Forest. A History of Sparta, 950-192 B.C.. New York W.W. Norton & Co., 1968.

Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 7. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1984.

Herodotus,

The Histories [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tech Classics Archive]

Jones, a.H.M. Sparta. Great Britain: Basil Blackwell & Mott, Ltd., 1967.

Forest, 15

Forest, 52-53

Jones, 121

Jones, 48-50

Forest, 64

Jones, 90-91

Xenophon, pg. 132

Forest, pg. 39

Herodotus, npg.....

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