Western Civilization I / Unit 3 WC1 0232 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sparta and Athens Compared on Six Features
The idea
The exam's most common Greek comparison sets Sparta against Athens and asks which statement fits which. The method is six features with paired answers: economy, constitution, army, citizen body, women, and slaves. Learn the pairs and the statements sort themselves.
In practice
Economy: Sparta agrarian on helot labor, Athens trade and silver. Constitution: Sparta two kings, council and approving assembly, Athens a voting assembly with offices by lot. Army: Sparta a full-time hoplite elite, Athens citizen hoplites and a navy rowed by the poor. Citizen body: Sparta a few thousand Equals, Athens about ten percent of a large population. Women: Spartan women owning land and speaking publicly, Athenian women increasingly restricted. Slaves: Sparta's helots as a conquered people held by terror, Athens's slaves bought and captured, worst in the mines. Apply: a statement about women athletes with property is Sparta; a statement about a fleet as the poor's political weapon is Athens; a statement about an annual declaration of war on one's own laborers is Sparta.
Where people slip
Both were slave societies and both were hoplite societies. The contrasts are of degree and form. The anchor's phrase for Sparta, elitist communism, is a quotation from Frost, attributed, and the anchor's Attica population figure is high; use neither as a fact of your own.
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