Spartan Army - Spartan Navy

Spartan Navy

Throughout their history, the Spartans were a land based force par excellence. During the Persian Wars, they contributed a small navy of 20 triremes, and provided the overall fleet commander, but they largely relied on their allies, primarily the Corinthians, for naval power. This fact meant that, when the Peloponnesian War broke out, the Spartans were supreme on land, but the Athenians supreme at sea. The Spartans repeatedly ravaged Attica, but the Athenians kept being supplied by sea, and were able to stage raids of their own around the Peloponnese with their navy. Eventually, it was the creation of a navy that enabled Sparta to overcome Athens. With Persian gold, Lysander, appointed navarch in 407 BC, was able to master a strong navy, and successfully challenge and destroy Athenian predominance in the Aegean Sea. The Spartan engagement with the sea would be short-lived, however, and did not survive the turmoils of the Corinthian War: in the Battle of Cnidus of 394 BC, the Spartan navy was decisively defeated by a joint Athenian-Persian fleet, marking the end of Sparta's brief naval supremacy. The final blow would be given 20 years later, at the Battle of Naxos in 376 BC. A small fleet was periodically maintained thereafter, but its effectiveness was limited; the last revival of Spartan naval power was under Nabis, who, with aid from his Cretan allies, created a fleet to control the Laconian coastline.

The fleet was commanded by navarchs, who were appointed for a strictly one-year term, and apparently could not be reappointed. The admirals were subordinated to the vice-admiral, called epistoleus. This position is seemingly independent of the one-year term clause, because it was used, in 405 B.C. to give Lysander command of the fleet after he was already an admiral for a year. Their helmets were made of bronze or silver and the plume was made of horse hair.