Who ruled Sparta?

Sparta lies in the valley of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in the south-eastern Peloponnese of Greece, sheltered between the Taygetus and Parnon mountain ranges. In antiquity it was the capital of the state of Lacedaemon, which from the seventh century BC to its defeat at Leuctra in 371 BC was the strongest land power in the Greek world. Famous for its militarised society and its role against Persia and Athens, it declined into a Roman showpiece and later a minor town; the modern city was refounded in 1834.

Pottery from the Middle Neolithic shows that people lived near the site early on. In the Bronze Age the centre of the valley seems to have been the area around the later shrine of the Menelaion, east of the river, where excavations have found three Mycenaean mansions; in Spartan belief this was the home of Menelaus and Helen. According to Greek tradition, Dorian invaders from the north settled the Peloponnese after the Bronze Age, but nothing in the archaeology of the valley clearly identifies them, and the early history of Sparta is largely legend, including its descent from Heracles.

Ancient Sparta was not a walled town but a cluster of villages. Thucydides remarked that if it were ever deserted, later ages would doubt its power, because it was not built continuously and "would therefore make a poor show".

In the eighth and seventh centuries BC the Spartans went through a period of civil strife, which ended in sweeping reforms later credited to a semi-mythical lawgiver, Lycurgus. Victory in the Messenian wars gave Sparta neighbouring Messenia, and its lands were worked by helots, state-owned enslaved labourers who greatly outnumbered the citizens. Freed from productive work, Spartiate men devoted their lives to military training, and by the sixth century Sparta led the Peloponnesian League. Around 500 BC it may have had some 20,000 to 35,000 citizens and a total population of perhaps 40,000 to 50,000.

During the Persian invasion of 480 BC King Leonidas led a small force, including about 300 Spartiates, in the last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae. The next year Sparta led the Greek army that defeated the Persians at Plataea.

A violent earthquake in 464 BC destroyed much of the city and contributed to the tensions that led to the first war with Athens. In the Peloponnesian War of 431 to 404 BC Sparta built a fleet, and Lysander's victory at Aegospotami ended the Athenian empire. A brief Spartan hegemony followed, with campaigns against the Persian provinces in Anatolia, but the Corinthian War weakened it, and in 387 BC the Peace of Antalcidas returned the Ionian cities to Persia.

In 371 BC Epaminondas of Thebes crushed the Spartan army at Leuctra and freed Messenia. With the loss of its helot labour and a steadily shrinking citizen body, Sparta never recovered its military strength. Philip II of Macedon ravaged Laconia in 338 BC without taking the city, and Sparta refused to join his League of Corinth. King Agis III rose against Macedon but was defeated and killed near Megalopolis in 331 BC.

Sparta remained a regional power after Alexander's death and resisted Pyrrhus in 272 BC. King Cleomenes III tried to restore its dominance of the Peloponnese but was defeated at Sellasia in 222 BC. After the defeat of its last king, Nabis, Sparta was forced into the Achaean League in 192 BC, ending its independence.

After Rome's conquest of Greece in 146 BC Sparta became a free city. Some old Lycurgan customs were revived, partly as a spectacle for Roman visitors, and the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, where Spartan boys underwent ritual flogging, was given a theatre-like building around 200 AD.

The Visigoths under Alaric sacked Sparta in 396 AD. In the Middle Ages the centre of Laconia moved to nearby Mystras, and Sparta dwindled. The Tsakonian language still spoken in the region is the only surviving descendant of ancient Doric Greek. In 1834 King Otto of Greece decreed the foundation of a new Sparta on the ancient site, and it is now the capital of the Laconia region.

The British School at Athens began excavating in the city in 1906, uncovering the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, whose votive offerings illuminate early Spartan art, and the temple of Athena Chalkioikos on the acropolis.