greek poleis

[PMBardunias]

Sparta, for the great bulk of the Hellenistic era, was a two-bit Peloponnesian piss-ant.

I see no need to be offensive, and you know I take offense at such virulent Laconophobia. This statement is also incorrect. Sparta found herself at war with Hellenistic kings perhaps more than any other Greek polis.

When Phillip was busy "uniting" the Greeks, Sparta thumbed her nose at him. He sent a message that "If I come to Sparta I will destroy you!" The Spartans answered in classic Laconic style: "If"

Alexander was so miffed he specifically excludes them from the rest of the greeks in sharing his victories. This is perhaps not suprising, because in Alex's absence Sparta had allied herself with the remnants of the Persian fleet and romped unchecked through Crete and the Peloponnese for the better part of a year- defeating at least one Macedonian force.

She then came close to derailing Alex's eastern expedition at the "Battle of Mice", a far closer-run thing than the moniker Alex supplied us with might indicate. Had the Spartans won, and the battle was one of the most brutal Greece had seen, Alex surely would have been checked by a "Lamian war" come a few years early.

Demetrios thought Sparta worthy of siege, and he's a fellow who knew a thing or two about sieges.

Even with rampaging pachederms and furious Keltoi Pyrrus broke his famously ridge-like teeth on Spartan defensive lines excavated by women and manned, in substantail part by the old and young men normally unfit for service. The Spartan army later hounded Pyrrus to Argos where he was dispatched by a fine Doric matron armed with terracotta.

Atreus of Sparta met Antigonos at Corinth in the Chremonidean war.

Agis IV attempted to bring a populist revolution to Greece. After his death, his wife's new husband, Cleomenes III, did so again, though with more sinister motives. He succeeded so well with message of debt-relief and land reform that a Macedonian force was begged back into the Peloponnese, by the very man who ejected them from it, to defeat the Spartans at Sellasia. Plutarch thought enough of them to compare them with the Gracchi, and some hold, though I do not, that all of Christianity owes a debt of mythology to Cleomenes III's end in Egypt.

Phillip V has to fight his way out of Laconia at Menelaion.

Nabis makes such a nuisance of himself that Roman intervention is called for. The political savy of two Spartans will later lead to the suicide of Phillipoemen, "the last Greek' and a perennial foe.

This does not even take into account the actions of individual Spartans in foreign service. Cleonymus was a bigger thorn in the side of Macedonians while in the service of Pyrrus than he ver was to Sparta, and Xanthippus changed the course of the first Punic war and doomed Rome to fighting two more.

A "piss-ant" is something you crush easily and be done with, not something you war against with varying success and failure for generation after generation.

Also, you said nothing above that counters my claim that the vast majority of poleis were politically irrelevant outside of their action as part of a league of poleis. Federations and empires had simply outpaced the resources of single city-states.