spartan army at Mantinea 418 BC

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

As a matter of fact,if you want to protect your precious few citizens,it's better to place them all together in a considerable depth,rather than spread them all,or even half of them,in the front line,that would ensure their death even in a victorious battle. But again this is speculative. Another clue is that the Sacred Band and the rest Theban army were deployed to an extraordinary depth only for some meters in the far right Spartan wing. Was this because the few homioi held their honorary place there?
So what about Sphacteria? There we don't have a real army,rather a pitiful garrison. The number of the homioioi there was equal to 6 school classes! If you think of this its ridiculous that they would have to hold the one wing. After all, in Sphacteria it's almost impossible to give a real battle between phalanxes.
The Spartans were not considering themselves superior to other people because of their ancestry or something. They just thought that their constitution was better and most of all,they were the ultimate warriors. So what kept them distinctive against any helots or perioikoi was was their training. If you place "foreigners" inside the base of their system,the enomotia, you ruin the whole concept. And you make an equal army of non homioi, with the right to claim all the victories that the spartan army had achieved. It may was possible that when needed the homioi could beploy in the first and last rank. It isn't necessary that this was the rule,nor that the perioikoi were part of the enomotia.
After all,the Spartan army was famous for its coordination,and in the othismos this is exactly what you need to win. If you place the proffecionals only in few ranks in all the lenght of the line,you destroy that coordination as well.
In Sphacteria we see that dofferent enomotiai(or men in the the number of the enomotia) were dispatched in order to guard different spots of the island. It is logical to assume that Spartans were put inside these groups in order to add confidence and assure that the perioikoi would not try to escape. We often see Sparta doing this,sending only commanders in otherwise foreighn armies,to ensure everything would be as planned.
Khairete
Giannis