SPARTANS, ELITE WARRIORS OF ANCIENT GREECE 7: ALKIBIADES’ MISCHIEF

“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.

(To read Part 6, go here; or to start at the beginning, go here.)

The Battle of Mantinea in 418 BC was the largest hoplite battle of the Peloponnesian War. The one-sided victory over her rivals secured Sparta’s hegemony in the Peloponnese and confirmed the reputation of the Spartan hoplite as the foremost soldier in Hellas.

The prime agent behind the anti-Spartan alliance that collapsed at Mantinea was the Athenian Alcibiades son of Cleinias. A kinsman of the late renown Athenian leader Pericles, Alcibiades was perhaps the most charismatic politician of…