Sparta, anciently LACEDÆMON, the capital of Laconia, and the most famous city of the Peloponnesus, situated on the right bank of the Eurotas, about 20 miles from the sea, in a plain shut in by mountains, of which that on the west side, Mount Taygetus, rises to a height of 8000 feet. The natural defences of the valley of Lacedæmon were so great that it continued unfortified down to the Macedonian period, and indeed was not regularly fortified till the time of the tyrant Nabis (195 B.C.). Previous to the Dorian conquest the primitive Achæans of Sparta seem to have dwelt in four or five scattered hamlets. These in course of time were grouped into one city by the conquerors, and became known as town-districts. Sparta had no striking public buildings—its Acropolis was merely a steep hill in the northern part of the city, crowned with the temple of Athena Polinchos or Chalcicæus. Here, as in all Dorian states, were found the three classes—Helots, or slaves; Perioikoi, a subject class of freemen without political rights; and the Spartiatæ, or the governing class of pure Dorian blood. The foundation of Spartan greatness was attributed to the legislation of Lycurgus (q.v.), and it is at any rate true that there survived a very ancient legal code, consisting of ῥῆτρα ('compacts'), supposed to have the special sanction of the Delphic oracle. At the head of the government stood two kings, one of the family of the Agidæ, the other of the family of the Eurypontidæ, their royalty hereditary in the main line, but limited to sons born while the father was actually king. Their powers were equal, and they were originally priests as well as judges and generals. After 506 B.C. only one king at once might take the field, and his powers came to be much curtailed by the growing power of the Ephors. These were five in number, elected annually by the people—the first giving his name to the year. Two accompanied the king on campaign, advising the three at home by the συντάλαι, or secret despatches. They received foreign ambassadors, imposed taxes, and judged in all matters except those which specially belonged to the kings as priests. The standing council of kings and ephors was the Gerousia, consisting of twenty-eight Spartans above sixty, and elected from the chief families by the people. Once a month was held the apella, or assembly of all Spartans above thirty, who might vote but could not speak, which only the king, ephors, and members of the gerousia had the right to do. The Spartans never ceased to look upon themselves as merely a military garrison, and all their discipline pointed to war. No deformed child was allowed to be brought up; boys began to be drilled at seven, entered the ranks at twenty, and thereafter had to dine every day in one of the military messes (ἀνδρεία or φύστια) in tents pitched in the public street. From twenty till sixty all Spartans were obliged to serve as Hoplites. In the 5th century the army was divided into twelve lochoi, commanded by lochagoi. Each lochos consisted of 500 men. After the Peloponnesian war the army was rearranged in six morai, each under a polemarchos. They never were strong at sea, although at Salamis they had ten ships, and under Lysander defeated the Athenian fleet and so ended the Peloponnesian war.
The earliest struggles of Sparta were with Messenia and Argos. The Messenian war terminated (668 B.C.) in the complete overthrow of the Dorians of Messenia, who were reduced by the victorious Spartans to the condition of Periæci. Similar struggles occurred both with the older Achæan inhabitants in the centre of Peloponnesus and with the Dorians of Argos, &c., in which the Spartans were generally successful. Under their stern discipline the Spartans became a race of resolute, rude, and narrow-minded warriors, capable of a momentary self-sacrificing patriotism, as in the story of the 300 heroes who fell at Thermopylæ, but utterly destitute of the capacity for adopting or appreciating a permanently noble and wise policy. The outbreak of the Peloponnesian war (431 B.C.) brought the rivalry between Sparta and Athens to a head, and in the mighty struggle that ensued victory declared on the side of the combatant least capable of maintaining the greatness of Greece. Sparta now attained the hegemony of Greece; but her insolent tyranny in the hour of her triumph excited the indignation of those whom she held in virtual subjugation, and the glorious retaliations of the Thebans under Epaminondas stripped her of all her splendid acquisitions, and reduced the Laconian state to its primitive boundaries. Later the rise of the Macedonian power limited still more the Spartan territory, nor did it ever after attain its earlier dimensions. After a series of vicissitudes Sparta passed into the hands of the Romans, became a portion of the Roman province of Achæia, and finally shared the fortunes of the rest of Greece (q.v.). The growth of the town of Misthra, 2 miles SW. of Sparta, in the 14th and 15th centuries, led to the total desertion of the more ancient city; but the modern town of Sparti (pop. 5000), which was founded by the Greek government in 1836, occupies part of the site of old Sparta, and is again capital of the province of Laconia.