it strikes me as if the Spartans ran into somewhat similar problems to Republican Rome: their system simply wasn’t designed to run an empire. On the City State level it functioned reasonably effectively to the point that they didn’t have to bother with walls around their city and had informal hegemony over their part of Greece, alongside near equal standing with Athens.
Beyond that though? Sparta fell apart trying to do something Lycurgus never envisioned it doing.
Correct, and it goes to show that a fair bit of the actual "Sparta-bashing" is misguided. That is not to say that criticism of Sparta is undeserved. In fact, it is quite richly deserved, because Sparta was deeply flawed-- and repeatedly succeeded more-or-less in
spite of itself.
Your observation cuts to the heart of it. Yes, they faced the same problem Rome faced. And Rome adapted to the needs of the occasion. Sparta... did not. And when we investigate
why not, we see the rotten core of Sparta. The way in which it ultimately doomed itself. Sparta was just about the most rigid society in recorded history. It was rigid by design. They did everything to make it that way, because they believed that "
be the hardest badass around" was the way to go about things. But things hat are exceedingly hard and unyieldingly rigid are also
brittle. They never bend, because they can't bend.
We recently talked about the attributes that made the more "youthful" Romans sufficiently dynamic, whereas the more "elderly" Greek cultures were comparatively more stagnant and "set in their ways". (This of course ultimately happened to the Romans, too, during the Dominate. You can't escape old age.) Now, the Spartans were just about the
most stagnated and ossified of the Greek cultures. Not because they were older, but because they deliberately set their society up around an ideal of cultural purity that became completely fixed and immutable.
That give them their strength. When others dallied, they acted, because to be Spartan is to act. When others were uncertain, they were resolute, because to be Spartan is to always know who you are. But when the world changed, others could (to varying degrees) change with it.
And Sparta could not.
Athens survived the implosion of the Spartan Hegemony and did enjoy a brief revival…until Macedon steamrollered them. Philip the one eyed was not to be denied, and the father of Alexander was not an easy man to deny.
Unless you happen to be Spartans, funnily enough. They still seemed to have enough reputation and muscle to make Philip think twice before attacking them, as demonstrated in the famous “if” story.
In reality, Epaminondas -- whose innovations in no small manner paved the way for the Macedonian ascendancy a bit later on -- already broke the Spartans quite comprehensively. He didn't destroy them, but then... he didn't have to. He defeated them by being innovative in war, while they relied on tried-and-tested tactics. He ran circles around them, and then he stood there as they drooped off back to their home.
He didn't even give them the final clash they desired. He left them to keep existing, for centuries thereafter, as an irrelevant side-show. That was the ultimate humiliation. During the Roman period, Sparta was something of an open-air museum. A tourist attraction. A clownish parody of its own glorious past, turned to mockery in the play-act of remembered greatness... forever lost.
Philippos II surely knew that Spartan soldiers were still strong in his day, and the overland approach was very tough, and Macedon was not a naval power... so he never attacked them. But consider also that he didn't
have to. Sparta couldn't threaten him, and he knew it. He could leave them be. They were already inconsequential to the serious powers of the region. And when Alexander crossed the narrows, and the Spartans sulkily declined to send a cohort, he left a dedication at the Granikos:
"
Here Alexander fought the Persians, leading an army of all the Greeks, except the Spartans."
So basically, he was telling the world that the age of Leonidas was well and truly over. As indeed it was.
