Sparta

Sparta appears in the Federalist essays not simply as a Greek city but as a test case in the argument over union: its actions expose how rivalry among neighboring states could undo common security, while its incorporation into different leagues shows that confederations could preserve or replace local institutions in sharply different ways.

Sparta in the Greek Confederacies

The essays introduce the Amphictyonic council as an ancient association of Greek republics whose arrangement resembled the American Confederation. Its members remained independent and sovereign, held equal votes in the federal council, and entrusted that body with responsibilities for common welfare, war, disputes among members, sanctions, and admitting new members. Sparta belonged to this confederacy, which left its government and legislation intact. The comparison establishes a distinction between a union that coordinated sovereign states and one that could reshape a member’s internal political order.

That distinction becomes concrete in the account of the Achaean League. When Philopoemen brought Sparta into the league, its institutions and laws associated with Lycurgus were abolished and Achaean laws and customs adopted. By contrast, Sparta’s earlier membership in the Amphictyonic confederacy had not deprived it of its own government and legislation. The contrast illustrates how the degree and character of federal authority could determine whether a member retained its established political arrangements.

Rivalry and the Failure of Common Action

Sparta’s relations with Athens recur as an example of rivalry overriding shared interests. In the account attributed to the Abbé Mably, Athens and Sparta, enlarged by victory over Persia, became rivals and then enemies; their mutual jealousy, fear, hatred, and injuries led to the Peloponnesian War. The essays present the conflict as a calamity greater than the harm they had suffered from Xerxes, and as a warning that success against an external enemy could not secure lasting peace between independent neighbors.

The same pattern appears in the Amphictyonic League’s failure to act together during defensive wars against Persia and Macedon. Its members did not unite consistently and could become dependent on, or serve, the common enemy. After the war with Xerxes, Sparta sought to expel cities judged disloyal. Athens resisted when it calculated that Sparta would lose fewer allies and gain control of the council’s deliberations. The episode is used to show both the league’s ineffectiveness and the ambition and jealousy of its strongest members; smaller states, despite formal equality, had become satellites of the more powerful.

Sparta and the Achaean League

The essays also describe Sparta as an opponent of the Achaean League’s expansion. After the league was broken apart through Macedonian influence and later revived by cities seeking freedom from tyrants, it grew to include almost the whole Peloponnese. The account says that Sparta and Athens, jealous of the Achaeans’ rising standing, dampened the prospect of a wider Greek confederation. Achaeans then sought alliances with the kings of Egypt and Syria against Macedon, but Cleomenes, king of Sparta, attacked the Achaeans and used his influence with those rulers to break their commitments to the league.

The Achaeans faced a choice between submitting to Cleomenes and appealing to Macedon, their former oppressor. They chose the latter. The Macedonian force defeated Cleomenes, but the resulting alliance proved costly: the essays observe that a victorious, powerful ally could become a master, and that the Achaeans obtained from him only toleration of their laws. The episode extends the essay’s warning beyond Sparta’s own rivalry: division and insecurity could drive a confederacy to call in an outside power, whose aid then threatened the independence it was meant to protect.

Political Significance

Sparta’s place in these historical comparisons is defined by contrast. Its preserved autonomy in the Amphictyonic arrangement differs from its absorption into the Achaean system; its conflict with Athens illustrates how neighboring powers could turn shared achievement into mutual hostility; and Cleomenes’ attack on the Achaeans shows how a member’s ambition could frustrate a wider union. Together, these examples support the Federalist argument that proximity alone does not produce peace and that a confederacy needs institutions capable of checking member rivalries and preventing foreign powers from exploiting them.