SPARTANS, ELITE WARRIORS OF ANCIENT GREECE 6: SPARTA’S REPUTATION IS REDEEMED AT MANTINEA!

“For the Spartans, it wasn’t walls or magnificent public buildings that made a city; it was their own ideals. In essence, Sparta was a city of the head and the heart. And it existed in its purest form in the disciplined march of a hoplite phalanx on their way to war!”
– Bettany Hughes, writer/historian.

(For Part Five, go here)

THE PEACE OF NICIAS

Signed in 421, the Peace of Niciasended the first half of the Peloponnesian War. It came none too soon for the belligerents. Both sides were exhausted, and the leaders of the “war-faction” in each state, Brasidas and Cleon the Tanner, had fallen at Amphipolis.

For the Spartans, the war had seen the legend of her soldier’s invincibility in battle shaken; with Spartans surrendering (!) at Sphacteria Island, and Athens putting the 292 prisoners on display. Brasidas had partially retrieved Sparta’s…