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Compare And Contrast The Athens Better Than Sparta

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"Come back with your shield- or on it," was the parting cry of Ancient Spartan mothers when their sons left for battle. Sparta reached its height after defeating Athens in the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. Everything in Sparta revolved around the city-state having the greatest military and best disciplined citizens possible. During the same time however, there was another prominent city-state to the northeast known as Athens, this city-state founded democracy and also made many strides in the fields of literature and mathematics. Although Athens was a very powerful city-state, the unquestionably superior city-state was Sparta due to their geography, quality of daily life, and incomparable government.

The geography of Sparta provided a far greater advantage than that of Athens. Sparta had a tremendous water source as , “The …show more content…

A reason why Sparta had a superior government to Athens was that it had a , "Council or Senate (apella) of 28 councilmen (men over 60 and elected for life by the citizens) and the 2 kings. They acted as judges and proposed laws to the citizens' assembly.” This was known as the council of elders, the only people in the council of elders were old men who have gained much experience and wisdom throughout their years. This would improve the government as it would make sure the correct decisions were made as only educated people had a say in the government. A weakness in the Athenian democracy is that ,“Usually around 5,000 citizens met, every 10 days or so on a hill called the Pnyx.” This was a huge inconvenience to the Athenian people due to the fact that transportation was so inefficient back in the 4th century BC. People were spending significant time traveling to the assembly and voting that they were losing chances to boost their economy by working in specialized areas such as farming or craftsmanship. Sparta was certainly the better government of the two powerful Greek

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