Changes

This new power disrupted Spartan society and over time undermined the unique system that had allowed the Spartans to become the finest soldiers in Greece.<ref>Thucydides 5. 6</ref> A little over thirty years after their victory over Athens the Spartans were defeated by a new rising power in Greece, Thebes. The defeat at Leuctra was the first inflicted on the Spartan army. The Spartans lost control of much of their empire and no longer the greatest power in Greece, indeed they were something of a backwater and entered in a period of profound decline, although they remained independent, until the rise of the Roman Empire, who annexed it in the 2nd century BCE.

[[File: Battle of Thermopylae - pass.jpg|thumbnail|left|200px|Spartans at the Battle of Thermopoyle]]

Sparta was a society that was based according to many historians on a caste system. The Spartan citizens were the highest caste, and they dominated the other groups in society. The other groups in Sparta included the helots and the Pereoki; this was a group of freemen who were not citizens and were usually craftsmen and traders.<ref>Plutarch, p. 113</ref> Spartan citizens, a male or a female, had to be able to trace their ancestry back to the original Doric conquerors. They also could not be of helot extraction.<ref>Cartledge, 2001, p. 56</ref> To be a Spartan citizen, one had to undertake the rigorous education of the Agoge. Only those who had completed their education in the Agoge was entitled to be a citizen.