How was Sparta conquered?

Sparta recovered from her defeat by the Thebans in 371 BC but was never again the hegemon of Greece. The Spartans did threaten their neighbours after this but rarely established any control outside Laconia.

In 331 BC when Alexander the Great had disappeared into the East, the Spartans led a Greek campaign against the Macedonians and many of their old Peloponnesian allies rallied to them so they fielded an army of some 20,000 and defeated the Macedonians in one major battle. It was just like the old days! Except it wasn’t. A much larger force of some 40,000 Macedonians under Antipater then crushed them at the Battle of Megalopolis. The king, Agis III was killed. Sparta itself however returned to peace for a while.

In 272 BC, the Spartans fought off the formidable army of King Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus’s army was armed in the Macedonian Successor fashion with pike armed infantry, heavy and light cavalry, elephants and auxiliaries. The truth is we don’t really know how the Spartans were armed. They certainly used mercenaries. They may have fielded the famous Spartan hoplites, but by this time they had very few of these. Anyway they drove off one of the most formidable men of his age.

A couple of generations later in 235, Cleomenes III became one of the kings of Sparta. He reformed the Kingdom, increasing the number of citizens by enrolling other classes and resident mercenaries. All were all trained to fight in the phalanx and he quickly raised a largely citizen army of Macedonian-style pike-armed infantry.

Cleomenes fought several campaigns in the Peloponnese, over-running the highland plan of Arcadia and capturing Tegea and Mantinaia. These were crucial allies from the days of the Peloponnesian League, however at this time they were part of the Achaean League, a federation of free Peloponnesian states. By all accounts the Spartan army of some 5000 men had lost none of the Spartans ancient prowess and defeated a much larger army of Achaeans.

However the Achaeans called in the Macedonians and the heavily outnumbered Spartan Army was overwhelmed in the pass between Tegea and Sparta. Cleomenes fled the country. He returned a few years later and attempted to repeat his revolution, but was unsuccessful and committed suicide.

This was not quite the end of Sparta, for a tyrant called Nabis took over and reprised some of Cleomenes’ reforms, hired mercenaries and reasserted Spartan power from 207 to 192 BC. After he was assassinated, Sparta was forced to join the Achaean League and was never again a military power.

However in 146 BC, a dispute between the Spartans and the Achaeans led to Roman intervention and the Achaean army was destroyed at Corinth. Achaea became a Roman province, but Sparta remained a free city with significant special privileges. (It also became a tourist destination).

Centuries later, around 580 AD, when the Western Roman Empire had fallen and various tribes of barbarians were at large in Greece, the Laconians took refuge in naturally strong places. The great rock of Monemvasia, on the Aegean coast and close to the old Spartan ‘perioikoi’ town of Epidauros Limera, was foremost of these. The Monemvasiots claimed the ancient rights that Sparta had had from Rome and fought as allies of the Roman-byzantines. In particular, a few centuries later, the Monemvasiot Navy prosecuted a successful war against the Arabs who had invaded Crete.

When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Monemvasia was about the last city standing of Roman Empire. The Archons of the city asked the Pope in Rome for protection, but when this didn’t work out, they agreed to put themselves under the control of Venice. However, they demanded the continuation of their ancient (Spartan) rights.