Spartans

The Spartans were the warrior people of the city of Sparta, a hardened army whose ferocity and discipline made them feared across all of Greece. Kratos was himself a Spartan, raised within the city and risen to become its youngest and greatest general, and his fellow Spartans followed him from the wars of his mortal life into his reign as the God of War.

A people raised for war#

The Spartans were bred for battle from their earliest years. According to Kratos, their training methods were unforgiving and cruel. Children were taken from their homes and raised in the Agoge, where they marched or drowned, fought for scraps or starved, and were beaten by the elders until they could no longer stand. At night they returned home alone or became food for the wolves. Bravery was the ultimate virtue, and Spartan mothers gave their sons their shields with the charge to return with it or carried upon it, victorious or dead, for to drop the heavy shield in flight was the mark of a deserter. Out of this harshness came an army whose discipline and ferocity were unmatched in Greece.

Kratos and the war with the Barbarians#

Kratos grew up in Sparta and rose to become its youngest and greatest general, leading his fellow Spartans to victory in many battles through his ruthless ferocity. In the years before his servitude, Kratos led the Spartans against the Barbarians of the East under their warlord Alrik. The Spartans were outnumbered and nearly slaughtered, and in a desperate bid for victory Kratos called upon Ares for aid. The God of War crushed the Barbarians and granted the Spartans their victory, but in doing so bound Kratos as his loyal servant. From that day Kratos besieged city after city in Ares' name, and his fellow Spartans joined him on these sieges and grew almost as ruthless as their general, killing on sight any who offered resistance.

The army of the God of War#

After Kratos slew Ares and became the new God of War, the Spartans worshiped him as something close to an immortal ruler and commander. Under his reign they began a great war campaign and conquered many cities and towns. The campaign ended at Rhodes, where Zeus attacked Kratos and stripped him of his power. As an act of revenge for Kratos' defiance, Zeus then turned on Sparta itself, destroying the city which had already lost the protection of its god.

Throughout these wars a single warrior stood out among the Spartan army: the Last Spartan, Kratos' lieutenant, who had earlier given him the Arms of Sparta near the Temple of Ares and who remained a figure of importance in Kratos' later campaigns. Spartan soldiers also fell as victims of Erinys, daughter of Thanatos, whom Kratos encountered dying on Crete and within his own homeland.

The fall and the rewritten fate#

On the Island of Creation, Kratos succeeded in slaying the Sisters of Fate and was able to rewrite the timeline, undoing his own defeat by Zeus and saving both his godly powers and Sparta. The ideology of the Spartan warrior remained bound to Kratos ever after; his rage in battle was fueled by his fury over the destruction of Sparta and his people, and he could summon the souls of Spartan warriors to form a phalanx around him, their spears thrust outward and arrows raining from above. Yet despite having saved his fellow Spartans from certain death, it is assumed they perished once more when the death of Poseidon flooded all of Greece, though it is possible that some survived the chaos that followed.