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Sparta was a prominent ancient Greek polis in Laconia. In classical antiquity, the state was known as Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων, Lakedaímōn), while Sparta referred to its capital, a group of villages in the valley of the Evrotas River in Laconia, in the southeastern Peloponnese. During the 7th century BC, it rose to become the most prominent land military power in the Greek world, a status it retained until its defeat at Leuctra in 371 BC.
In the 6th century BC Sparta founded the Peloponnesian League, establishing its hegemony over most of Peloponnese. During the second Persian invasion of Greece, Sparta was recognised as the leading land force of the Hellenic alliance that also included the rising maritime power of Athens. The Spartan army was crucial in the battles of Thermopylae and Plataea under the leadership of Leonidas and Pausanias respectively. Sparta led the Peloponnesian League against the Athenian Empire during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it emerged victorious after Lysander's victory at the naval Battle of Aegospotami. A short period of Spartan hegemony followed, when Spartan armies under Agesilaus II led a series of campaigns in western Anatolian satrapies of the Achaemenid empire to protect the Ionian cities. However, Epaminondas' victory over Sparta at Leuctra in 371 BC started the Theban hegemony while Messenia was freed from Spartan rule; the loss of the slave labour this region provided sent the city into terminal decline as a military power.
Nonetheless, Sparta tried to reclaim its hegemony in Peloponnese several times until it was annexed by the Achaean League in early 2nd century BC. The city recovered some autonomy after the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC and became a tourist destination during the Roman era, restoring some measure of prosperity. However, Sparta was sacked in 396 AD by the Visigothic king Alaric, and underwent a long period of decline into the medieval period, when much of its population relocated to the nearby Mystras. Modern Sparta is a provincial town and the seat of the Laconia regional administration.
Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution, which were supposedly introduced by the semi-mythical lawgiver Lycurgus. Spartan society was exceptionally militarised, focusing the entire attention of the Spartiate class on military training and physical development to the point of legally barring them from productive economic activity. The inhabitants of Sparta were rigidly stratified into Spartiates (citizens with full rights), mothakes and perioikoi (free non-citizens), and helots (state-owned enslaved non-Spartan locals), with helots making up the vast majority of the population; social mobility was nearly nonexistent. Spartiate men underwent the harsh agoge training regimen, and Spartan phalanx units were widely considered to be among the best in battle, though this was as much a matter of propaganda as battlefield prowess. Free Spartiate women enjoyed somewhat greater legal rights than elsewhere in classical antiquity, though helots suffered exceptionally harsh treatment at the hands of the Spartiates (particularly the Crypteia), causing repeated revolts. Sparta was a subject of fascination in its own day, as well as in later Western culture following the revival of classical learning. The admiration of Sparta is known as Laconophilia.
The ancient Greeks used one of three words to refer to the Spartan city-state and its location. First, "Sparta" refers primarily to the main cluster of settlements in the valley of the Eurotas River. The second word, "Lacedaemon" (Λακεδαίμων), was often used as an adjective and is the name referenced in the works of Homer and the historians Herodotus and Thucydides. The third term, "Laconice" (Λακωνική), referred to the immediate area around the town of Sparta, the plateau east of the Taygetos mountains, and sometimes to all the regions under direct Spartan control, including Messenia.
The earliest attested term referring to Lacedaemon is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀨𐀐𐀅𐀖𐀛𐀍, ra-ke-da-mi-ni-jo, "Lakedaimonian", written in Linear B syllabic script, the equivalent of the later Greek Λακεδαιμόνιος, Lakedaimonios (Latin: Lacedaemonius).
Herodotus seems to use "Lacedaemon" for the Mycenaean Greek citadel at Therapne, in contrast to the lower town of Sparta. This term could be used synonymously with Sparta, but typically it denoted the region in which the city was located. In Homer it is typically combined with epithets of the countryside: wide, lovely, shining and most often hollow and broken (full of ravines), suggesting the Eurotas Valley. "Sparta" on the other hand is described as "the country of lovely women", an epithet for people.
The residents of Sparta were often called Lacedaemonians. This epithet utilised the plural of the adjective Lacedaemonius (Greek: Λακεδαιμόνιοι; Latin: Lacedaemonii, but also Lacedaemones). The ancients sometimes used a back-formation, referring to the land of Lacedaemon as Lacedaemonian country. As most words for "country" were feminine, the adjective was in the feminine: Lacedaemonia (Λακεδαιμονία, Lakedaimonia). Eventually, the adjective came to be used alone.
"Lacedaemonia" was not in general use during the classical period and before. It does occur in Greek as an equivalent of Laconia and Messenia during the Roman and early Byzantine periods, mostly in ethnographers and lexica of place names. For example, Hesychius of Alexandria's Lexicon (5th century AD) defines Agiadae as a "place in Lacedaemonia" named after Agis. The actual transition may be captured by Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (7th century AD), an etymological dictionary. Isidore relied heavily on Orosius's Historiarum Adversum Paganos (5th century AD) and Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicon (early 5th century AD), as did Orosius. The latter defines Sparta to be Lacedaemonia Civitas, but Isidore defines Lacedaemonia as founded by Lacedaemon, son of Semele, which is consistent with Eusebius's explanation. There is a rare use, perhaps the earliest of "Lacedaemonia", in Diodorus Siculus's The Library of History, but probably with Χώρα (chōra, "country") suppressed.
Lakedaimona was until 2006 the name of a province in the modern Greek prefecture of Laconia.
Sparta is located in the region of Laconia, in the south-eastern Peloponnese. Ancient Sparta was built on the banks of the Eurotas, the largest river of Laconia, which provided it with a source of fresh water. The Eurotas valley was a natural fortress, bounded to the west by Mt. Taygetus (2,407 m) and to the east by Mt. Parnon (1,935 m). To the north, Laconia is separated from Arcadia by hilly uplands reaching 1000 m in altitude. These natural defences worked to Sparta's advantage and protected it from sacking and invasion. Though landlocked, Sparta had a vassal harbour, Gytheio, on the Laconian Gulf.
Lacedaemon (Greek: Λακεδαίμων) was a mythical king of Laconia. The son of Zeus by the nymph Taygete, he married Sparta, the daughter of Eurotas, by whom he became the father of Amyclas, Eurydice, and Asine. As king, he named his country after himself and the city after his wife. He was believed to have built the sanctuary of the Charites, which stood between Sparta and Amyclae, and to have given to those divinities the names of Cleta and Phaenna. A shrine was erected to him in the neighbourhood of Therapne.
Tyrtaeus, an archaic era Spartan writer, is the earliest source to connect the origin myth of the Spartans to the lineage of the hero Heracles; later authors, such as Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, and Apollodorus, also made mention of Spartans understanding themselves to be descendants of Heracles.
Thucydides wrote:
Suppose the city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame. Their city is not built continuously, and has no splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages, like the ancient towns of Hellas, and would therefore make a poor show.
Until the early 20th century, the chief ancient buildings at Sparta were the theatre, of which, however, little showed above ground except portions of the retaining walls; the so-called Tomb of Leonidas, a quadrangular building, perhaps a temple, constructed of immense blocks of stone and containing two chambers; the foundation of an ancient bridge over the Eurotas; the ruins of a circular structure; some remains of late Roman fortifications; several brick buildings and mosaic pavements.
The remaining archaeological wealth consisted of inscriptions, sculptures, and other objects collected in the local museum, founded by Stamatakis in 1872 and enlarged in 1907. Partial excavation of the round building was undertaken in 1892 and 1893 by the American School at Athens. The structure has been since found to be a semicircular retaining wall of Hellenic origin that was partly restored during the Roman period.
In 1904, the British School at Athens began a thorough exploration of Laconia, and in the following year excavations were made at Thalamae, Geronthrae, and Angelona near Monemvasia. In 1906, excavations began in Sparta itself.
A "small circus" (as described by Leake) proved to be a theatre-like building constructed soon after 200 AD around the altar and in front of the Temple of Artemis Orthia. It is believed that musical and gymnastic contests took place here, as well as the famous flogging ordeal administered to Spartan boys (diamastigosis). The temple, which can be dated to the 2nd century BC, rests on the foundation of an older temple of the 6th century, and close beside it were found the remains of a yet earlier temple, dating from the 9th or even the 10th century. The votive offerings in clay, amber, bronze, ivory and lead dating from the 9th to the 4th centuries BC, which were found in great profusion within the precinct range, supply invaluable information about early Spartan art.
In 1907, the location of the sanctuary of Athena "of the Brazen House" (Χαλκίοικος, Chalkioikos) was determined to be on the acropolis immediately above the theatre. Though the actual temple is almost completely destroyed, the site has produced the longest extant archaic inscription in Laconia, numerous bronze nails and plates, and a considerable number of votive offerings. The city wall, built in successive stages from the 4th to the 2nd century, was traced for a great part of its circuit, which measured 48 stades or nearly 10 km (6 miles) (Polyb. 1X. 21). The late Roman wall enclosing the acropolis, part of which probably dates from the years following the Gothic raid of 262 AD, was also investigated. Besides the actual buildings discovered, a number of points were situated and mapped in a general study of Spartan topography, based upon the description of Pausanias.
In terms of domestic archaeology, little is known about Spartan houses and villages before the Archaic period, but the best evidence comes from excavations at Nichoria in Messenia where postholes have been found. These villages were open and consisted of small and simple houses built with stone foundations and clay walls.
The Menelaion is a shrine associated with Menelaus, located east of Sparta, by the river Eurotas, on the hill Profitis Ilias (Coordinates: 37°03′57″N 22°27′13″E / 37.0659°N 22.4536°E). Built around the early 8th century BC, the Spartans believed it had been the former residence of Menelaus. In 1970, the British School in Athens started excavations around the Menelaion in an attempt to locate Mycenaean remains in the area. There are remains of three Mycenaean mansions which were likely destroyed by earthquakes or fire. The offerings dedicated to Helen and Menelaus made during the Classical period were also found at the site.
Excavations made from the early 1990s to the present suggest that the area around the Menelaion in the southern part of the Eurotas valley seems to have been the centre of Mycenaean Laconia. The Mycenaean settlement was roughly triangular in shape, with its apex pointed towards the north. Its area was approximately equal to that of the "newer" Sparta, but denudation has wreaked havoc with its buildings and nothing is left of its original structures save for ruined foundations and broken potsherds.
The prehistory of Sparta is difficult to reconstruct because the literary evidence was written far later than the events it describes and is distorted by oral tradition. The earliest certain evidence of human settlement in the region of Sparta consists of pottery dating from the Middle Neolithic period, found in the vicinity of Kouphovouno some two kilometres (1.2 miles) south-southwest of Sparta.
This civilisation seems to have fallen into decline by the late Bronze Age, when, according to Herodotus, Macedonian tribes from the north (called Dorians by those they conquered) marched into the Peloponnese and, subjugating the local tribes, settled there. The Dorians seem to have set about expanding the frontiers of Spartan territory almost before they had established their own state. They fought against the Argive Dorians to the east and southeast, and also the Arcadian Achaeans to the northwest. The evidence suggests that Sparta, relatively inaccessible because of the topography of the Taygetan plain, was secure from early on: it was never fortified.
Nothing distinctive in the archaeology of the Eurotas River Valley identifies the Dorians or the Dorian Spartan state. The prehistory of the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the Dark Age (the Early Iron Age) at this moment must be treated apart from the stream of Dorian Spartan history.
The legendary period of Spartan history is believed to fall into the Dark Age. It treats the mythic heroes such as the Heraclids and the Perseids, offering a view of the occupation of the Peloponnesus that contains both fantastic and possibly historical elements. The subsequent proto-historic period, combining both legend and historical fragments, offers the first credible history.
Between the 8th and 7th centuries BC the Spartans experienced a period of lawlessness and civil strife, later attested by both Herodotus and Thucydides. As a result, they carried out a series of political and social reforms of their own society which they later attributed to a semi-mythical lawgiver, Lycurgus. Several writers throughout antiquity, including Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plutarch have attempted to explain Spartan exceptionalism as a result of the so-called Lycurgan Reforms.
In the Second Messenian War, Sparta established itself as a local power in the Peloponnesus and the rest of Greece. During the following centuries, Sparta's reputation as a land-fighting force was unequalled. At its peak around 500 BC, Sparta had some 20,000–35,000 citizens, plus numerous helots and perioikoi. The likely total of 40,000–50,000 made Sparta one of the larger Greek city-states; however, according to Thucydides, the population of Athens in 431 BC was 360,000–610,000, making it much larger.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Sparta”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.