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Essay about The Importance of the Army in Spartan Society.

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The importance of the army in Spartan society:
The entire Spartan society revolved around the army, essentially making it the key aspect of Spartan life and culture. The army influenced areas such as education and social structure as well as being the most important defence of Sparta in both combat and reputation.
After an embarrassing defeat at the battle of Hysiai Sparta went through great military change, these changes dramatically changed all other areas of Spartan life, turning Sparta into a military focused state. This militaristic influence impacted greatly on Spartan education, essentially aiming to mass produce the perfect solider. The education and training of Spartan boys aged as young as 7 in the agoge became the crucial …show more content…

The army acted as a second family for the men, the closest bond of friendship imaginable, not only did they fight together, but ate together every night in their ssystia, or mess group. Men were required to eat in these groups every night, even after married and fought with these groups in battle, showing the importance of the army in the lifelong friendship. These ssystia shared barracks together whilst before the age of 30 men had to live in the barracks despite marriage, this implies the great importance of the army over ruling the importance of family ties whilst the boy is young and then over relationships when the man grows older.
The army was responsible for maintaining the reputation of Sparta, arguably the most important role it played. Knows as the best warriors of the Peloponnese the Spartans used their strong military tactics in order to conquer neighbouring lands in order to further expand Sparta and gain larger areas of fertile land. Sparta lead the untied Peloponnese army and was greatly feared throughout the Mediterranean due to their title as the greatest army throughout Greece. This title in itself made the thought and task of attacking or declaring war on the spartiates a feared happening, further defending them from attacks dismissed as useless and never carried out by neighbouring states. The army was the main defence of Sparta keeping the citizens safe and

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