The Spartiates (full Spartan citizens) were forbidden by law from having any profession. It's fair to ask how they could have much of a society if they weren't allowed to do anything but train. The traditional answer is simple: the helots worked the land and the perioikoi, the freeborn non-citizens of Lakedaimon, took care of all the skilled work and trading that the Spartiates couldn't do themselves. But this answer is at best incomplete. Perioikoi may have served as craftsmen and merchants, but they had no political rights in Sparta. Who was actually running the place?

The reality is, as always, a lot more complex than the stereotype of Sparta would have you believe. Non-Spartans may have observed with awe that Sparta was governed not like a city, but 'like an army camp' (Isokrates 6.81), but this only appeared true in comparison to states like Athens, where popular ideology focused on 'living as we please'. The greater extent to which Sparta controlled its citizens' lives was an extension of the way their society had been organised - not just to be best in war, but to preserve the lifestyle of the leisured class that formed its oligarchic government.

What is Sparta

While Sparta was recognisably different from other Greek states in the Classical period, its difference was often one of degree rather than kind. Most of the strange things about Sparta also occurred elsewhere in the Greek world. And Sparta itself, before it became known as that weird fighty place, was just another Greek state, facing similar pressures and developing in similar ways as the others.

What does this mean in practice? As populations grew and Greece became richer in the course of the Archaic period, many communities saw a rift opening between rich and poor. More and more arable land fell into the hands of the wealthy; the poor, unable to pay their debts, fell into bondage, and often found themselves the physical property of the rich. To turn this around, the poor clamoured for greater political power and for greater accountability of elite magistrates. These twin pressures – rising inequality and pressure on existing power structures – produced different responses in different states. In Athens, the reforms of Solon outlawed debt bondage (henceforth making it impossible to enslave Athenian citizens) and codified the political rights of different classes. Later reforms confirmed a trend toward widening the franchise, protecting the poor, and spreading access to power, eventually bringing about Athenian democracy.

Sparta’s response was different. While the earliest evidence we get for the codification of their laws also sets out the institutions of government, their system confirmed the status of old elites and the position of the kings, which disappear everywhere else in Greece. Where others gradually opened up access to magistracies and assemblies, the Spartans drew up walls around the elite, condemning the poor forever to the type of bondage called helotage. From then on, Sparta was ruled by an exclusive oligarchy whose status was defined by their wealth. Only those who belonged to the leisure class – those who owned so much land that they did not need to use the labour of their own hands to survive – were allowed a political voice. To preserve the exclusivity of this class, working for a living was outlawed for Spartiate citizens.

This decision meant that Spartan society was permanently split between those who met the requirements for citizenship, and those who did not. To justify this situation, the Spartiates made further laws to ensure that their leisure class lived the kind of life that all elite Greeks regarded as morally worthy. Instead of competing openly for ever greater wealth and status, they removed superficial differences of dress and diet, and subjected all Spartiate boys to a common education that inculcated them with the values of the ideal citizen: obedience, discipline, moderation, and a selfless dedication to the good of the state.

This is the society we find in the sources: a Sparta ruled by a small upper class of leisured gentlemen, admired by others for its political stability and the apparent moral fortitude of its citizens. This ideal state was built on the backs of a vast enslaved underclass that so internalised its unfree status that later authors speculated that they belonged to a different people than the Spartiates themselves. It was also – coming back to your question – not a state built for war. Preparation for war was simply one of the duties of a good citizen in any Greek state. The Spartans, who prided themselves in consisting entirely of leisure-class citizens, also mandated more physical training than any other state. But this did not make them soldiers. They were citizens, whose military duties were one of the requirements to preserve and extend their status as a slave-owning leisure class.

Who runs Sparta

In terms of the political system, then, Sparta was little different from other Greek oligarchies. The elite monopolised positions of power. The state was run by the Spartiates themselves. The Spartan Assembly was accessible to all Spartiates. Membership of the council of elders (gerousia) was an elected position, meaning that only the wealthiest and most prominent of citizens over 60 had a chance of getting in. The five magistrates known as the ephors were elected annually from all citizens, and could serve only once. Together with the two kings, these bodies formed the legislative (gerousia and Assembly), executive (ephors and kings) and judicial (gerousia and ephors) branches of government. The Spartan system excluded all non-citizens, free or otherwise, from power; helots and perioikoi had no political rights.

Compared to other Greek oligarchies, the only odd feature is the dual kingship. This was a peculiar Spartan institution of unknown origin. The kings served as high priests in peacetime, and commanded armies in war. They also had a seat on the gerousia for life. However, they did not have supreme power in Sparta; they could be brought to trial for their conduct at home or on campaign, and the ephors had the right to fine them, exile them, or even have them executed.

To answer your question, then, the most powerful men in Sparta were the two kings, the 28 members of the council, plus a board of 5 citizens who were elected to the ephorate for a year and resumed their normal duties afterward. Given that Sparta never had more than 10,000 citizens in total, it does not appear to have needed more government officials, other than the officers in charge of educating boys and leading army units in the field.

How does Sparta work

If none of the Spartiates were allowed to work, how did Spartans get anything done? Who built their ships and their houses, who brought in bronze for their shields and dye for their clothes? It’s clear that the perioikoi mentioned earlier played a major role in Spartan life. These were people from communities subjected to Sparta, but not absorbed into the helot population; they retained local autonomy and lived like other Greeks, except that they were compelled to serve the Spartans without ever acquiring a voice in Spartan politics. These freeborn Lakedaimonians were able to pursue any profession they liked, and no doubt made up most of the craftsmen and merchants in Sparta. By the end of the fifth century BC, they also formed the majority of the Spartan army.

But the functioning of Spartan society wasn’t all down to them. Spartiates may not have been allowed to learn a trade, but as I said, they were not soldiers either: they were leisure-class citizens. They were estate owners, compelled by law to spend most of their time with their tent groups in Sparta itself, but with considerable freedom to spend the rest of their days as they saw fit. Many of them would have spent their time managing their property: overseeing the labour of the helots, keeping an eye on finances and stockpiles, and arranging what needed to be arranged. Moreover, the women of Sparta – empowered by greater inheritance and property rights than women elsewhere in Greece – were often capable estate managers in their own right.

In other words, we shouldn’t think of Sparta as a community of weird recluses doing nothing but raising children and training for war while the non-citizens roll their eyes and go about trying to hammer the place into some semblance of a functioning society. Much of the day-to-day running of the economy would have been done by the Spartiates themselves. They owned the land and slaves that formed the main wealth of Sparta. In Xenophon’s account of the conspiracy of Kinadon, or in his account of Sparta’s laws from the 4th century BC, we get glimpses of Spartiates going about their business and appearing to all the world like regular Greek leisure-class citizens. They could be seen walking about the agora, apparently doing business with the traders there; they borrowed their neighbours’ farming tools and hunting dogs; they spent lavishly on horses and chariot teams to sponsor at the Olympics. Again, their society was not actually much focused on warfare at all. They spent a lot of their time training, to be sure, but they spent less time on campaign than the leisure-class citizens of Athens, and they spent the rest of their time living the comfortable life of a wealthy Greek landowner.

To sum up: how could Sparta function as a society? By being a lot less militarist than the popular image suggests. Spartan citizens held their status by virtue of their wealth, and their priority was to preserve both. Military preparation proved a good means toward that end, and that was more or less the only reason why Sparta gained a reputation for being rigidly focused on warfare. In practice, Sparta was run much like any other Greek oligarchy, with power and wealth in the hands of a small elite, which preferred to keep such things to itself.