The Spartan Command Structure and Non-Citizen Roles

Leadership on campaign: kings and ephors

Sparta’s army was not simply a body of citizen soldiers following a king. It depended on political decisions, officers who communicated orders, and people outside the citizen body who supplied labour and additional manpower. These connections help explain how Sparta sustained its military strength in the fifth century BC.

Sparta had two hereditary kings, drawn from separate royal families. A king could lead the army on campaign, where his position gave him considerable authority. Kings also served as priests of Zeus, connecting military leadership with religious responsibility.

Royal power was not unlimited. The ephors were five officials who served for one year. Two ephors accompanied a king on campaign, providing oversight rather than leaving military leadership entirely beyond political supervision. Commanding the army did not mean that a king controlled every aspect of the Spartan state.

The career of King Agis illustrates this accountability. In 418 BC, after he failed to exploit an opportunity against Argos, the Spartans threatened to destroy his house and impose a heavy fine. They instead appointed ten Spartan counsellors whose consent he needed before leading an army out of the city. This was an exceptional restriction imposed on Agis, not a permanent feature to assume for every campaigning king.

Mobilisation and practical organisation

An army needed decisions about who would serve, not just instructions once battle began. Xenophon describes the ephors announcing the age limits for those called up, including cavalry, heavy infantry and artisans. Artisans were skilled workers, and their inclusion shows that a campaign required practical support as well as fighting men. Equipment travelled on wagons and baggage animals.

Xenophon’s account dates to around 375 BC, later than this lesson’s fifth-century setting. It helps explain Spartan organisation, but its precise numbers should not be treated as a timeless description of Sparta.

Thucydides provides a fifth-century example of mobilisation before the Battle of Mantinea in 418 BC, during the Peloponnesian War. Sparta urgently assembled its own forces and called on allies to join them. Some of the oldest and youngest Spartans were then sent home to guard Sparta. Mobilisation therefore involved balancing the needs of an expedition against security at home.

How orders reached the soldiers

At Mantinea, Agis directed the army through a chain of command: a sequence of officers through whom orders passed. Thucydides describes the king giving instructions to the polemarchs, who passed them to the lochagoi, then to the penteconters, then to the enomotarchs, and finally to the soldiers in the enomotiai.

Each officer dealt with a manageable part of the army rather than the king having to instruct every soldier personally. Thucydides emphasises that orders reached the troops quickly and that responsibility was shared among many officers.

He also describes seven companies at Mantinea, excluding the separate Sciritae contingent. Each company contained four pentekostyes, and each pentekostys contained four enomotiai. The front rank of each enomotia had four men; depth varied, although the units were generally eight deep. This is a description of the army at that battle, not proof that every Spartan expedition had identical numbers.

Xenophon’s later account describes six regiments called morai. Each infantry mora had one polemarch, four lochagoi, eight penteconters and sixteen enomotarchs. The accounts show successive levels of command, but their different unit arrangements should not be collapsed into one fixed system.

Small-unit officers had an important practical job. Xenophon explains that enomotarchs gave spoken orders to change the depth of the battle line. Men needed to recognise their leaders and follow instructions. Organisation therefore turned individual obedience into coordinated movement.

The hierarchy also supported everyday discipline. Xenophon describes a senior polemarch issuing orders through a herald for inspection, meals and relief of the outposts. Command was necessary throughout a campaign, not only during fighting.

The strengths and limits of command at Mantinea

A clear hierarchy made coordinated action possible, but it did not guarantee that an order would be sensible, timely or obeyed.

At Mantinea, Agis feared that the enemy would outflank his left wing. He ordered troops on the left to move outwards and instructed two polemarchs, Hipponoidas and Aristocles, to bring companies from the right to fill the resulting gap. The two officers did not move, and the enemy attacked through the unfilled gap. They were later banished for their disobedience.

Sparta nevertheless won the battle as its centre and right defeated their opponents, and Agis subsequently ordered support for the struggling wing. The example reveals both sides of Spartan command: the king could coordinate different parts of the army, but last-minute instructions and subordinate disobedience could undermine the plan.

The perioeci: military service without citizenship

The perioeci, also called perioikoi, were free inhabitants of communities under Spartan control. They were not full Spartan citizens and had no political rights in Sparta. Their position was therefore different from both the privileged Spartiates and the unfree helots.

Perioeci included farmers and artisans, and they served in the Spartan army. Their military importance was that Sparta could draw on manpower beyond its citizen soldiers. Their productive work also supported the wider economy on which campaigns depended.

The important distinction is between contribution and political power. Serving Sparta militarily did not make a perioecus a Spartiate or give him an equal voice in Spartan government. Sparta’s military efforts involved people who did not share the rights of the citizen group directing the state.

The helots: farming, fighting and supplying the army

The helots were an unfree agricultural population working on Spartan-owned estates. They cultivated the land while Spartan citizens devoted their time to military training, warfare and politics. This was a direct military connection: citizen soldiers’ ability to concentrate on military life rested on other people producing food.

Helot contributions also extended to campaigns. At Plataea in 479 BC, during the war against Persia, Herodotus describes 5,000 Spartan soldiers accompanied by 35,000 lightly armed helots: seven helots to each Spartan. These are Herodotus’s reported figures. His account places helots among the light-armed troops, showing that they were not simply an agricultural workforce left behind at home. They should not be confused with the heavily armed citizen hoplites.

Helots also undertook dangerous supply work. In 425 BC, Athenian forces blockaded Spartan troops on the island of Sphacteria, near Pylos. Thucydides describes helots carrying provisions, including ground grain, wine and cheese, to the trapped men. They approached by boat at night, particularly when winds made it difficult for Athenian ships to maintain the blockade. Sparta promised freedom to helots who successfully delivered supplies.

This example makes their military importance concrete: troops could not continue resisting without food, and helot supply efforts helped prolong the blockade. The promise of freedom also shows that participation should not automatically be interpreted as loyalty to Sparta or equality with its citizens.

An organised army with important dependencies

Spartan command combined royal leadership, political oversight and subordinate officers. Clear responsibilities helped make mobilisation and coordinated action manageable, although Mantinea shows that orders could fail in practice.

Sparta’s strength cannot be explained by citizen discipline alone. Perioeci contributed military manpower and productive work; helots sustained citizen soldiering through farming and also performed wartime duties. The army depended on groups excluded from full citizenship.

Dependence on helots created a serious tension. Sparta needed their labour but feared resistance from a population it controlled by coercion. Helot revolts damaged Sparta during the fifth century BC. The social system that supported military readiness therefore also created an internal security problem.