>>18488473


HOW IS A FICTIONAL BARBARIAN FROM A FANTASY MOVIE RELATED TO THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR?

>>18488473
They did. It was called the Spartan Hegemony and lasted until 371 BC.

>>18488473
Sparta was the dominant land hegemon before Athens was relevant, it later beat Athens by leveraging into an power on land & sea, and it later tried to invade Persia by crossing into Asia Minor (Agesilaus II's expedition, which got foiled by Persia financing rebels back in Greece)
Phillip/Alexander weren't the first to unite the Greeks in an invasion vs Persia, just infinitely more sucessful

>>18488473
Sparta did have a short lived empire, but the reason why it didn't last was due to the fact their actions caused others to really hate them, and their entire system made it nearly impossible to sustain it especially since their citizen pool kept shrinking

>>18488473
Not really, there would've been no way for Sparta to convince other Greek city-states to actually support them in maintaining local peace and power. This was something the Athenians attempted as well, with mostly bloody consequences in the Delian League, even though the Athenians were arguably more able to project power from Athens.

In addition, the Spartan army was in some ways hamstrung by the Spartan fear of helot uprisings, which did indeed happen like with the Third Messenian War.

Also consider that Sparta generally had a smaller population than Athens and other city-states, and simply did not have the manpower to handle an empire.

In short, Sparta did try to have an empire. But it's hard to have an empire when you can't really convince people to actually work with you, you're always afraid of your slave class revolting, and you just don't have as many men as other city-states do. Compare to Rome or Macedon that were militarily powerful but actually had the bureaucratic, logistical, and social apparatuses to support an empire.

>>18488473
no