0431 BC-12-01 00:00:00
Thucydides, a contemporary historian, believed that the war broke out because of Spartan fear of the rising power of Athens, whose empire and capital increasingly isolated less imaginative and less adventurous rivals. Both were unusually powerful, atypical–and antithetical–Greek states that could afford to ignore the old rules of infantry warfare. Supported by nearly 200,000 Helots (serfs) who worked the farms of Messenia and Laconia, the Spartans fielded professional hoplites, year-round infantry not subject to the normal restrictions that free agriculture placed on yeomanry in infantry battle.
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