Sparta Sentence Examples

Hermonymus of Sparta was his master in Greek.

In the wars of the period Athens took a prominent part with a view to upholding the balance of power, joining the Corinthian League in 395, and assisting Thebes against Sparta after 378, Sparta against Thebes after 369.

This revolution was accompanied by a conflict with Sparta and other powers.

In 294 B.C. he was defeated at Mantineia by Demetrius Poliorcetes, who invaded Laconia, gained a second victory close to Sparta, and was on the point of taking the city itself when he was called t So Plut.

Prytanis was also the name of a legendary king of Sparta of the Eurypontid or Proclid line.

The ceiling of that of Orchomenos, and the painted vases and gold cups from the Vaphio tomb by Sparta, with their marvellous reliefs showing scenes of bull-hunting, represent the late palace style at Cnossus in its final development.

The most important towns, besides Sparta and Gythium, were Bryseae, Amyclae and Pharis in the Eurotas plain, Pellana and Belbina on the upper Eurotas, Sellasia on the Oenus, Caryae on the Arcadian frontier, Prasiae, Zarax and Epidaurus Limera on the east coast, Geronthrae on the slopes of Parnon, Boeae, Asopus, Helos, Las and Teuthrone on the Laconian Gulf, and Hippola, Messa and Oetylus on the Messenian Gulf.

The exiles were settled by Sparta in Thyreatis, on the frontiers of Laconia and Argolis.

In the 4th century its political development was arrested by constant struggles between oligarchs and democrats, who in turn brought the city under the control of Sparta (4 12 -395, 39 1 -37 8), of Athens (395-39 1, 37 8 -357), and of 'the Carian dynasty of Maussollus (357-340).

He was worshipped at Oropus, Athens and Sparta.

At Sparta we have a third instance of a people shrinking up into a nobility, but it is a people whose position differs altogether from anything either at Rome or at Athens.

And, as at Rome in early times, there were at Sparta distinctions within the populus; there were 5 otot and nro,ueioves, like the majores and minores genies at Rome.

Finally, he did not allow his friendliness with Argos to involve him in war with Sparta, towards whom he pursued a policy of moderation.

In classical times it was a community of perioeci, politically dependent on Sparta, though doubtless with a municipal life of its own.

In the Peloponnesian war, Nicias occupied the island, but in 421 it was recovered by Sparta.

The origin of the Cretan laws was of course attributed to Minos, but they had much in common with those of the other Dorian states, as well as with those of Lycurgus at Sparta, which were, indeed, according to one tradition, copied in great measure from those already existing in Crete.'

The supreme governing authority was vested in magistrates called Cosmi, answering in some measure to the Spartan Ephori, but there was nothing corresponding to the two kings at Sparta.

For this plan he hoped to gain the assistance of Sparta.

On his return Agis fled to the temple of Athene Chalcioecus at Sparta, but soon afterwards he was treacherously induced to leave his asylum and, after a mockery of a trial, was strangled in prison, his mother and grandmother sharing the same fate (241).

During this period Agamemnon and Menelaus took refuge with Tyndareus, king of Sparta, whose daughters Clytaemnestra (more correctly Clytaemestra) and.

In the legends of Peloponnesus, Agamemnon was regarded as the highest type of a powerful monarch, and in Sparta he was worshipped under the title of Zeus Agamemnon.

A similar enterprise against Delphi in 448 was again frustrated by Sparta, but not long afterwards the Phocians recaptured the sanctuary with the help of the Athenians, with whom they had entered into alliance in 454.

They received assistance from Sparta in 380, but were afterwards compelled to submit to the growing power of Thebes.

The British School, founded in 1886, has been unable, owing to insufficient endowment, to work on similar lines with the French and German institutions; it has, however, carried out extensive excavations at Megalopolis and in Melos, as well as researches at Abae, in Athens (presumed site of the Cynosarges), in Cyprus, at Naucratis and at Sparta.

The Achaean kingdom fell before the incoming Dorians, and throughout the classical period the history of Laconia is that of its capital Sparta (q.v.).

Throughout the middle ages it was the scene of vigorous struggles between Sla y s, Byzantines, Franks, Turks and Venetians, the chief memorials of which are the ruined strongholds of Mistra near Sparta, Gerald (anc. Geronthrae) and Monemvasia, "the Gibraltar of Greece," on the east coast, and Passava near Gythium.

The district has been divided into two departments (nomes), Lacedaemon and Laconia, with their capitals at Sparta and Gythium respectively.

The results, of which the most important are summarized in the article Sparta, are published in the British School Annual, x.

Gylippus was felt to be the representative of Sparta, and of the Peloponnesian Greeks generally, and his arrival inspired the Syracusans with the fullest confidence.

Syracusan and Selinuntine ships under Hermocrates now play a distinguished part in the warfare between Sparta and Athens on the coast of Asia.

Of his daughters, the princess Charlotte was married to Bernard, hereditary prince of Meiningen; the princess Victoria to Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe; the princess Sophie to the duke of Sparta, crown prince of Greece; and the princess Margaretha to Prince Friedrich Karl of Hesse.

Tarentum (whether or no founded by pre-Dorian Greeks - its founders bore the unexplained name of Partheniae) became a Laconian colony at some unknown date, whence a legend grew up connecting the Partheniae with Sparta, and 707 B.C. was assigned as its traditional date.

Repeated expeditions from Sparta and Epirus tried in vain to prop up the decaying Greek states against the Lucanians and Bruttians; and when in 282 the Romans appeared in the Tarentine Gulf the end was close at hand.

This confederacy, which after many modifications and vicissitudes was finally broken up by the capture of Athens by Sparta in 404, was revived in 378-7 (the "Second Athenian Confederacy") as a protection against Spartan aggression, and lasted, at least formally, until the victory of Philip II.

During the 6th century B.C. Sparta had come to be regarded as the chief power, not only in the Peloponnese, but also in Greece as a whole, including the islands of the Aegean.

The Persian invasions of Darius and Xerxes, with the consequent importance of maritime strength and the capacity for distant enterprise, as compared with that of purely military superiority in the Greek peninsula, caused a considerable loss of prestige which Sparta was unwilling to recognize.

It is not, therefore, surprising that when Pausanias was recalled to Sparta on the charge of treasonable overtures to the Persians, the Ionian allies appealed to the Athenians on the grounds of kinship and urgent necessity, and that when Sparta sent out Dorcis to supersede Pausanias he found Aristides in unquestioned command of the allied fleet.

Sparta had so far no quarrel with Athens.

It was at this time that Cimon, who had striven to maintain a balance between Sparta, the chief military, and Athens, the chief naval power, was successfully attacked by Ephialtes and Pericles.

During the ensuing years, apart from a brief return to the Cimonian policy, the resources of the league, or, as it has now become, the Athenian empire, were directed not so much against Persia as against Sparta, Corinth, Aegina and Boeotia.

Peace was made with Sparta, and, if we are to believe 4thcentury orators, a treaty, the Peace of Callias or of Cimon, was concluded between the Great King and Athens in 449 after the death of Cimon before the walls of Citium in Cyprus.

Her failure was due partly to the commercial jealousy of Corinth working on the dull antipathy of Sparta, partly to the hatred of compromise and discipline which was fatally characteristic of Greece and especially of Ionian Greece, and partly also to the lack of tact and restraint shown by Athens and her representatives in her relations with the allies.

The conditions which led to the second Athenian or Delian Confederacy were fundamentally different, not only in virtue of the fact that the allies had learned from experience the dangers to which such a league was liable, but because the enemy was no longer an oriental power of whose future action there could be no certain anticipation, but Sparta, whose ambitious projects since the fall of Athens had shown that there could be no safety for the smaller states save in combination.

Sparta had only Sestos and Abydos of all that she had won by the battle of Aegospotami.

The peace of Antalcidas or the King's Peace (see ANTALcIDAS; Sparta) in 386 was a blow to Athens in the interests of Persia and Sparta.

The gross selfishness of the Spartans, herein exemplified, was emphasized by their capture of the Theban citadel, and, after their expulsion, by the raid upon Attica in time of peace by the Spartan Sphodrias, and his immunity from punishment at Sparta (summer of 378 B.C.).

At this point Sparta was roused to a sense of the significance of the new confederacy, and the Athenian corn supply was threatened by a Spartan fleet of sixty triremes.

Once again Sparta sent out a fleet, but Timotheus in spite of financial embarrassment held his ground.

By this time, however, the alliance between Thebes and Athens was growing weaker, and Athens, being short of money, concluded a peace with Sparta (probably in July 374), by which the peace of Antalcidas was confirmed and the two states recognized each other as mistress of sea and land respectively.

The expedition which followed produced negative successes, but the absence of any positive success and the pressure of financial difficulty, coupled with the defection of Jason (probably before 37 1), and the high-handed action of Thebes in destroying Plataea (373), induced Athens to renew the peace with Sparta which Timotheus had broken.

With the support of Persia an agreement was made by a congress at Sparta on the basis of the autonomy of the cities, Amphipolis and the Chersonese being granted to Athens.

The original purpose of the league - the protection of the allies from the ambitions of Sparta - was achieved.

Athens was recognized as mistress of the sea; Sparta as the chief land power.

It seems that all the states adopted this policy with the exception of Sparta (probably) and Elis.

This new coalition naturally alarmed Sparta, which at once made overtures to Athens on the ground of their common danger from Thebes.

This suspicion, which was due primarily, no doubt, to the agreement with Sparta, would find confirmation in the subsequent exchange of compliments with Dionysius I.

Alliances with various land powers, and an inability to understand the true relations which alone could unite the league, combined to alienate the allies, who could discover no reason for the expenditure of their contributions on protecting Sparta or Corinth against Thebes.

Founded with the specific object of thwarting the ambitious designs of Sparta, it was plunged by Athens into enterprises of an entirely different character which exhausted the resources of the allies without benefiting them in any respect.

The northern Doris, for example, spoke Aeolic, while Elis, Phocis, and many non-Dorian districts of north-west Greece spoke dialects akin to Doric. Many Dorian states had additional " nonDorian tribes "; Sparta, which claimed to be of pure and typical Dorian origin, maintained institutions and a mode of life which were without parallel in Peloponnese, in the Parnassian and in the Asiatic Doris, and were partially reflected in Crete only.

Rhodes, and some Cretan towns, traced descent from Argos; Cnidus from Argos and Sparta; the rest of Asiatic Doris from Epidaurus or Troezen in Argolis.

Such legends often arise to connect towns bearing identical or similar names (such as are common in Greece) and to justify political events or ambitions by legendary precedents; and this certainly happened during the successive political rivalries of Dorian Sparta with non-Dorian Athens and Thebes.

The legend of a Dorian invasion appears first in Tyrtaeus, a 7thcentury poet, in the service of Sparta, who brings the Spartan Heracleids to Peloponnese from Erineon in the northern Doris; and the lost Epic of Aegimius, of about the same date, seems to have presupposed the same story.

The steady dependence of Sparta on the Delphic oracle, for example, is best explained as an observance inherited from Parnassian ancestors.

Sparta in particular remained, even after the reforms of Lycurgus, and on into historic times, simply the isolated camp of a compact army of occupation, of some s000 families, bearing traces still of the fusion of several bands of invaders, and maintained as an exclusive political aristocracy of professional soldiers by the labour of a whole population of agricultural and industrial serfs.

Late in the 6th century Corinth joined the Peloponnesian league under Sparta, in which her financial resources and strategic position secured her an unusual degree of independence.

The alliance of this latter power with Athens accentuated the rising jealousy of the Corinthians, who, after deprecating a federal war in 440, virtually forced Sparta's hand against Athens in 432.

In 395 the domineering attitude of Sparta impelled the Corinthians to conclude an alliance with Argos which they had previously contemplated on occasions of friction with the former city, as well as with Thebes and with Athens, whose commercial rivalry they no longer dreaded.

By its vicinity to the watersheds of the Eurotas and Alpheus, and its command over the main roads from Laconia to Argos and the Isthmus, Tegea likewise was brought into conflict with Sparta.

For several centuries Tegea served as a bulwark of Arcadia against the expanding power of Sparta; though ultimately subdued about 550 B.C. it was allowed to retain its independence and its Arcadian nationality.

During the Persian invasion the Tegeans displayed a readiness unusual among Peloponnesian cities; in the battle of Plataea they were the first to enter the enemy's camp. A few years later they headed an Arcadian and Argive league against Sparta, but by the loss of two pitched battles (Tegea and Dipaea) were induced to resume their former loyalty (about 468-467).

During the early 4th century before Christ Tegea continued to support Sparta against the Mantineians and other malcontents.

After the battle of Leuctra the philo-Laconian party was expelled with Mantineian help. Tegea henceforth took an active part in the revival of the Arcadian League and the prosecution of the war in alliance with Thebes against Sparta (371-362), and the ultimate defection of Mantineia confirmed it in its federalist tendencies.

In the Samian and the Peloponnesian wars, Artaxerxes remained neutral, in spite of the attempts made by both Sparta and Athens to gain his alliance.

In the beginning of his reign falls the rebellion of his brother Cyrus, who was secretly favoured by Parysatis and by Sparta.

When in 399 war broke out between Sparta and Persia, the Persian troops in Asia Minor were quite unable to resist the Spartan armies.

This victory enabled the Greek allies of Persia (Thebes, Athens, Argos, Corinth) to carry on the Corinthian war against Sparta, and the Spartans had to give up the war in Asia Minor.

The consequence was that, when in 388 the Spartan admiral Antalcidas came to Susa, the king was induced to conclude a peace with Sparta by which Asia fell to him and European Greece to Sparta.

Shortly after the edict by which the king had proclaimed his alliance with Thebes, and the conditions of the general peace which he was going to impose upon Greece, his weakness became evident, for since;56 all the satraps of Asia Minor (Datames, Ariobarzanes, Mausolus, Orontes, Artabazus) were in rebellion again, in close alliance with Athens, Sparta and Egypt.

But Lysander's boundless influence and ambition, and the superhuman honours paid him, roused the jealousy of the kings and the ephors, and, on being accused by the Persian satrap Pharnabazus, he was recalled to Sparta.

He soon returned to Sparta to mature plans for overthrowing the hereditary kingship and substituting an elective monarchy open to all Heraclids, or even, according to another version, to all Spartiates.

An able commander and an adroit diplomatist, Lysander was fired by the ambition to make Sparta supreme in Greece and himself in Sparta.

Busolt, who suggests that Tyrtaeus was a native of Aphidnae in Laconia, conjectures that the entire legend may have been concocted in connexion with the expedition sent to the assistance of Sparta in her struggle with the revolted Helots at Ithome (464).

Its democratic constitution, which seems to have been entirely congenial to the population of small freeholders, and its ambition to gain control over the Alpheus watershed and both the Arcadian high roads to the isthmus, frequently estranged Mantineia from Sparta and threw it into the arms of Argos.

About 469 B.C. Mantineia alone of Arcadian townships refused to join the league of Tegea and Argos against Sparta.

In the time following the peace of Nicias the Mantineians, whose attempts at expansion beyond Mount Maenalus were being foiled by Sparta, formed a powerful alliance with Argos, Elis and Athens (420), which the Spartans, assisted by Tegea, broke up after a pitched battle in the city's territory (418).

Under his father's patronage he joined in the conservative reaction which came to a head in 411, when hopes of a Persian alliance or peace with Sparta strengthened the existing dissatisfaction with the democratic rule.

Late in 405 Theramenes went as plenipotentiary to Lysander to obtain peace terms; after long negotiations he proceeded to Sparta and arranged a settlement which the Athenians ratified (April 404).

The Mycenaeans, who had temporarily regained their independence with the help of Sparta, fought on the Greek side at Plataea in 479 B.C. The long warfare between the two cities lasted till 468 B.C., when Mycenae was dismantled and its inhabitants dispersed.

In Scythia an old iron sword served as the symbol of the god, to which yearly sacrifices of cattle and horses were made, and in earlier times (as apparently also at Sparta) human victims, selected from prisoners of war, were offered.

Thus, at Sparta, under the name of Theritas, he was offered young dogs and even human beings.

The Dioscuri were said to have brought his image from Colchis to Laconia, where it was set up in an old sanctuary on the road from Sparta to Therapnae.

When a child she was carried off from Sparta by Theseus to Attica, but was recovered and taken back by her brothers.

Menelaus thereupon took her back, and they returned together to Sparta, where they lived happily till their death, and were buried at Therapnae in Laconia.

A further interest in Greek archaeology has been awakened in all civilized lands by the excavations of Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, Epidaurus, Sparta, Olympia, Dodona, Delphi, Delos and of important sites in Crete.

He was a member of the Aepytid family, the son of Nicomedes (or, according to another version, of Pyrrhus) and Nicoteleia, and took a prominent part in stirring up the revolt against Sparta and securing the co-operation of Argos and Arcadia.

His daring is illustrated by the story that he came by night to the temple of Athene "of the Brazen House" at Sparta, and there set up his shield with the inscription, "Dedicated to the goddess by Aristomenes from the Spartans."

A desperate plan to seize Sparta itself was foiled by Aristocrates, who paid with his life for his treachery.

Though slightly estranged from Sparta after the peace of Nicias, they never abated their enmity against their neighbours.

Boeotia took a prominent part in the war of the Corinthian League against Sparta, especially at Haliartus and Coronea (395-394) This change of policy seems due mainly to the national resentment against foreign interference.

Thus from the coins of Byblus we learn the names of four kings, 'El-pa'al, 'Az-ba'al (between 360 and 340 B.C.), Adar-melek, `Ain-el; from the coins of the other cities it is difficult 1 The naval expeditions against Greece in 480-449 and Sparta in 396-387 were mainly fitted out by Phoenicia.

When he reached manhood, he visited Pylos and Sparta to make inquiries about his father, who had been absent for nearly twenty years.

It suited the interests of Sparta to join this amphictyony; and, before the regular catalogue of Olympic victors begins in 77 6 B.C., Sparta had formed an alliance with Elis.

Elis and Sparta, making common cause, had no difficulty in excluding the Pisatans from their proper share in the management of the Olympian sanctuary.

The destruction of Pisa (before 572 B.e.) by the combined forces of Sparta and Elis put an end to the long rivalry.

Appointed to the chief command two years later, he introduced heavy armour and close formation for the infantry, and with a well-trained army beat Machanidas of Sparta, near Mantinea.

Though unsuccessful at sea, he almost annihilated Nabis's land force near Gythium, but was prevented by the Roman Flamininus from taking Sparta.

In Igo Philopoemen protected Sparta, which meanwhile had joined the League and thereupon seceded, but punished a renewed defection so cruelly as to draw the censure of Rome upon his country.

Since 228 their Arcadian possessions had been abandoned to Sparta.

In 192 they wasted themselves in an unsuccessful attempt to secure Sparta.

Peloponnesus and captured its most famous cities, Corinth, Argos and Sparta, selling many of their inhabitants into slavery.

The Syracusan heavy-armed are as far below those of Athens as those of Athens are below those of Sparta.

Syracuse, threatened with destruction by Athens, was saved by the zeal of her metropolis Corinth in stirring up the Peloponnesian rivals of Athens to help her, and by the advice of Alcibiades after his withdrawal to Sparta.

His dominion is Italian as well as Sicilian; his influence, as an ally of Sparta, is important in old Greece; while, as a hirer of mercenaries everywhere, he had wider relations than any earlier Greek with the nations of western Europe.

This even Sparta would not endure; Dionysius had to content himself with sending a fleet along the west coast of Italy, to carry off the wealth of the great temple of Caere.

He also gave help to Sparta against Thebes, sending Gaulish and Iberian mercenaries to take part in Greek warfare.

The view taken by Thucydides that Sparta was the real foe of Athens has been much modified by modern writers.

The fact that the Corinthian argument failed to impress Sparta and many of the delegates is shown by the course of the debate.

We can hardly regard Sparta as the determined enemy of Athens at this time.

The permanent strength of the Peloponnesian confederacy lay in the Peloponnesian states, all of which except Argos and Achaea were united under Sparta's leadership. But it included also extra-Peloponnesian states - viz.

The federal assembly with few exceptions met only in time of war, and then only when Sparta agreed to summon it.

It met in Sparta and the delegates, having stated their views before the Spartan Apella, withdrew till the Apella had come to a decision.

It is clear that the link was purely one of common interest, and that Sparta had little or no control over, e.g.

Sparta was the chief member of the confederacy (hegemon), but the states were autonomous.

Sparta could not only rely on voluntary co-operation but could undermine Athenian influence by posing as the champion of autonomy.

Upon the refusal of all these demands Sparta finally made the maintenance of peace contingent upon the restoration by Athens of autonomy to all her allies.

Orders were at once sent from Sparta to repair this disaster and 77 ships were equipped.

This decree, though in accordance with the rigorous customs of ancient warfare as exemplified by the treatment which Sparta shortly afterwards meted out to the Plataeans,.

So acutely did Sparta feel their position that an offer of peace was made on condition that the hoplites should go free.

Thus in 424 the Athenians had seriously damaged the prestige of Sparta, and broken Corinthian supremacy in the north-west, and the Peloponnesians had no fleet.

This was the zenith of their success, and it was unfortunate for them that they declined the various offers of peace which Sparta made.

This solitary success had already in the spring of 423 induced Sparta in spite of the successes which Brasidas was achieving in Thrace to accept the " truce of Laches " - which, however, was rendered abortive by the refusal of Brasidas to surrender Scione.

The final success of Brasidas at Amphipolis, where both he and Cleon were killed, paved the way for a more permanent agreement, the peace parties at Athens and Sparta being in the ascendant.

Whereas Sparta had been least of all the allies interested in the war, and apart from the campaigns of Brasidas had on the whole taken little part in it, her allies benefited least by the terms of the Peace.

These and other reasons rapidly led to the isolation of Sparta, and there was a general refusal to carry out the terms of agreement.

In 421 Sparta and Athens concluded a defensive alliance; the Sphacterian captives were released and Athens promised to abandon Pylos.

Such a peace, giving Sparta everything and Athens nothing but Sparta's bare alliance, was due to the fact that Nicias and Alcibiades were both seeking Sparta's friendship. At this time the Fifty Years' Truce between Sparta and Argos was expiring.

The war party in Sparta regained its strength under new ephors and negotiations began for an alliance between Sparta, Argos and Boeotia.

This oligarchy was overthrown again in June, and the new democracy having vainly sought an agreement with Sparta rejoined Athens.

All this time, however, the alliance between her and Sparta was not officially broken.

War, this war was fought almost exclusively in the Aegean Sea, the enemy was primarily Sparta, and the deciding factor was Persian gold.

In 412 many Ionian towns revolted, and appealed either to Agis at Decelea or to Sparta direct.

The satraps likewise made overtures to Sparta.

His arrival coincided with the appointment of Lysander (c. Dec. 408) as Spartan admiral - the third of the three great commanders (Brasidas and Gylippus being the others) whom Sparta produced during the war.

A common theory is that Sparta fought throughout the war as an advocate of oligarchy, while Athens did not seek to interfere with the constitutional preferences of her allies.

This idea is disproved by Thucydides' own narrative, which shows that down to 418 (the battle of Mantinea) Sparta tolerated democratic governments in Peloponnesus itself - e.g.

In view of the disastrous issue of the war, it is important to notice that on three occasions - (a) after Pylos, (b) after Cyzicus, (c) after Arginusae - Athens refused formal peace proposals from Sparta.

Moreover, an alliance with Sparta would have meant a check to Persian interference.

Sparta also is a power which can cross swords with the Macedonian king, and Cleomenes III.

Whether Hera was also worshipped by the early Dorians is uncertain; after the Dorian invasion she remained the chief deity of Argos, but her cult at Sparta was not so conspicuous.

Theseus and Pirithous now carried off Helen from Sparta, and when they drew lots for her she fell to the lot of Theseus, who took her to Aphidnae, and left her in charge of his mother Aethra and his friend Aphidnus.

There Alcibiades met the satrap Tissaphernes in 411 B.C., and thence succeeded in getting the Phoenician fleet, intended to co-operate with Sparta, sent back home.

Meyer and others), or accept the tradition that it was founded during the first Messenian War, which necessitated a prolonged absence from Sparta on the part of both kings (Plato, Laws, iii.

So with Syrian as well as Jewish troops the brothers set about subduing Palestine; and Jonathan sent ambassadors in the name of the high-priest and people of the Jews to Rome and Sparta.

Of the two chief methods of working bronze, gold and silver, it is probable that the hammer process was first practised, at least for statues, among the Greeks, who themselves attributed the invention of the art of hollow casting to Theodorus and Rhoecus, both Samian sculptors, about the middle of the 6th century B.C. Pausanias specially mentions that one of the oldest statues he had ever seen was a large figure of Zeus in Sparta, made of hammered bronze plates riveted together.

This supremacy was first challenged about the 8th century by Sparta.

Partly in consequence of its defeat, partly out of jealousy against Sparta, Argos took no part in the war against Xerxes.

In spite of this league Argos made no headway against Sparta, and in 4 51 consented to a truce.

By throwing in her lot with the Peloponnesian democracies and Athens, Argos seriously endangered Sparta's supremacy, but the defeat of Mantineia (418) and a successful rising of the Argive oligarchs spoilt this chance.

At the outset of the 4th century, Argos, with a population and resources equalling those of Athens, took a prominent part in the Corinthian League against Sparta.

The democracy consistently supported the victorious Thebans against Sparta, figuring with a large contingent on the decisive field of Mantineia (362).

In 272 the Argives joined Sparta in resisting the ambition of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose death ensued in an unsuccessful night attack upon the city.

In the Homeric poems eastern Messenia is represented as under the rule of Menelaus of Sparta, while the western coast is under the Neleids of Pylos, but after Menelaus's death the Messenian frontier was pushed eastwards as far as Taygetus.

But the fertility of the soil, the warm and genial climate, the mingling of races and the absence of opposition, combined to render the Messenians no match for their hardy and warlike neighbours of Sparta.

War broke out - in consequence, it was said, of the murder of the Spartan king Teleclus by the Messenians - which, in spite of the heroism of King Euphaes and his successor Aristodemus ended in the subjection of Messenia to Sparta (c. 720 B.C.).

The next revolt broke out in 464, when a severe earthquake destroyed Sparta and caused great loss of life; the insurgents defended themselves for some years on the rock-citadel of Ithome, as they had done in the first war; but eventually they had to leave the Peloponnese and were settled by the Athenians at Naupactus in the territory of the Locri Ozolae.

This centrifugal tendency is most marked in the cases of the more important states, Athens, Sparta, Argos, Corinth, but Greek history is full of examples of small states deliberately sacrificing what must have been obvious commercial advantage for the sake of a precarious autonomy.

The 4th century Arcadian league, which was no doubt a revival of an older federation, was the result of the struggle for supremacy between Thebes and Sparta.

The defeat of Sparta at Leuctra removed the pressure which had kept separate the Arcadian tribes, and 'ApK&bwv was established in the new city, Megalopolis (also Arcadia).

In the sense of "worker for the people" the word was used throughout the Peloponnese, with the exception of Sparta, and in many parts of Greece, for a higher magistrate.

At the dawn of Greek history Mycenae is no longer the seat of empire; new empires, polities and civilizations have grown up - Sparta with its military discipline, Delphi with its religious supremacy, Miletus with its commerce and numberless colonies, Aeolis and Ionia, Sicily and Magna Graecia.

After the fall of the tyrants their institutions survived till the end of the 6th century, when the Dorian supremacy was re-established, perhaps by the agency of Sparta, and the city was enrolled in the Peloponnesian League.

Henceforth its policy was usually determined either by Sparta or by its powerful neighbour Corinth.

In the Peloponnesian war Sicyon followed the lead of Sparta and Corinth.

Again in the Corinthian war Sicyon sided with Sparta and became its base of operations against the allied troops round Corinth.

For this he was brought to trial at Sparta, and to save his life fled to the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea.

She thereupon withdrew to Sparta and thence to Mantineia, where she died and where her tomb was shown.

The idea of a Utopia is, even in literature, far older than More's romance; it appears in the Timaeus of Plato and is fully developed in his Republic. The idealized description of Sparta in Plutarch's life of Lycurgus belongs to the same class of literary Utopias, though it professes to be historical.

True, war with Sparta followed immediately, over the division of the spoils, and the campaigns of the Spartan generals in Asia Minor (399395) were all the more dangerous as they gave occasion to numerous rebellions.

But Persia joined the Greek league against Sparta, and in 394 Pharnabazus and Conon annihilated the Lacedaemonian fleet at Cnidus.

It was said that he was planning a campaign in the interior, or even an attack on Artaxerxes himself, when he was recalled to Greece owing to the war between Sparta and the combined forces of Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Argos and several minor states.

The loss, however, of a mora, which was destroyed by Iphicrates, neutralized these successes, and Agesilaus returned to Sparta.

In 370 Agesilaus tried to restore Spartan prestige by an invasion of Mantinean territory, and his prudence and heroism saved Sparta when her enemies, led by Epaminondas, penetrated Laconia that same year, and again in 362 when they all but succeeded in seizing the city by a rapid and unexpected march.

A man of small stature and unimpressive appearance, he was somewhat lame from birth, a fact which was used as an argument against his succession, an oracle having warned Sparta against a "lame reign."

The worst trait in his character is his implacable hatred of Thebes, which led directly to the battle of Leuctra and Sparta's fall from her position of supremacy.

In 457 Sparta, needing a counterpoise against Athens in central Greece, reversed her policy and reinstated Thebes as the dominant power in Boeotia.

In the Peloponnesian War the Thebans, embittered by the support which Athens gave to the smaller Boeotian towns, and especially to Plataea, which they vainly attempted to reduce in 431, were firm allies of Sparta, which in turn helped them to besiege Plataea and allowed them to destroy the town after capture (427).

After the downfall of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War the Thebans, finding that Sparta intended to protect the states which they desired to annex, broke off the alliance.

In 404 they had urged the complete destruction of Athens, in 403 they secretly supported the restoration of its democracy in order to find in it a counterpoise against Sparta.

A few years later, influenced perhaps in part by Persian gold, they forced on the so-called Corinthian War and formed the nucleus of the league against Sparta.

In the consequent wars with Sparta the Theban army, trained and led by Epaminondas and Pelopidas, proved itself the best in Greece.

They carried their arms into Peloponnesus and at the head of a large coalition permanently crippled the power of Sparta.

The states which she protected were indisposed to commit themselves permanently to her tutelage, and the renewed rivalry of Athens, which had been linked with Thebes since 395 in a common fear of Sparta, but since 371 had endeavoured to maintain the balance of power against her ally, prevented the formation of a Theban empire.

Antigonus' preoccupation during the Celtic invasions, Sparta's prostration after the Chremonidean campaigns, the wealth amassed by Achaean adventurers abroad and the subsidies of Egypt, the standing foe of Macedonia, all enhanced the league's importance.

Quinctius Flamininus, restored all their lost possessions and sanctioned the incorporation of Sparta and Messene (191), thus bringing the entire Peloponnese under Achaean control.

Moreover, Sparta and Messene always remained unwilling members.

These hostages, when restored in 150, swelled the ranks of the proletariate opposition, whose leaders, to cover their maladministration at home, precipitated a war by attacking Sparta in defiance of Rome.

Their surrender made a deep impression on the whole Greek world, which had learned to regard a Spartan surrender as inconceivable, and to Sparta their loss was so serious that the Athenians might have concluded the war on very favourable terms had they so wished.

As a general Cleomenes did much to revive Sparta's old prestige.

But Aratus, whose jealousy could not brook to see a Spartan at the head of the Achaean league called in Antigonus Doson of Macedonia, and Cleomenes, after conducting successful expeditions to Megalopolis and Argos, was finally defeated at Sellasia, to the north of Sparta, in 222 or 221 B.C. He took refuge at Alexandria with Ptolemy Euergetes, but was arrested by his successor, Ptolemy Philopator, on a charge of conspiracy.

Both as general and as politician Cleomenes was one of Sparta's greatest men, and with him perished her last hope of recovering her ancient supermacy in Greece.

It was natural that a personality invested with such charms should be regarded as the ideal of womanly beauty, but it is remarkable that the only probable instance in which she appears as such is as Aphrodite, uop4co form ") at Sparta (0.

The cult is found not only where oriental influence was strongest, but in places remote from it, such as Sparta, where she was known by the name of Areia (" the warlike "), and there are numerous references in the Anthology to an Aphrodite armed with helmet and spear.

Even in the case of the Helots of Sparta, although their condition was very hard and they were made to perform services to any Spartiate who might require them to do so, features of a similar tributary condition are apparent.

This secured for Sparta the undisputed hegemony of the Peloponnese.

Tiribazus, who was favourable to Sparta, threw Conon into prison, but Artaxerxes II.

The terms were announced to the Greek envoys at Sardis in the winter 387-386, and were finally accepted by Sparta in 386.

The importance of Arcadia in Greek history was due to its position between Sparta and the Isthmus.

Most of these rebellions were easily quelled by Sparta, though in 469 and again in 420 the disaffected cities, backed by Argos, formed a dangerous coalition and came near to establishing their inde pendence.

But a severe defeat at the hands of Sparta in 368 (the "tearless battle") and the recrudescence of internal discord soon paralysed this movement.

Similarly the various cities were divided in their allegiance between the Achaean and the Aetolian leagues, with the result that Arcadia became the battleground of these confederacies, or fell a prey to Sparta and Macedonia.

According to the traditional story, when Cleomenes, king of Sparta, invaded the land of the Argives in 510 B.C., and slew all the males capable of bearing arms, Telesilla, dressed in men's clothes, put herself at the head of the women and repelled an attack upon the city of Argos.

The annihilation of the Apharetidae in the legend indicates the subordinate position held by the Messenians after the loss of their independence and subjugation by Sparta, the Dioscuri being distinctly Spartan, as the Apharetidae were Messenian heroes.

The Achaean League at once deserted the cause of Macedonia, and Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, entered into an alliance with Rome; Acarnania and Boeotia submitted in less than a year, and, with the exception of the great fortresses, Flamininus had the whole of Greece under his control.

In the Corinthi a n war Thespiae sided with Sparta, and between 379 and 372 repeatedly served the Spartans as a base against Thebes.

Similarly on land, the post it occupied between northern Greece and the Peloponnese materially influenced its relation to other states, both in respect of its alliances, such as that with Thessaly, towards which it was drawn by mutual hostility to Boeotia, which lay between them; and also in respect of offensive combinations of other powers, as that between Thebes and Sparta, which throughout an important part of Greek history were closely associated in their politics, through mutual dread of their powerful neighbour.

Sparta, favoured by the depression of Thebes in the Phocian War, was threatening Megalopolis.

Both Sparta and Megalopolis sent embassies to Athens.

The inability of the council to enforce its resolutions was chiefly due to its composition; the majority of the communities represented were even in combination no match for individual cities like Athens, Sparta or Thebes.

At the same time its distance from the sea - Sparta is 27 m.

But Amyclae and Therapne (Therapnae) seem to have been in early times of greater importance than Sparta, the former a Minyan foundation a few miles to the south of Sparta, the latter probably the Achaean capital of Laconia and the seat of Menelaus, Agamemnon's younger brother.

The Aetolians settled in Elis the Dorians pushed up to the headwaters of the Alpheus, where they divided into two forces, one of which under Cresphontes invaded and later subdued Messenia, while the other, led by Aristodemus or, according to another version, by his twin sons Eurysthenes and Procles, made its way down the Eurotas valley and gained Sparta, which became the Dorian capital of Laconia.

But it was solely in this consistency and steadfastness that the greatness of Sparta lay.

We cannot trace in detail the process by which Sparta subjugated the whole of Laconia, but apparently the first step, taken in the reign of Archelaus and Charillus, was to secure the upper Eurotas valley, conquering the border territory of Aegys.

This extension of Sparta's territory was viewed with apprehension by her neighbours in the Peloponnese.

The final struggle for Peloponnesian supremacy was with Argos, which had at an early period been the most powerful state of the peninsula, and even now, though its territory had been curtailed, was a serious rival of Sparta.

The final blow was struck by King Cleomenes I., who maimed for many years to come the Argive power and left Sparta without a rival in the Peloponnese.

In fact, by the middle of the 6th century, and increasingly down to the period of the Persian Wars, Sparta had come to be acknowledged as the leading state of Hellas and the champion of Hellenism.

Of such a position Sparta proved herself wholly unworthy.

Of the internal development of Sparta down to this time but little is recorded.

But it is, in fact, due also to the absence of an historical literature at Sparta, to the small part played by written laws, which were, according to tradition, expressly prohibited by an ordinance of Lycurgus, and to the secrecy which always characterizes an oligarchical rule.

This dual kingship, a phenomenon unique in Greek history, was explained in Sparta by the tradition Kingship. that on Aristodemus's death he had been succeeded by his twin sons, and that this joint rule had been perpetuated.

But the decay was too deeprooted to be eradicated by such means, and we shall see that at a late period in Sparta's history an attempt was made without success to deal with the evil by much more drastic measures.

The 5th Century B.C. - The beginning of the 5th century saw Sparta at the height of her power, though her prestige must have suffered in the fruitless attempts made to impose upon Athens an oligarchical regime after the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny in 51o.

In the second campaign, conducted ten years later by Xerxes in person, Sparta took a more active share and assumed the command of the combined Greek forces by sea and land.

Sparta felt that an effort was necessary to recover her position, and Pausanias, the victor of Plataea, was sent out as admiral of the Greek fleet.

By the withdrawal of Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies from the fleet the perils and the glories of the Persian War were left to Athens, who, though at the outset merely the leading state in a confederacy of free allies, soon began to make herself the mistress of an empire.

Sparta took no steps at first to prevent this.

Moreover, Sparta's attention was at this time fully occupied by troubles nearer home - the plots of Pausanias not only with the Persian king but with the Laconian helots; the revolt of Tegea (c. 473-71), rendered all the more formidable by the participation of Argos; the earthquake which in 464 devastated Sparta; and the rising of the Messenian helots, which immediately followed.

In this so-called first Peloponnesian War Sparta herself took but a small share beyond helping to inflict a defeat on the Athenians at Tanagra in 457 B.C. After this battle they concluded a truce, which gave the Athenians an opportunity of taking their revenge on the Boeotians at the battle of Oenophyta, of annexing to their empire Boeotia, Phocis and Locris, and of subjugating Aegina.

Materially Sparta must have remained almost unaffected, but she was forced to take action by the pressure of her allies and by the necessities imposed by her position as head of the league.

That the terms of the Peace of Nicias, which in 421 concluded the first phase of the war, were rather in favour of Sparta than of Athens was due almost entirely to the energy and insight of an individual Spartan, Brasidas, and the disastrous attempt of Athens to regain its lost land-empire.

The final success of Sparta and the capture of Athens in 405 were brought about partly by the treachery of Alcibiades, who induced the state to send Gylippus to conduct the defence of Syracuse, to fortify Decelea in northern Attica, and to adopt a vigorous policy of aiding Athenian allies to revolt.

The lack of funds which would have proved fatal to Spartan naval warfare was remedied by the intervention of Persia, which supplied large subsidies, and Spartan good fortune culminated in the possession at this time of an admiral of boundless vigour and considerable military ability, Lysander, to whom much of Sparta's success is attributable.

The fall of Athens left Sparta once again supreme in the Greek world and demonstrated clearly.

For a short time, indeed, under the energetic rule of Agesilaus, it seemed as if Sparta would pursue a Hellenic policy and carry on the war against Persia.

Further, the naval activity displayed by Sparta during the closing years of the Peloponnesian War abated when Persian subsidies were withdrawn, and the ambitious projects of Lysander led to his disgrace, which was followed by his death at Haliartus in 395.

In the following year the Spartan navy under Peisander, Agesilaus' brother-in-law, was defeated off Cnidus by the Persian fleet under Conon and Pharnabazus, and for the future Sparta ceased to be a maritime power.

In 371 a fresh peace congress was summoned at Sparta to ratify the Peace of Callias.

The result of the battle was to transfer the Greek supremacy from Sparta to Thebes.

The invading army even made its way into Laconia and devastated the whole of its southern portion; but the courage and coolness of Agesilaus saved Sparta itself from attack.

On Epaminondas' fourth expedition Sparta was again within an ace of capture, but once more the danger was averted just in time; and though at Mantinea (362 B.C.) the Thebans, together with the Arcadians, Messenians and Argives, gained a victory over the combined Mantinean, Athenian and Spartan forces, yet the death of Epaminondas in the battle more than counterbalanced the Theban victory and led to the speedy break-up of their supremacy.

But Sparta had neither the men nor the money to recover her lost position, and the continued existence on her borders of an independent Messenia and Arcadia kept her in constant fear for her own safety.

The reign of Cleomenes is marked also by a determined effort to cope with the rising power of the Achaean League and to recover for Sparta her long-lost supremacy in the Peloponnese, and even throughout Greece.

It was not long afterwards that the dual kingship ceased and Sparta fell under the sway of a series of cruel and rapacious tyrants - Lycurgus, Machanidas, who was killed by Philopoemen, and Nabis, who, if we may trust the accounts given by Polybius and Livy, was little better than a bandit chieftain, holding Sparta by means of extreme cruelty and oppression, and using mercenary troops to a large extent in his wars.

Nabis was assassinated in 192, and Sparta was forced by Philopoemen to enrol itself as a member of the Achaean League (q.v.) under a phil-Achaean aristocracy.

Again and again the relations between the Spartans and the Achaean League formed the occasion of discussions in the Roman senate or of the despatch of Roman embassies to Greece, but no decisive intervention took place until a fresh dispute about the position of Sparta in the league led to a decision of the Romans that Sparta, Corinth, Argos, Arcadian Orchomenus and Heraclea on Oeta should be severed from it.

For Sparta the long era of war and intestine struggle had ceased and one of peace and a revived prosperity took its place, as is witnessed by the numerous extant inscriptions belonging to this period.

Thus for nearly six centuries it was Mistra and not Sparta which formed the centre and focus of Laconian history.

In 1834, after the War of Independence had resulted in the liberation of Greece, the modern town of Sparta was built on part of the ancient site from the designs of Baron Jochmus, and Mistra decayed until now it is in ruins and almost deserted.

As a result of popular clamour, however, a survey for a railway was begun in 1907, an event of great importance for the prosperity of Sparta and of the whole Eurotas Plain.

Until 1905 the chief ancient buildings at Sparta were the theatre, of which, however, little shows above ground except portions of the retaining walls; the socalled 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.

Though excavations were carried on near Sparta, on the site of the Amyclaeum in 1890 by Tsountas, and in 1904 by Furtwangler, and at the shrine of Menelaus in Therapne by Ross in 1833 and 1841, and by Kastriotis in 1889 and 1900, yet no organized work was tried in Sparta itself save the partial excavation of the "round building" undertaken in 1892 and 1893 by the American School at Athens; the structure has been since found to be a semicircular retainingwall of good Hellenic work, though partly restored in Roman times.

In 1906 excavations began in Sparta itself with results of great value, which have been published in the British School Annual, vol.

The votive offerings in clay, amber, bronze, ivory and lead found in great profusion within the precinct range from the 9th to the 4th century B.C. and supply invaluable evidence for early Spartan art; they prove that Sparta reached her artistic zenith in the 7th century and that her decline had already begun in the 6th.

In the spring of 423 a truce was concluded between Athens and Sparta, but its operation was at once imperilled by Brasidas's refusal to give up Scione, which,.

In April 422 the truce with Sparta expired, and in the same summer Cleon was despatched to Thrace, where he stormed Torone and Galepsus and prepared for an attack on Amphipolis.

Brasidas united in himself the personal courage characteristic of Sparta with those virtues in which the typical Spartan was most signally lacking.

The Arcadian was said to have cured the women of Sparta of a fit of madness.

His ruling principles were an inveterate hatred of the nobility, and an equal hatred of Sparta.

It was mainly through him that the opportunity of concluding an honourable peace (in 425) was lost, and in his determination to see Sparta humbled he misled the people as to the extent of the resources of the state, and dazzled them by promises of future benefits.

His treatment of Aratus and Philopoemen, the heroes of the Achaean League, and of Cleomenes of Sparta, its most constant enemy, is perhaps open to severer criticism.

Byzantine walls at Sparta, as elsewhere, fortify only ancient acropolis not civic center; place of refuge at time of attack.

Sparta had a communal domain of great extent, the produce of which served in some measure to maintain the public repasts.

Causes of this were (I) the peace-loving luxury (born of commercial wealth and contact with Oriental life) of the great Ionian cities of Asia; (2) the tameness with which they submitted first to Lydia and to Persia, then to Athenian pretensions, then to Sparta, and finally to Persia again; (3) the decadence and downfall of Athens, which still counted as Ionian and had claimed (since Solon's time) seniority among " Ionian " states.

Yet the drain on the country's strength was severe, and when news arrived in 453 that the whole of the Egyptian armament, together with a reserve fleet, had been destroyed by the Persians, a reaction set in, and Cimon, who was recalled on Pericles' motion (but see Cimon), was empowered to make peace with Sparta on the basis of the status quo.

A further embassy calling upon the Athenians to expel the accursed family of the Alcmaeonidae, clearly aimed at Pericles himself as its chief representative, was left unheeded, and early in 431 hostilities began between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies (see Peloponnesian War).

The Panhellenic alliance (from which Sparta still stood aloof) against the barbarians was renewed.

Sparta to the last remained what Rome was at the beginning, a city with a populus (8,uos) but no plebs.

Its fortifications were strengthened by the tyrant Nabis, but in 195 B.C. it was invested and taken by Titus and Lucius Quintius Flamininus, and, though recovered by Nabis two or three years later, was recaptured immediately after his murder (192 B.C.) by Philopoemen and Aulus Atilius and remained in the Achaean League until its dissolution in 146 B.C. Subsequently it formed the most important of the Eleutherolaconian towns, a group of twenty-four, later eighteen, communities leagued together to maintain their autonomy against Sparta and declared free by Augustus.

Another important aspect of Demeter was that of a divinity of the under-world; as such she is XBovia at Sparta and especially at Hermione in Argolis, where she had a celebrated temple, said to have been founded by Clymenus (one of the names of Hades-Pluto) and his sister Chthonia, the children of Phoroneus, an Argive hero.

Meanwhile Lysander had gained the battle of Aegospotami and Sparta was supreme in the Greek world.

Although the dominant position of Lysander had been broken in 403 by King Pausanias, the Spartan government gave him all the support which was possible without going into open war against the king; it caused a partisan of Lysander, Clearchus, condemned to death on account of atrocious crimes which he had committed as governor of Byzantium, to gather an army of mercenaries on the Thracian Chersonesus, and in Thessaly Menon of Pharsalus, head of a party which was connected with Sparta, collected another army.

He fell ill on his return from Delphi, where he had gone to dedicate a tithe of the spoils, and, probably in 401, died at Sparta, where he was buried with unparalleled solemnity and pomp. Thuc. iii.

In his Tripoliticos he described the best form of government as a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, and illustrated it by the example of Sparta.

Moreover, whereas Persia had been for several years aiding Athens against Sparta, the revolt of the Athenian ally Evagoras of Cyprus set them at enmity, and with the secession of Ephesus, Cnidus and Samos in 391 and the civil war in Rhodes, the star of Sparta seemed again to be in the ascendant.

To counterbalance the new power Athens very rashly plunged into Peloponnesian politics with the ulterior object of inducing the states which had formerly recognized the hegemony of Sparta to transfer their allegiance to the Delian League.

The Cretan cities, irrespective of origin, exhibit serfage, militant aristocracy, rigid martial discipline of all citizens, and other marked analogies with Sparta; but the Asiatic Dorians and the other Dorian colonies do not differ appreciably in their social and political history from their Ionian and Aeolic neighbours.

In the following year (337) Philip was in the Peloponnesus, and a congress of the Greek states at the Isthmus (from which, however, Sparta held sullenly aloof) recognized Philip as captain-general for the war against Persia.

Five battles are recorded to have been fought near Mantineia; 418, 362 (see'above), 295 (Demetrius Poliorcetes defeats Archidamus of Sparta), 242 (Aratus beats Agis of Sparta), 207 (Philopoemen beats Machanidas of Sparta).

After the second Messenian war (see Sparta) the conquered Messenians were reduced to the status of helots, from which Epaminondas liberated them three centuries later after the battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.).

Yet disaffection against Thebes was now growing rife, and Sparta fostered this feeling by stipulating for the complete independence of all the cities in the peace of Antalcidas (387).

So complete was the destruction of the Peloponnesian fleet that, according to Diodorus, peace was offered by Sparta (see ad fin.)and would have been accepted but for the warlike speeches of the " demagogue " Cleophon representing the extreme democrats?

Thus the Spartan power of offence was crippled; and the upshot of the long-protracted war was that Sparta ruefully returned to the Persian alliance, and by the Peace of Antalcidas, concluded with the king in 387 B.C., not only renounced all claims to the Asiatic possessions, but officially proclaimed the Persian suzerainty over Greece.

According to Professor Ridgeway, however, the Turkish crescent, like that seen on modern horse-trappings, has nothing to do with the new moon, but is the result of the baseto-base conjunction of two claw or tusk amulets, an example of which has been brought to light during the excavations of the site of the temple of Artemis Orthia at Sparta (see Athenaeum, March 21, 1908).

Athens must never permit, if she could help it, the re-establishment of such a domination as Sparta exercised in Greece from the battle of Aegospotami to the battle of Leuctra.

The Franks on their arrival in the Morea found a fortified city named Lacedaemonia occupying part of the site of ancient Sparta, and this continued to exist, though greatly depopulated, even after Guillaume de Villehardouin had in1248-1249founded the fortress and city of Misithra, or Mistra, on a spur of Taygetus some 3 m.

His death removed the chief obstacle to an arrangement with Sparta, and in 421 the peace of Nicias was concluded (see Peloponnesian War).

In the beginning of the game, the city of Sparta is going through turmoil and upheaval.

He showed great heroism in the defence of Sparta against Epaminondas immediately before the battle of Mantineia (362).

A demand for help which the Samians sent to Sparta was rejected at the instance of the Corinthians.

Pericles now seemed to have made up his mind that war with Sparta, the head of that ' The date can hardly be fixed; probably it was after 440.

The combined complaints of the injured parties led Sparta to summon a Peloponnesian congress which decided on war against Athens, failing a concession to Megara and Corinth (autumn 432).

In this crisis Pericles persuaded the wavering assembly that compromise was useless, because Sparta was resolved to precipitate a war in any case.

It is not quite easy to see why he abandoned this successful policy in order to hasten on a war with Sparta, and neither the Corcyrean alliance nor the Megarian decree seems justified by the facts as known to us, though commercial motives may have played a part which we cannot now gauge.

Athens at once appealed to Sparta to punish this act of medism, and Cleomenes I., one of the Spartan kings, crossed over to the island, to arrest those who were responsible for it.

Sparta is the best case of a nobility of conquest.

We hardly look on the Spartans as a nobility among the other Lacedaemonians; Sparta rather is a ruling city bearing sway over the other Lacedaemonian towns.

Only at Rome, where there was a plebs to be striven against, these distinctions seem to have had a tendency to die out, while at Sparta they seem to have had a tendency to widen.

Indeed, the Cretan system, like that of Sparta, appears to have aimed at training up the young, and controlling them, as well as the citizens of more mature age, in all their habits and relations of life.

Soon after the conquest of the Median empire, Cyrus was attacked by a coalition of the other powers of the East, Babylon, Egypt and Lydia, joined by Sparta, the greatest military power of Greece.

At this point Aratus appealed to Sparta to help the Achaeans in repelling an expected Aetolian attack, and Agis was sent to the Isthmus at the head of an army.

The centre of her worship was Cydonia, whence it extended to Sparta and Aegina (where she was known as Aphaea) and the islands of the Mediterranean.

The subsequent decline of Athenian land-power had the effect of weakening this new connexion; at the time of the Peloponnesian War Phocis was nominally an ally and dependent of Sparta, and had lost control of Delphi.

Under the guidance of Pericles the Athenians renounced the unprofitable rivalry with Sparta and Persia, and devoted themselves to the consolidation and judicious extension of their maritime influence.

He reached Sparta on the day on which Orestes was holding the funeral feast over Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra.

The Attic bouleutae took the oath by Athena Boulaia; at Sparta she was ayopaia, presiding over the popular assemblies in the market-place; in Arcadia µnXavZTts, the discoverer of devices.

For the moment it tended;to impair the good relations which had subsisted between Athens and Sparta since the first days of the Persian peril.