What factor influenced the Spartans to have Military government?

Answer 1

Well the Spartans had conquered the Messenians during 743 b.c and 668 b.c (2 wars during that period). The conquered inhabitants were turned into helots (people who worked their masters lands, something like serfs during the middle ages) These helots were extremely hostile towards their Spartan Masters and out numbered them (some accounts put the ration at 10:1), Thus Sparta was like a camp in the middle of a hostile population (like an American military outpost in the heart of Baghdad) . This caused the Spartans to adopt the Lycurgus system (the "military government") in order to meet a helot revolt with quickly and overcome the insurrection as fast as possible. It was the fear of helot revolts that caused them to adopt the system.

*The Irony is that helot system which they instituted (expansion, conquest, land distribution , serfdom) was the main reason for them to convert their social system to the military model.

For further info, try and refer to "A history of Greece" by J.B. BUry and Russell Miggs

It is only a personal theory which some may consider wacko, but the Greeks observed nature closely and took much inspiration from it. I think they may have observed the ants and seen them as a perfect society in prehistoric Greece, just as a Greek temple column is thought to represent a tree trunk because Greek religious rites were once held in the woods. Each Greek city-state can be likened to an anthill, and the hardbodied ant-man physique depicted in Greek art was certainly the ideal if not the exact reality. Ants make war on other ants. Ants give no quarter in battle, but they take the eggs of defeated ants and raise them to be slaves. If true, the earliest Spartans must have decided to be the army ants of Greece, with each man being a soldier and nothing more. The Spartan helots, or slaves, were the workers, as an ant soldier is incapable of feeding itself. Every Spartan woman was a queen, and her purpose was to bear as many healthy Spartan children as possible. In the team-oriented ant society, there was no room for weak members, which may account for the Greek abandonment of weak or deformed children. If my theory is valid, Sparta certainly carried this belief to greater extremes than any other of the ancient Greeks, and theirs was the only Greek army with uniformity of armor. Also, Spartans were descended from warlike Dorians who invaded Greece centuries earlier, and the Doric temple column derives its name from these early invaders.