Questions:

Ceremonies and ways

of worshipping.




God or gods which
were important in the
religion.



The role of religion in the
major celebrations in
their lives such as births,
weddings, reaching
adulthood and death.

How were decisions
made, who made them
and how did they get to
their position of power


Information
Even though they are a military state they still liked
to celebrate festivals that linked to their religion,
Hyakinthia for example, was a major ceremony that
lasted for 3 days and celebrated the gods Apollo and
Hyakinthos. It is also believed that when the 300
soldiers (see the other page for more info) were sent
out with Leonidas, the festival was happening at the
same time and because they didnt want to anger
the gods, they only used the available men.
The Spartans were Polytheists which means they
believed in more than one god, Zeus was the
strongest and led the Olympians, he was connected
to all of them in some way and the Spartans
believed in this. The whole of Greece believed in this
but the Spartans were the one who followed the
gods and obeyed without question. All states had
favourite gods, Ares and Apollo were the Spartans
favourites because they are both war-related and
their culture is based around it.
The Spartans believed that when you die, you go to
the underworld ruled by Hades, god of the
underworld. You will either enjoy eternal happiness
in the Elysium Fields or Eternal Pain in Tartaros. The
third possibility was a grey shadowy non-life.

Two kings rule the city but a group called council of
elders, that consists of 28 members, can limit their
power. The members of the council were the ones
with the highest social class, the aristocratic
Spartiates. They were a group of military
professionals who spent most of their lives in
military housing, barely seeing their wives and
children. Their lands were farmed by slaves so they
able to carry on with their lives in the military.
The class under the highest is called Perioeci; this
class consists of farmers and artisans who were the
descendants of the earliest Spartans, they pay taxes
and are allowed to join the army but dont have any
official political rights.
The lowest class were the Helots, a slave class who
are descendants of those who resisted subjugation
by Sparta. Because they would always rebel, the
Spartans tried to control this by creating a secret
organisation that would occasionally kill any helots
that would encourage rebelling
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