Register Sign in
Labeca Laboratory for the Study of the Ancient City

Sparta

Greece (Lacedaemon)

For Sparta the textual evidence is abundant, but the same is not true of the archaeological evidence. Located in Lacedaemon in the Peloponnese, the city was 48 km from the sea, and the nearest modern town today is Sparti. According to Thucydides, Sparta was organised in the old way, i.e. katá komas, meaning that it was made up of several villages. The written sources identify five of them, neighbouring the city: Pitane, Mesoa, Limnai and Kynosoura, and also Amyklai. The first four, together with Sparta, may have been the five 'obai' of the written sources, that is, the five civic divisions of the city. The site of the settlement consists of low hills and plain.

Relationship between ásty and khóra

Structures between ásty and khóra: walls, necropoleis, sanctuaries.

Little has been excavated at Sparta. In the Archaic and Classical periods the territory of Sparta must have been around 270 km². The 'low' acropolis (today Palaiokastro), not very high according to Pausanias, commands a view of the city on its north side. Ancient texts tell us that the city did not have a regular street plan and, as Thucydides said, it was laid out in the old way: katá komas, that is, in villages. It is believed that the agora of Sparta was on the acropolis, with its 5th-century BC stoa on its north-west side. A round building dated to the 3rd/2nd century BC has been identified with the Choros of Pausanias' time.
Some roads around the city have been identified, as well as remains of some bridges over the Eurotas and its tributaries.
Burials have been found on the edges of each of the four villages, which implies that they lay within the "urban" area.

Bibliography (2)
  • Schoder, R. V.; Ancient Greece from the Air.
  • Morkot, R.; The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece.

Forms of occupation of the ásty

Walls and position of the gates

The city of Sparta had no walls in the Archaic and Classical periods. Its first wall is generally dated to 317 BC, on the eve of the Macedonian invasion.

Bibliography (1)
  • Schoder, R. V.; Ancient Greece from the Air.

Forms of occupation of the khóra

Sacred areas: deposits, temples, shrines, sanctuaries, altars

Sparta had a ring of sanctuaries around it: the sanctuary of Apollo at Amyklai; of Zeus Messapeus in the Tsakona mountain range; another of Zeus Messapeus on the plain to the south; a peak sanctuary (deity?) east of Phagia; an Eleusinion at Kalyvia Sochas in the south. And these sanctuaries were within sight of one another.
In the city, the sanctuaries of Athena Chalkioikos on the acropolis and of Athena Poliachos within the city, shared by all the villages, are worth noting; on the edge of the city was the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, whose first phase dates from the 7th century BC.
Also of interest is the Menelaion, a place of cult of the hero Menelaus and of Helen, extra-urban, on the range of hills to the south-east across the Eurotas (c. 700 BC), on a Bronze Age site.

migration

images from the old database

Between the 8th and 5th centuries BC Sparta conquered the plain of Messenia and dominated the southern and central Peloponnese thanks to its impressive and powerful army, coming to hold a territory of considerable size, as illustrated in the maps.

Bibliography (1)
  • Morkot, R.; The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece.