Sparta[1] was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece.

In antiquity, the city-state was

known as Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων, Lakedaímōn), while the name Sparta referred to its main
settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in the Eurotas valley of Laconia, in south-eastern
Peloponnese.[2] Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient
Greece.

Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek
military during the Greco-Persian Wars, in rivalry with the rising naval power of Athens.[3] Sparta
was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC),[4] from which it
emerged victorious after the Battle of Aegospotami. The decisive Battle of Leuctra against Thebes in
371 BC ended the Spartan hegemony, although the city-state maintained its political independence
until its forced integration into the Achaean League in 192 BC. The city nevertheless recovered much
autonomy after the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC and prospered during the Roman Empire,
as its antiquarian customs attracted many Roman tourists. However, Sparta was sacked in 396 AD by
the Visigothic king Alaric, and underwent a long period of decline, especially in the Middle Ages,
when many of its citizens moved to Mystras. Modern Sparta is the capital of the southern Greek
region of Laconia and a center for processing citrus and olives.

Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution, which were supposedly
introduced by the semi-mythical legislator Lycurgus. His laws configured the Spartan society to
maximize military proficiency at all costs, focusing all social institutions on military training and
physical development. The inhabitants of Sparta were stratified as Spartiates (citizens with full
rights), mothakes (free non-Spartiate people descended from Spartans), perioikoi (free non-
Spartiates), and helots (state-owned enslaved non-Spartan locals). Spartiate men underwent the
rigorous agoge training regimen, and Spartan phalanx brigades were widely considered to be among
the best in battle. Spartan women enjoyed considerably more rights than elsewhere in classical
antiquity.

Sparta was frequently a subject of fascination in its own day, as well as in Western culture following
the revival of classical learning. The admiration of Sparta is known as Laconophilia. Bertrand Russell
wrote:

Sparta had a double effect on Greek thought: through the reality, and through the myth.... The
reality enabled the Spartans to defeat Athens in war; the myth influenced Plato's political theory, and
that of countless subsequent writers.... [The] ideals that it favors had a great part in framing the
doctrines of Rousseau, Nietzsche, and National Socialism.[5]

Names

Eurotas River
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.[6] The
second word, "Lacedaemon" (Λακεδαίμων),[7] 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,[8] 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,[9][n 1] the equivalent of the later Greek
Λακεδαιμόνιος, Lakedaimonios (Latin: Lacedaemonius).[15][16]

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 terrain in which the city was located.[17] In Homer it is typically combined with epithets of the
countryside: wide, lovely, shining and most often hollow and broken (full of ravines),[18] 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 utilized 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.[19] The actual
transition may be captured by Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (7th century AD), an etymological
dictionary. Isidore relied heavily on Orosius' 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,[20] but Isidore defines Lacedaemonia as founded by Lacedaemon, son of
Semele, which is consistent with Eusebius' explanation.[21] There is a rare use, perhaps the earliest
of "Lacedaemonia", in Diodorus Siculus' The Library of History,[22] but probably with Χώρα (‘’chōra’’,
"country") suppressed.

Lakedaimona was until 2006 the name of a province in the modern Greek prefecture of Laconia.