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This Spartan army was only a token force and, according to Herodotus, there were possibly 8,000 Spartiates available for deployment. This is the battle in which three hundred Spartans and 1,000 allies under the leadership of King Leonidas held off the massive invasion force of the Persian King, Xerxes, which perhaps numbered over 120,000 men. The most famous 5th century battle, which included Spartans, took place in 480BC at Thermopylae against the Persians. This decline can be shown with the differing numbers of troops that Sparta could call upon to send to battle during the 5th and early 4th centuries BC. They had been inter-breeding since the Dorian invasions and a closed society such as this would eventually decline.
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One of the major problems with the closed society, championed by Lycurgus and many other Spartans throughout the citys history, was the lack of fresh blood being introduced into the Spartan race. However, if they did realize that their system was too restrictive in an age of expansion, it was already too late.
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The councils, the “ephors” and the royal families of Sparta believed that the system given to them by Lycurgus did not need altering and they could cite the example of King Pausanias for the reasons why a Spartan should not have too much wealth or personal power. The reasons for the Spartan fall from grace can be mostly traced to their failure to adapt the absurdly rigid Lycurgan system for a pan-Hellenic empire or for the influx of wealth that came with it. The battles of Tegyra (375 BC) and especially Leuctra (371) put paid to any hope that the Lacedaemonians could once again retake control of Greece and indeed signified their fall into irrelevance and obscurity. However, after the ejection of the Spartan garrison from the Cadmea, the Attic invasion of Sphodrias and the subsequent alliance between Athens and Thebes, Sparta begins her final decline. The Spartans even captured and controlled the Greek city of Thebes between 382BC and 379BC. Sparta was able to dismantle the Boeotian and Chalcidian Leagues and was responsible for the dioikismos of Mantinea. After eight years of intermittent warfare, Sparta was able to regain supremacy in the name of the Kings Peace laid down by Artaxerxes in 386BC. This defeat of Spartan navy was followed by the expulsion of the Spartan harmosts (military governor) throughout the Aegean and the virtual dissolution of the Lacedaemonian maritime empire. Sparta originally starting to lose hegemony in 394BC after the naval victory of the combined Persian and Greek fleet under the command of the Athenian general Conon and the satrap Pharnabazus over the Spartan navy led by Pisander off the coast of Cnidos.