Social organization of ESPARTA and CLASES

Social organization has been a key factor in the history of humanity since its origins, being a factor that has evolved and has greatly changed the way of managing each of the civilizations. To talk about social status in one of the most influential cultures for Westerners in this lesson from a PROFESSOR we must offer a summary of the social organization of Sparta.

Index

1. Brief history of Sparta
2. Sparta social classes
3. Spartan noncitizens

Before talking about the social organization of the Spartan polis, we must talk briefly about it, to know information about its existence and to understand thanks to it how important it was for Greece and the Western world in general.

Sparta It was a greek polis located in the Laconia region, in the Peloponnese Peninsula, being the most relevant polis in the area and one of the most important in the entire Greek world. His particularity in the Greek world was his thought centered on the military life

It was the least typical polis of all those that made up the Greek world, with aspects as unique as the absence of acropolis or walls, being therefore the great counterpart of the more classical polis that was Athens.

Characteristics of Sparta

To better understand Sparta we must talk about its great peculiarities, to understand why it was such an interesting polis. The main characteristics of Sparta were the following:

• Some Greeks considered it a kind of tribe, since its peculiarities differentiate it too much from the concept of polis.
• The core of society was the military training, modifying all aspects of Spartan life.
• The agogeit was Spartan education, being compulsory for all Spartans and serving to create great warriors.
• The government consisted of two kings, by five magistrates called Ephors and by a Senate made up of 28 people.

When talking about the social organization of the Spartans we must understand that there was a great difference between two groups: citizens and non-citizens. The former were the classes that had the greatest benefits and the latter were considered second-rate people.

The citizens, and therefore the only social class with political rights, were those Spartans who descended from the Dorians, the first settlers of Sparta. These had numerous privileges such as being born with a plot of land, owning helot slaves, participating in politics and having military power. The Spartan citizens only dedicated themselves to privileged tasks, with the rest of jobs such as agriculture being the task of non-citizens.

To be a Spartan citizen you had to meet a series of conditions such as, for example, being the son of a citizen father and mother, since the bastards no longer had all the citizen rights, having been brought up in education Spartan or agogé, eat in public dining rooms with the rest of the citizen Spartans and have enough property to fulfill their obligations citizens.

Although it was impossible to enter this group from another social class, it was not like that to leave it, since on certain occasions the Spartans could suffer the so-called atimia, being the loss of rights, going from being Spartan citizens to "three before" for reasons such as infidelity or loss of honor. The three former were despised by all Spartan society, having almost the same rights as slaves and the only difference being that they could enter public places and that through war they could regain their status.

Image: Slideshare

To finish with this summary of the social organization of Sparta, we must talk about those social classes that make up the non-citizens of Sparta, being those that fewer rights and privileges possessed and those that are in the lower zone of the social ladder.

Periecos

The Periecos were the inhabitants of the areas around Sparta, being descendants of the peoples conquered by the Spartans without violence. Although they were a free people who were mainly engaged in agriculture and commerce, they could not participate in political life. Even with this they had freedoms, being able to marry and have children, participate in the army, and not being able to be used as slaves.

Helots

Peasants and slaves of the Spartans, they were descendants of the peoples subdued by Sparta through the use of force. Being a kind of servants of the Spartans they were united to the State, to the crops they worked and on certain occasions to their lord. They had certain freedoms such as marrying or having children, or even keeping part of the land produced. In some sources it is said that they could join the army and be freed for it, but the usual riots for their rights seem to show otherwise.

Lower

The so-called inferiors were a series of non-citizen social classes that were not as common as the Helots and the Perieci but also they had limited rights, being less common and having few sources on some of them. Some examples of the lower calls were the following:

• Neodamodes: They were helots freed for their participation in the Spartan army.
• Esquiritas: Located to the north of Laconia they were a town very similar to the Periecos.
• Motaces: Sons between Spartans and Helots, they did not have Spartan rights but could participate in armies.
• Parthenios: Children born out of wedlock in Spartan society, it is said that they were the founders of Taranto.
• Trophimus: Non-citizen Spartans who carried out Spartan education.
• Tresantens: Disgraced Spartan citizens could go to public places and participate in warfare but otherwise had the same rights as Helots.

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