Units of History - The Spartan Royal Guard DOCUMENTARY

The Spartans are remembered today as some of the most famous warriors, not just of antiquity but of all history. Known for their strength, discipline and courage, they were truly fine examples of what the ancient Greek world could bring to bear on the battlefield. But among these, none more represented the ideal hoplite than the 300 hand-picked soldiers who defended the king. Today, let us take a closer look at the Spartan Royal Guard. Their history playlist is quite expansive, with a huge 48-part series called The Other Side of History on daily life in the past. To enrich our own content, definitely check out Lecture 13 on being a Greek soldier and sailor. For me, I found it best to download the app on my phone. This allows me to swap from video to audio mode so I can listen to the series as a podcast while going about my daily activities. Right now, The Great Courses Plus is offering a free trial which you can start by clicking the link in the description below or visiting thegreatcoursesplus.com forward slash Invictor. I highly recommend that you take a look at what they have to offer and dive into the material you are most interested in. Sparta's origins stretch back to the early Bronze Age when many communities were sprouting up across the fertile Eurotas Valley of Laconia. This was a of some note, with a Mycenaean palace occupying its heights, whose mythological king Menelaus features prominently in Homer's Trojan War. Yet, despite this bit of notoriety, the communities of Laconia fell into decline by the end of the Bronze Age, and subsequently experienced a rather glacial period of development. It was only at the start of the Archaic Period that Sparta appears to have begun its rise to power. This occurred locally at first as several villages coalesced through a gradual process of Senecism, adopting a dual monarchy in the process. These unified communities, which would become known as Sparta, then used their collective might to dominate the area around them. Initial clashes first targeted their immediate neighbours in the valley of Laconia, but soon after extended to their neighbours across the Great Tigetos Range in Messinia. During this period of the 8th and 7th century, Sparta would have closely resembled the other Greek communities of its time. Militarily speaking, its early armies were nothing special. They consisted of two basic groups, the social elite, who took the field as heavily armoured spearmen, and their followers, who deployed as lightly armed footmen. Yet each group would be far from uniform, as everyone had to buy their own equipment. This meant that only the wealthiest Spartans could afford to act as mounted hoplites, riding horses to battle, then dismounting to fight on foot in the finest armour. We have vase paintings of these sorts of warriors from Corinth and elsewhere, which seems to indicate that it was probably a common practice at the time. In places like Athens and Eritrea, such rich men formed a separate social class, known as the hippias, or horsemen. It is this prestigious title that would later be given to the Spartan royal guard, long after they had ceased to actually ride horses. In battle, the archaic Spartan army formed up in loosely organised masses that don't seem to have been able to manoeuvre or act with much unison. According to the Spartan poet Tertius, warriors advanced or hung back as they wished, charging forward individually to gain glory for themselves. Only rarely would a larger number of these spearmen, the promokoi, or front fighters, bunch together to attack or defend. By the early 7th century, this motley crew of warriors was able to finally dominate its neighbours in the southern Peloponnese, folding them into a new social order as subjects who were obliged to give half of their harvest in tribute to the Spartans. Victory now placed Sparta in control of some 8,500 square kilometres of territory, making it the largest polis in Greece. However, such vast lands were unwieldy to manage and would frequently bark against the reigns of their new master. This regional instability seems to have undermined Sparta, as it set out to battle other cities to the north and led to several military defeats. Something had to be done. Thus, around this time, the Spartan socio-political system was drastically revised. Ancient historians attributed this change to the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus. However, most scholars now assume this happened in a more organic manner around the middle of the 6th century. Change seems to have brought about a restructuring of the government with a new ruling council known as the Gerousia and a reformed Spartan assembly. At the same time, a wall was drawn up between citizens and non-citizens. The non-citizens were grouped together into the class of the Helots and Periakoi. The former were enslaved communities centered around Sparta and Mycenae, who worked the lands and held virtually no rights. The latter were free communities from the further-flung areas of Spartan territory, who held limited rights. In opposition to these were the full Spartan citizens, who had started to present themselves as a closed body of absolute equals, the homoioi, or same ones. Laws now regulated their food, dress, language, education, and behavior. It denied anyone a chance to stand out from the rest. Even though they were still rich and poor citizens, on the outside it seemed they were all the same. Militarily, this meant that the army, which had previously been composed of elites and their retinues, was now turned into a mass hoplite militia. For the wealthy Hippias, this meant relinquishing their horses and joining their comrades on foot. Their job now evolved to protecting the king in battle. This was the birth of the Spartan royal guard. No longer were they a unit of the rich, now they were a unit of the best. The Spartan royal guard would have been armed in a similar manner to the other Spartan hoplites. After all, since the guard was now selected for age, fitness, and zeal rather than wealth, individuals would not have been better or more heavily equipped than others. Defensively, this meant donning bronze greaves, a bronze cuirass or linothorax, a pterogese skirt, a Corinthian-style helmet with a transverse crest for officers, and the most important piece of equipment for a hoplite, the round double grip shield known as the aspis. It was made of laminated strips of wood attached with nails onto an outer rim of bronze. The inside face was covered in leather, while the outside face might remain wood or be coated in a thin layer of bronze. Offensively, the royal guard primarily used the roughly two-meter double-ended dory spear with a flat, leaf-shaped iron head and a bronze butt spike. As a backup, they might carry the kopis sword, a curved, single-edged blade weighted towards the tip. Generally speaking though, they carried only a short dagger with a leaf-shaped bronze blade. Later, Spartans would brag that their swords were shorter than those of the other Greeks because they dared to get closer than their enemies. Throughout their early history and the Persian Wars, Spartan hoplites would be equipped however they liked, just like Greek militia elsewhere. Their colours, crests and shield blazons would have been their own choice. But by the time of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans had begun to realise the intimidating effect of uniform equipment, which showed their sameness and made them look almost superhuman. As a result, they forced their militia to dress in the same red tunic and carry the same shields. Now the law required that the aspis front be covered by a bronze outer face with an emblazoned lambda. The shining metal, meticulously polished, would flash in the sun and terrify the enemy. That being said, standard equipment for hoplites did change over time. One of the major trends was towards the use of lighter gear, as evidenced by artistic depictions and archaeology. The exact reason is never stated by our ancient sources, but may have resulted from a recognition that the shield was sufficient for most infantry clashes, from a desire to be more mobile, and from the fact that as time went on a greater number of regular citizens diluted the previously rich ranks of the phalanx. Thus, bronze and linen cuirasses became less common, leg guards were abandoned, and heavy Corinthian helmets were replaced with simpler open-faced types. The conical pylos helmet, for example, was standard for Spartan hoplites of the Peloponnesian War, showing off their trademark long hair. Let's now turn to a discussion of their training and tactics. This all began with recruitment. Selection for the royal guard happened when a Spartiate year group turned 20 and became eligible for military service. At that point, the aethors chose the three most promising young men and named them Hippogretae, or Hippaeus pickers. Each of the three Hippogretae chose 100 men from his year group to make up the 300 soldiers of the guard. Every choice had to be individually justified to the aethors. Only the finest paragons of Spartan virtue could serve. At least that was the theory, but as Spartan citizen numbers dwindled in the course of the classical period, the pool of candidates in each year group would have grown smaller and smaller. By the time of Sparta's defeat at Leuctra in 371 BC, every Spartan citizen would have spent his early 20s rotating through the royal guard, necessarily serving several consecutive years. There simply weren't enough full citizen Spartiates left to raise anywhere near the required 300 boys to adulthood every year. In terms of training, the royal guard always consisted of the youngest, fittest, most competitive, but least experienced warriors in the Spartan militia. They were not professional soldiers, but merely the cream of the levy, reconstituted every year when a new batch of Spartans came of age. Unfortunately, we know nothing about the specific training of the guard. Most likely this would have been similar to that of the other Spartan citizens, with emphasized general fitness, endurance, agility, and mental fortitude. Such training primarily took the form of athletic exercises, running, jumping, wrestling, boxing, and throwing the discus. Overall, this was quite similar to what the other Greeks were doing, if only practiced by a greater percentage of the citizen population, and more regularly. It should be noted that we have no records that the Spartans conducted any weapons training with the sword or spear. After all, they believed a citizen warrior's job was to be brave and to love hard work, not to be a martial arts master. The closest thing to combat training would be unit formation and drill practice. Such training was indeed distinct from the other Greeks, who spent little, if any, time on these affairs prior to battle. It is this fact that would in many ways grant the Spartans their edge in battle. But beyond this, we know very little of actual Spartan training in the archaic or classical period, beyond what gets reported long after the city's decline. Many of the most intense aspects of the Argoge, for instance, date to the Roman era, when Sparta had been reduced to a pale shadow of its former self, and took deliberate steps to rehabilitate its image. There is one interesting note worth mentioning from our sources, though, that sheds light on the daily activities of the guard. Apparently, young men who had not been chosen for the Hippias would constantly try to start fights with them. If these challengers could prove that they were better than a guardsman in a brawl, they might get picked next time. As a result, the men in the Hippias had to be ready to scrap at all times. As one might imagine, this would have placed even more pressure on them to maintain peak fitness. According to our records, it seems these challenges were so common and so vicious that the Spartans had to make a rule that anyone had the right to step in and stop the fight. Disobedience to this command was punished with heavy fines. In terms of actual use, the Royal Guard may have functioned similarly to the elite state-sponsored units of other cities, like the Sacred Band of Thebes. The Hippias seem to have been an informal standing force of sorts, at the disposal of the aethors whenever they needed muscle. They may have been used to respond to crises, to suppress helot unrest, or to repel invasion from the sea. At one point, the Royal Guard even helped the aethors arrest conspirators aiming to overthrow the Spartan state. But while the Royal Guard was a flexible jack-of-all-trades unit from a strategic perspective, in battle they were simply a part of the Spartan phalanx. In this regard, though, we're not sure if the Hippias were a part of the regular militia units of the Spartan army or existed alongside it. If the former were true, they would have been part of the first of the six so-called marae, or battalion-sized army units. If the latter were true, then they operated on their own in some undescribed group. In either case, the Royal Guard took their place towards the head of the army's marching column with the king. Once on the battlefield, the Spartan army would then have displayed its mastery of formation drills by deploying smoothly from column into line. In doing so, the first marae at the head of the army would end up on the extreme right of the battlefield. In many cases, the king joined them on the flank with the Royal Guard. However, this was not a universal fact. Sometimes the king might be stationed elsewhere in the Spartan line, or allies might be the ones to take up the extreme right. Yet, despite all of the possible ways the army could be deployed, our records agree that the Royal Guard always deployed with the king. They were never separately stationed or used as a mobile tactical force, as might be the case with the Sacred Band. Representing the best of the homoioi, they fought alongside the rest of the hoplites, doing their duty as Spartan equals, no matter what. Let's now turn to the service history of the Royal Guard. We can pick things up again in the 6th century BC, when Sparta had just completed its conquest of the southern Peloponnese and undergone significant internal change. This helped them regain some domestic stability and allowed them to now focus their effort outwards against their northern rivals. Unfortunately, we have no records of combat from this period and no explicit mention of the Royal Guard in action. However, it is possible that they were involved in the famous Battle of the Champions between Sparta and Argos, where each side chose to commit just 300 of their best fighters to decide the outcome of the conflict. In the end, only one Spartan and two Argives were left standing, with both cities claiming victory. This sort of stalemate was quite representative of Sparta's attempt to physically defeat its most immediate neighbors at this time. Therefore, Sparta appears to have changed its approach to foreign policy. They no longer took enemy territory outright. Instead, they expanded by forcing other states into a system of unequal alliances we call the Peloponnesian League. Its members had to swear to follow wherever the Spartans led. By the 5th century BC, the power of the Peloponnesian League was so significant that it elevated Sparta as the primary leader of the Greek world. This presented them with a unique opportunity to achieve greatness with the outbreak of the Greco-Persian Wars. One would imagine that the Royal Guard of Sparta would play a key role in the battles of this conflict. Unfortunately, however, we have no explicit mention of their use. At the Battle of Thermopylae, for instance, we know that the Spartans sent their king and 300 men with him. This seems to fit the bill of the Hippias. However, we are also told that these 300 were picked because they already had sons. This poses a problem, since the men would have had to have been at least 30 years old when male citizens were allowed to get married. Yet, as we've previously stated, the Royal Guard were chosen from amongst the most promising 20 year olds of that year. These two ages contradict one another. It is possible that perhaps the 300 of Thermopylae were all former guardsmen, but we simply don't know. Eventually, the Greek forces were able to turn back the Persian invasion following the critical battles of Salamis and Plataea. It is at this point that the Royal Guard officially make their entry into the historical record, when we hear of the Hippias serving as an honor guard to escort the Athenian commander Themistocles back home from a diplomatic mission. Yet they would spend little time in this role, as Sparta soon found itself at war with Athens in the Peloponnesian War. It's about halfway through this nearly three-decade conflict that we spot them at the important battle of Mantinea in 418 BC. Here, about 20,000 troops faced off and attempted to outflank one another. When combat began, the Spartan left wing was pushed back by the elite Argive thousand, while the Spartan main body with the Hippias similarly crushed their opponents. At this critical moment, King Aegis was able to perform an unprecedented wheeling maneuver to save their fleeing comrades on the left and ultimately win the battle. This and other successes ultimately led to Sparta's victory in the Peloponnesian War. Yet in the aftermath of this conflict, Spartan supremacy proved short-lived, as the Greeks were quick to form new alliances in opposition to whoever might currently be the reigning champion. The ascendancy of Thebes in particular threatened the Spartans and precipitated a war between them. It's during this conflict that we get our second confirmed sighting of the Royal Guard at the famous battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. The Spartans had mastered a mighty army but were countered by the brilliant tactics of Epaminondas. Rather than replay the tactics of Mantinea, the Theban commander had chosen to mass his men and the sacred band on the left to launch a massed assault directly on the Spartan king while delaying battle elsewhere. The attack was devastating. Sparta's Royal Guard fought valiantly to hold the line but could not stop the mass of Thebans bearing down on them. Many officers died and even the king was felled. In the ensuing devastation, the entire Royal Guard was wiped out and the Spartan army collapsed into a rout. After this crippling defeat, we never hear of the Hippias in action again. Most likely, they were revived in some capacity and continued to serve as the Spartans' fittest and most dependable troops. However, by this point, Spartan power had faded and fell into terminal decline. With each passing year, its citizen numbers shrank further and further to the point where it was no longer possible to pick out an elite unit of hoplites without stripping the main phalanx of skilled officers required for it to function properly. Even when Argus and Cleomenes reformed Spartan society and the army once more in the 3rd century BC in an attempt to fight the decline, there is no sign of a new Royal Guard being formed. Like Sparta itself, the exclusivity of its military elite proved to be its downfall. The best of the best were no more.