This does not mean that Spartans were generally lazy.
HOPLITE SHIELD WITH THE LETTER A FREE
The Spartan said that he would like to meet this Athenian, who was evidently the only free man in the city. The difference between Sparta and Athens is well illustrated by the story of the Spartan visitor to Athens who heard that an Athenian had been prosecuted in the courts for idleness. Farming, trading and handiwork were left to helots and slaves. When he was not training for war, the Spartiate was idle. A Spartiate had no other job than to be the best warrior he could be.
HOPLITE SHIELD WITH THE LETTER A PROFESSIONAL
Spartan soldiers made up one of the world’s first professional armies. Only partly, because the other part of the formula for victory lay in the nature of a Spartan warrior. Consequently, when up against the Spartans, other hoplites expected to lose, and partly as a result of that expectation, they did. This preoccupation tended to be a fatal distraction to men facing a finely-honed and trained killing machine whose components were focussed only on victory or death.
Therefore in any army facing the Spartans, those in the battleline had a tendency to keep looking around as they tried to find the perfect balance between not appearing cowardly and not leaving it too late to run for their lives. However, the reality was that at this time the Spartans were the best-trained and most skilful warriors in Greece, and a sure bet to defeat even twice their number in combat. This would have been true even if the side opposing the Spartans had the same degree of training and skill as the Spartans had, because their side lacked the Spartan motivation to stay in the ranks and fight to the end. Therefore those going into battle against the Spartans knew that only one battle line was eventually going to break, and that battle line was theirs. Any Spartan who did run would have been so ostracised and mocked that life would not be worth living anyway. Naturally, this did not apply to the Spartans, who were indoctrinated from early childhood to prefer death to the dishonour of flight. Therefore, if the battle line was going to break, those who broke first and fastest were the ones who got out alive. On the other hand, those brave souls who remained fighting in a crumbling battle line ended up being captured or killed. The problem was that those who were the first to break ranks and run from the battle line had the better chance of survival, because the enemy had first to get through those still standing their ground. Once a hoplite was deprived of the protection of the warriors on either side of him, he was easy to kill – especially as a fleeing man usually discarded the large shield which was his principal form of defence. Most casualties in a battle were sustained by the side which broke first and ran away. The name ‘hoplite’ means something like ‘armoured man’ and as the name implies, a hoplite in the battleline was well defended by his panoply. Hoplites fought ‘shield against rounded shield’ (as the poet Tyndareus puts it). The reason for this lies in the manner of fighting employed by Greek hoplite armies. Those who went into battle against the Spartans did so in the expectation that they would lose, and this became a self-fulfilling expectation.
By the late sixth century, the Spartan army had evolved into a fighting machine which enemies tried to avoid if given the slightest chance.
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