Semester 1 Humanities Honors
Process
For my project, I decided to look into the ideologies that made Sparta into such a strong army, and how those strategies eventually hurt them and resulted in their downfall.
I chose this topic originally because I wanted to look into an ancient army that was strong and powerful. This is because they are overall super cool to me and I love to see how strong armies were before technological advancements, and see how they were able to get so powerful just on the raw strength of the warriors that made up an army. I narrowed it down to either researching the vikings or spartan's, but Greek history is a topic I really love and I wanted to research it deeper.
I originally wanted to find if I should defend how their war focused society was beneficial or hurtful to their overall success. I read multiple sources about what was special about what they did to be war focused and how they made such a strong army, and looking into how they fell and what contributed to their end. After this research I found that one of their strategies that made their army so powerful, also was part of the reason they fell. This led me to decide to research all the ways their war focused society hurt them.
My research process was pretty smooth and I found a lot of info on the whole time period; however I found a problem finding primary sources. With such an old time period, there wasn't many texts of writing that is now usable to get info about their society. On top of that, Sparta wasn't a very book smart empire so they weren't writing any books about their time period.
I chose this topic originally because I wanted to look into an ancient army that was strong and powerful. This is because they are overall super cool to me and I love to see how strong armies were before technological advancements, and see how they were able to get so powerful just on the raw strength of the warriors that made up an army. I narrowed it down to either researching the vikings or spartan's, but Greek history is a topic I really love and I wanted to research it deeper.
I originally wanted to find if I should defend how their war focused society was beneficial or hurtful to their overall success. I read multiple sources about what was special about what they did to be war focused and how they made such a strong army, and looking into how they fell and what contributed to their end. After this research I found that one of their strategies that made their army so powerful, also was part of the reason they fell. This led me to decide to research all the ways their war focused society hurt them.
My research process was pretty smooth and I found a lot of info on the whole time period; however I found a problem finding primary sources. With such an old time period, there wasn't many texts of writing that is now usable to get info about their society. On top of that, Sparta wasn't a very book smart empire so they weren't writing any books about their time period.
Context
The Spartan Empire was a Greek empire that ran from the 6th to the 2nd century BCE. The Spartans were a war focus society that feared across the world and has been recognized as the strongest army history has seen.
The Spartans had a lot of ways that made them unique and a war focus culture. These special system did make them strong, but also contributed to their downfall or held them back from being even stronger. The Spartans held themselves back a lot my not seeking knowledge. They only thought strength and experience of life was valuable and went out of their way to not learn from teachers or other geniuses offering teachings of their knowledge. Knowledge and book smarts is very valuable and every empire should have some to an extent. Knowing psychology, philosophy, math, or literature could have furthered their tactics by multitudes.
The Spartans had one of the most powerful armies history has ever seen, but their methods to achieve this also backfired on them and resulted in their down fall. The Spartans gave importance to every individual in their army, and everyone was of upmost quality and power. To help keep this up, the Spartans' walls were closed to any outsiders, and to be apart of their society you had to have Spartan blood. This overall hurt their population greatly with them fighting so many battles, their were losing warriors a lot faster then they were gaining. This lead to them being greatly underpopulated and falling to Thebes due to too small of an army.
The Spartans had one of the most powerful armies history has ever seen, but their methods to achieve this also backfired on them and resulted in their down fall. The Spartans gave importance to every individual in their army, and everyone was of upmost quality and power. To help keep this up, the Spartans' walls were closed to any outsiders, and to be apart of their society you had to have Spartan blood. This overall hurt their population greatly with them fighting so many battles, their were losing warriors a lot faster then they were gaining. This lead to them being greatly underpopulated and falling to Thebes due to too small of an army.