Cover photo: Crouching warrior, tondo of an Attic black-figure kylix, c. 560 BC, State Collections of Antiquities in Munich’s Kunstareal.

With the painful defeat at Leuctra (371 BC from the Boeotean League led by the Thebans where the Spartan king Cleomvrotus was killed) where the Spartans, with great losses, bore the brunt of the battle from the fierce attack of the Sacred Band and the left wing of the Epaminondas and Pelopidas, a messenger was sent to the city.

He arrived in the unwalled Sparta on the last day of the Gymnopaidia, the annual summer festival (July 15 – August 15)¹, precisely when the men’s dance—men, adolescents, and children were participating—was on stage. Upon announcing the unprecedented disaster, the ephors were shocked but maintained their composure. They immediately decided to continue the dance in the theater as usual and to conclude the competitions.

To each of the relatives, they announced the names of the dead, while the ephors warned the women not to mourn for them but to silently endure their misfortune. Obviously, in this very difficult moment for Sparta, it would be important to maintain composure and order. Indeed, the next day, the relatives of the deceased were publicly circulating with a “bright and cheerful face,” while those who survived either did not circulate at all or wandered around gloomy and humiliated.

Of course, the ephors took substantive decisions by mobilizing the remaining forces of the city, from adolescence to those who were 40 years old, five additional classes, that is, from the battle of Leuctra onwards. Since Agesilaus, the second king², had not yet fully recovered from his illness, the city appointed his son Archidamus to assume the leadership in his absence. The Tegeans readily rallied around him as allies of the Spartans who wielded significant influence in their city and were still active.

The Mantinians from their rural settlements were also animated with fervor. Additionally, the Corinthians, Sikyonians, Phliasians, and Achaeans eagerly followed suit, and other cities likewise dispatched their troops. Simultaneously, the Spartans and Corinthians themselves outfitted war vessels and urged the Sikyonians to do the same, intending to utilize them for ferrying the army across.

Source:

Xenophon, “Hellenica”

Footnotes:

1. In the second summer month of the Spartan calendar, equivalent to the Attic month of Metageitnion (roughly late July to late August), the Gymnopaidiai were celebrated, ‘and there is another festival, the Gymnopaidiai, which are among the Spartans by way of education…’ (Pausanias III, 11, 9). ↩︎
2. Sparta had dual kingship and was ruled by two hereditary kings of the Agiad and the Eurypontid dynasties, equal in authority. ↩︎