What gave Sparta an advantage over other Greek States between 500-390BC and Persia during the Persian Wars?
………Between 736 to 545.BC, Spartan influence in the Peloponnese was established and fortified; a series of battles took place with their neighbours, namely the Messenians who became an irreplaceable element to their economy as serfs or Helots. The helots (hel meaning seized in Greek) were the key to the future military might of Sparta, the whole Spartan social and economic system was based on their subservience, and they could never have become professional soldiers without them. The Second Messenian war (668-657.BC) further hardened their need for vigilance and a strong force to keep the population under control. Throwing the control of Sparta off them, they rose up and were quashed over a 10-year period that created paranoid, aggressive and far more vigilant Spartans.A series of defeats with Tegea and Argos, their neighbours in the Peloponnese, pushed Sparta to developing a system of training Hoplites so they could defeat these defiant neighbours. Lycurgus, the law giver, began
