🗡️🛡️Collapse of Sparta, Actual Reason Why Spartan Empire Went Extinct

6 months ago
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The Spartan Heiresses were an immensely wealthy group of women. During and after the collapse of Sparta, where did this wealth go? Aristotel diatribe against the position of women in Sparta, which he regards as a corruption of the natural order and a root cause of the inequality of Spartan society a weakness as a political power. As he points out, the territory of Sparta could easily support a levy of 30,000 hoplites and 1,500 cavalry, but the bad laws with regard to property and inheritance and the resulting greed and influence of the women have driven the number of full Spartan citizens below 1,000. Plutarch corroborates the story of growing inequality. He describes the state of Sparta a century later, around 240 BC, when the forces that Aristotle identified as key to the decline of Sparta had spun entirely out of control. Rome conquered Sparta and the rest of Greece in 146 BC, though Sparta was only a shadow of itself by then.

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