Spartans Sentence Examples

Four years later he captured Caryae, ravaged the territory of the Parrhasii and defeated the Arcadians, Argives and Messenians in the "tearless battle," so called because the victory did not cost the Spartans a single life.

Certainly the Spartans adopted, together with the political traditions of the Heracleids, many old Laconian cults and observances such as those connected with the Tyndaridae.

From the latter it was transferred by Antigonus Doson to the Achaean League (222); in 218 it was again occupied by the Spartans but reconquered in 207 by the Achaean general Philopoemen.

Professor Mahaffy has pointed out that many other events in Greek history are viewed by us in somewhat perverted perspective because the great writers of Greece were Athenians rather than Spartans or Thebans.

Its military importance was recognized in 427 B.C. by the Spartans, who sent a garrison to guard the Trachinian plain against the marauding highland tribes of Oeta and built a citadel close by the Asopus gorge with the new name of Heraclea.

The Spartans failed to safeguard Heraclea against the Oetaeans and Thessalians, and for a short time were displaced by the Thebans (420).

The Spartans were successful but did not pursue their advantage, and soon afterwards the Athenians, seizing their opportunity, sallied forth again, and, after a victory under Myronides at Oenophyta, obtained the submission of all Boeotia, save Thebes, and of Phocis and Locris.

Many cases occur where such an office was hereditary; thus the family of Callias at Athens were proxeni of the Spartans.

At the end of the Peloponnesian War Lysander restored the scattered remnants of the old inhabitants to the island, which was used by the Spartans as a base for operations against Athens in the Corinthian War.

In any case the Spartans form a ruling body, and a body whose privileged position in the land is owing to conquest.

The Spartans answer to the patricians, the 7reploLKOC to the plebs; the helots are below the position of plebs or demos.

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.

He joined the Illyrians in an attempt to plunder the temple of Delphi, pillaged the temple of Caere on the Etruscan coast, and founded several military colonies on the Adriatic. In the Peloponnesian War he espoused the side of the Spartans, and assisted them with mercenaries.

He gave strenuous support to the Spartans; evidently he had already then formed the design, in which he was supported by his mother, of gaining the throne for himself after the death of his father; he pretended to have stronger claims to it than his elder brother Artaxerxes, who was not born in the purple.

The history of Cyrus and of the retreat of the Greeks is told by Xenophon in his Anabasis (where he tries to veil the actual participation of the Spartans).

The Spartans were happy, said the writer, because they had plenty of good, suitable clothing and lodging, robust women, and were able to meet their requirements both physical and mental.

After helping the Spartans to invade Boeotia during the Corinthian War (395-94), the Phocians were placed on the defensive.

For a time dependent on Argos, it became afterwards an important possession of the Spartans, who annually despatched a governor named the Cytherodices.

Their inclination to take advantage of opportunities for this purpose is shown by the number that escaped from Athens to join the Spartans when occupying Decelea.

At first he seems to have remained on good terms with Themistocles, whom he is said to have helped in outwitting the Spartans over the rebuilding of the walls of Athens.

The range of Taygetus is well watered and was in ancient times covered with forests which afforded excellent hunting to the Spartans, while it had also large iron mines and quarries of an inferior bluish marble, as well as of the famous rosso antico of Taenarum.

The Eleans, however, refused to recognize the Olympiad or to include it in the register, and shortly afterwards, with the aid of the Spartans, who are said to have looked upon Pheidon as having ousted them from the headship of Greece, defeated Pheidon and were reinstated in the possession of Pisatis and their former privileges.

Tarentum is remarkable as the only foreign settlement made by the Spartans.

To some extent the Spartans were undoubtedly relieved, in that it no longer fell to them to organize distant expeditions to Asia Minor, and this feeling was strengthened about the same time by the treacherous conduct of their king Leotychides in Thessaly.

Gradually individual cities which had formed part of the Athenian empire returned to their alliance with Athens, until the Spartans had lost Rhodes, Cos, Nisyrus, Teos, Chios, Mytilene, Ephesus, Erythrae, Lemnos, Imbros, Scyros, Eretria, Melos, Cythera, Carpathus and Delos.

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.).

The Athenians immediately fitted out a fleet under Chabrias, who gained a decisive victory over the Spartans between Naxos and Paros (battle of Naxos 376 B.C.), both of which were added to the league.

Trouble, however, soon arose over Zacynthus, and the Spartans not only sent help to the Zacynthian oligarchs but even besieged Corcyra (373) Timotheus was sent to relieve the island, but shortness of money compelled him to search for new allies, and he spent the summer of 373 in persuading Jason of Pherae (if he had not already joined), and certain towns in Thrace, the Chersonese, the Propontis and the Aegean to enrol themselves.

It is clear from the traditions about Lycurgus, for example, that even the Spartans had been a long while in Laconia before their state was rescued from disorder by his reforms; and if there be truth in the legend that the new institutions were borrowed from Crete, we perhaps have here too a late echo of the legislative fame of the land of Minos.

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.

By the peace of Antalcidas the Persian supremacy was proclaimed over Greece; and in the following wars all parties, Spartans, Athenians, Thebans, Argives continually applied to Persia for a decision in their favour.

The curse or pollution thus incurred was frequently in later years raked up for political reasons; the Spartans even demanded that Pericles should be expelled as accursed at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war.

After a defeat by sea, Polycrates repelled an assault upon the walls, and subsequently withstood a siege by a joint armament of Spartans and Corinthians assembled to aid the rebels.

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).

In 385 the Spartans seized a pretext to besiege and dismantle Mantineia and to scatter its inhabitants among four villages.

Few more brilliant pieces of historical writing exist than his description of the coronation procession of Anne Boleyn through the streets of London, few more full of picturesque power than that in which he relates how the spire of St Paul's was struck by lightning; and to have once read is to remember for ever the touching and stately words in which he compares the monks of the London Charterhouse preparing for death with the Spartans at Thermopylae.

That the general attitude of the Spartans towards them was one of distrust and cruelty cannot be doubted.

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."

Aristomenes and the survivors retired to the mountain stronghold of Eira, where they defied the Spartans for eleven years.

On another occasion he was captured during a truce by some Cretan auxiliaries of the Spartans, and was released only by the devotion of a Messenian girl who afterwards became his daughter-in-law.

At length Eira was betrayed to the Spartans (668 B.C. according to Pausanias), and after a heroic resistance Aristomenes and his followers had to evacuate Messenia and seek a temporary refuge with their Arcadian allies.

For a time the presidency of the Boeotian League was taken away from Thebes, but in 457 the Spartans reinstated that city as a bulwark against Athenian aggression.

When Catherine found herself opposed by the policy of France and England, and threatened by the jealousy of Prussia and Austria, she dropped the Greek design, observing to Voltaire that the descendants of the Spartans were much degenerated.

This festival, from i which the Eleans and Spartans were excluded, was afterwards struck out of the official register, as having no proper existence.

As the Eleans, therefore, were the religious supervisors of Olympia, so the Spartans aimed at constituting themselves its political protectors.

In 432 a conference of Peloponnesian allies was summoned and the Corinthian envoys urged the Spartans to declare war on the ground that the power of Athens was becoming so great as to constitute a danger to the other states.

In spring 427 the Spartans again invaded Attica without result.

Shortly afterwards the Spartans 1 So Thuc. iii.

Demosthenes was left behind in this fort, and the Spartans promptly withdrew from their annual raid upon Attica and their projected attack on Corcyra to dislodge him.

Even before the final catastrophe the Spartans had reopened hostilities.

It was subsequently renewed in a form somewhat less disgraceful to Greek patriotism by the Spartans Astyochus and Theramenes.

Moreover Alcibiades lost the confidence of the Spartans and passed over to Tissaphernes, at whose disposal he placed his great powers of diplomacy, at the same time scheming for his restoration to Athens.

The war, which, probably because of financial trouble, the Spartans had neglected to pursue when Athens was thus in the throes of political convulsion, was now resumed.

After several unavailing attempts Aratus contrived to win Argos for the Achaean League (229), in which it remained save during a brief occupation by the Spartans Cleomenes III.

The rocky promontory on which the temple stands was fortified by a wall with towers, in 413 B.C., as a protection against the Spartans in Decelea; but it was soon after seized by a body of fugitive slaves from the Laurium mines.

When these two powers quarrelled after the peace of Nicias it remained loyal to the Spartans; but the latter thought it prudent to stiffen the oligarchic government against a nascent democratic movement.

The victorious Greeks subsequently punished Thebes by depriving it of the presidency of the Boeotian League, and an attempt by the Spartans to expel it from the Delphic amphictyony was only frustrated by the intercession of Athens.

At the battles of Haliartus (395) and Coroneia (394) they again proved their rising military capacity by standing their ground against the Spartans.

Some years of desultory fighting, in which Thebes established its control over all Boeotia, culminated in 371 in a remarkable victory over the pick of the Spartans at Leuctra.

Under Philopoemen the league with a reorganized army routed the Aetolians (210) and Spartans (207, 201).

At the close of the Peloponnesian War the Spartans gave to the people of Delos the management of their own affairs; but the Athenian predominance was soon after restored, and survived an appeal to the amphictyony of Delphi in 345 B.C. During Macedonian times, from 322 to 166 B.C., Delos again became independent; during this period the shrine was enriched by offerings from all quarters, and the temple and its possessions were administered by officials called i€poirocol.

The Spartans, who were then invading Attica, withdrew their forces and attacked them vigorously by sea and land, but were repulsed, and the Athenians were enabled by the arrival and victory of their fleet to blockade on the island of Sphacteria a body of 420 Spartiates with their attendant helots.

A large body of light troops was landed and drove the Spartans from their encampment by a well in the middle of the island to its northern extremity.

It was instituted primarily as a precaution against the ever-present danger of a helot revolt, and secondarily perhaps as a training for young Spartans, who were sent out by the ephors to keep watch on the helots and assassinate any who might appear dangerous.

Thus, at Athens,Apollo Patroos was known as the protector of the Ionians, and the Spartans referred the institutions of Lycurgus to the Delphic oracle.

In 385 B.C. he served in a Theban contingent sent to the support of the Spartans at Mantineia, where he was saved, when dangerously wounded, by Epaminondas.

Upon the seizure of the Theban citadel by the Spartans (383 or 382) he fled to Athens, and took the lead in a conspiracy to liberate Thebes.

At the battle of Leuctra (371) he contributed greatly to the success of Epaminondas's new tactics by the rapidity with which he made the Sacred Band close with the Spartans.

This tradition, together with the advice of Alcibiades, led the Spartans to fortify Decelea as a basis for permanent occupation in Attica during the later years of the Peloponnesian War, from 413-404 B.C. Its position enabled them to harass the Athenians constantly, and to form a centre for fugitive slaves and other deserters.

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

Nevertheless, it is not probable that without the training introduced by Lycurgus the Spartans would have been successful in securing their supremacy in Laconia, much less in the Peloponnese, for they formed a small immigrant band face to face with a large and powerful Achaean and autochthonous population.

Under Alcamenes and Theopompus a war broke out between the Spartans and the Messenians, their neighbours on the west, which, after a struggle Messenian lasting for twenty years, ended in the capture of Wars.

A victory won about 546 B.C., when the Lydian Empire fell before Cyrus of Persia, made the Spartans masters of the Cynuria, the borderland between Laconia and Argolis, for which there had been an age-long struggle.

Yet, in spite of the heroic defence of Thermopylae by the Spartan king Leonidas, the glory of the decisive victory at Salamis fell in great measure to the Athenians, and their patriotism, self-sacrifice and energy contrasted strongly with the hesitation of the Spartans and the selfish policy which they advocated of defending the Peloponnese only.

The insulting dismissal of a large body of Athenian troops which had come, under Cimon, to aid the Spartans in the siege of the Messenian stronghold of Ithome, the consummation of the Attic democracy under Ephi altes and Pericles, the conclusion of an alliance between Athens Training A pothetae (ai 'A-r-o%-raa, from lurOBEros, hidden) .

But this gave rise to chronic disorders and disputes, which led g p to armed intervention on the part of the Achaeans, who compelled the Spartans to submit to the overthrow of their city walls, the dismissal of their mercenary troops, the recall of all exiles, the abandonment of the old Lycurgan constitution and the adoption of the Achaean laws and institutions (188 B.C.).

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.

When Alcibiades urged the Spartans to send a general to lead the Syracusan resistance against the Athenian expedition, Gylippus was appointed, and his arrival was undoubtedly the turning point of the struggle(414-413).

The first Persians to engage were the mounted archers, who rained arrows on the Spartans.

The Spartans are trying to fight the independent city-state of Arcadia which is powerful in its own right.

The Spartans were indignant, and when the Argives and their allies, in flagrant disregard of the truce, took Arcadian Orchomenus and prepared to march on Tegea, their fury knew no bounds, and Agis escaped having his house razed and a fine of 100,000 drachmae imposed only by promising to atone for his error by a signal victory.

Subsequently he invaded and ravaged Elis, forcing the Eleans to acknowledge the freedom of their perioeci and to allow Spartans to take part in the Olympic games and sacrifices.

In Laconia Aristodemus (or his twin sons) effected a rigid military occupation which eventually embraced the whole district, and permitted (a) the colonization of Melos, Thera and parts of Crete (before 800 B.C.), (b) the reconquest and annexation of Messenia (about 750 B.C.), (c) a settlement of half-breed Spartans at Tarentum in south Italy, 700 B.C. In Argos and other cities of Argolis the descendants of the Achaean chiefs were taken into political partnership, but a tradition of race-feud lasted till historic times.

Survival of fair hair and complexion and light eyes among the upper classes in Thebes and some other localities shows that the blonde type of mankind which is characteristic of north-western Europe had already penetrated into Greek lands before classical times; but the ascription of the same physical traits to the Achaeans of Homer forbids us to regard them as peculiar to that latest wave of pre-classical immigrants to which the Dorians belong; and there is no satisfactory evidence as to the coloration of the Spartans, who alone were reputed to be pure-blooded Dorians in historic times.

The festival was to acquire a new importance under the protection of the Spartans, who, having failed in their plans of actual conquest in the Peloponnese, sought to gain at least the hegemony (acknowledged predominance) of the peninsula.

Among others of the name may be mentioned (3) Athenodorus Of Teos, who played the cithara at the wedding of Alexander the Great and Statira at Susa (324 B.C.); (4) a Greek physician of the 1st century A.D., who wrote on epidemic diseases; and two sculptors, of whom (5) one executed the statues of Apollo and Zeus which the Spartans dedicated at Delphi after Aegospotami; and (6) the other was a son of Alexander of Rhodes, whom he helped in the Laocoon group.

According to another story, he was taken prisoner in a war between the Spartans and Cnossians, and put to death by his captors, because he refused to prophesy favourably for them.

The Spartans hated Aristomenes.

The Spartans said to one another, Let us throw this fellow into the rocky chasm.

As a member of the NCAA system, the Spartans have several professional, intramural, and club sports.

Play the game as the Spartans, Egyptians or Persians.

Woot!" and pump their fists in the air than they are to yell "Go, Spartans!"

Over the years, Saturday Night Live's hilarious Spartans cheerleaders appeared in about 17 episodes of the late night comedy show.

Saturday Night Live Transcripts is the most comprehensive resource for transcripts of Spartans sketches.

Scroll down the page until you see the link for the Spartans transcript, and click on it to open.

Considering that Will Farrell and Cheri Oteri have been gone for a number of years from Saturday Night Live, the fact that a new generation is enjoying the Spartans shows just how universally funny they are.

Originally aired on Jan. 20, 1996, the Spartans are reduced to cheering at odd school events.

On April 19, 1997, the Spartans follow the volleyball team to California.

The March 7, 1998 skit finds the Spartans watching Titanic way too many times, and they can't concentrate.

Ariana gets dissed by Gabby from the flag corps, but the Spartans' unquenchable spirit still lets them perform "the perfect cheer" just one last time.