Spartan Mora regiments at Battle of Plataea

[Paralus]

It is entirely possible that the perioici were deputed to “homeland defence” – anything is possible given the equivocal nature of the source material. There seems – mostly – to be a regiment or two of the army generally left at home (or at least those above 35) with whom they might have been deployed. Certainly you would not leave the city’s defence in the hands of helots and perioici alone.

The unequivocal evidence comes down to times of crisis for Sparta: the Athenian occupation of Pylos and the battle of Plataea. In both instances Sparta is clearly described as mustering the perioici as part of the army to confront the crisis.

At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War Sparta musters an army of invasion at the Isthmus (as with Plataea). Thucydides, at 2.11.1, has Archidamus address his generals with the following words:

‘Peloponnesians and allies, our fathers made many campaigns both within and without Peloponnese, and the elder men among us here are not without experience in war. Yet we have never set out with a larger force than the present; and if our numbers and efficiency are remarkable, so also is the power of the state against which we march.

“We have never marched out with a larger force than the present” is, one thinks, Thucydides’ method of conveying the size of this force. Just how large it was it not readily attainable but, if the above is true, one needs to go back to Plataea to find a comparison. All Thucydides tells us just what the muster was for this force at 2.10.1:

The several states were ready at the time appointed and assembled at the Isthmus; the contingent of each city being two-thirds of its whole force.

This would, indeed, correspond to what we know of the Plataean army. I would suggest that it most likely counted Perioici amongst the Lacedaemonian two thirds.

Be that as it may, clearly, Mantinea in 418 was the gravest crisis Sparta had faced since the Persian invasion. Alcibiades, giving note of his abilities, has not only roused Argos to action but has also detached League allies from Sparta and put them into the field. A loss on the field here will have occasioned Sellasia-like results. And, like Sellasia, I rather suspect that the Spartans will have mobilised as many of her resources as possible. To my mind that would include periocic hoplites.

The other possibility here is the use of the term “allies”. At the time of the King’s Peace prior to Leuktra Agesilaos insisted on Sparta’s right to sign on behalf of the allies – included in this was the legal nicety of the periocic “cities”. So to Xenophon describing the return of the army after the calamitous defeat at Leuktra an army that (at 6.4.17) included “those who were forty years beyond the minimum military age”:

And proceeding with very great difficulty, since they were withdrawing at night and in fear and by a hard road, they arrived at Aegosthena in the territory of Megara. There they fell in with the army under Archidamus. And after waiting there until all the allies had joined him, Archidamus led back the whole army together as far as Corinth; from there he dismissed the allies and led the citizen troops back home.

Again, given desperate situation indicated by the call up, I’d think it highly likely periocic hoplites were part of Archidamnus’ force if not the original force under Kleombrotus.

It is just possible that the perioici are referred to as “allies” this being the legal nicety Epaminondas so enraged Agesilaos about.