Sparta
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Sparta was a prominent ancient Greek polis in Laconia. In classical antiquity, the state was known as Lacedaemon, while Sparta referred to its capital, a group of villages in the valley of the Evrotas
Eurotas River
Hollow Lacedaemon. Site of the Menelaion, the ancient shrine to Helen and Menelaus constructed in the Bronze Age city that stood on the hill of Therapne on the left bank of the Eurotas River overlooking the future site of Dorian Sparta. Across the valley the successive ridges of Mount Taygetus are in evidence.
The theatre of ancient Sparta with Mt. Taygetus in the background
Ruins of the Temple of Artemis Orthia
Leonidas I
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Leonidas I was king of the Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. He was the son of king Anaxandridas II and the 17th king of the Agiad dynasty, a Spartan royal house which claimed descent from Heracles.
Sparta
…that also included the rising maritime power of Athens. The Spartan army was crucial in the battles of Thermopylae and Plataea under the leadership of Leonidas and Pausanias respectively. Sparta led the Peloponnesian League against the Athenian Empire during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it…
Sculpture of a hoplite, called "Leonidas" by its excavators. 5th century BC
The Spartans throw Persian envoys into a well.
Leonidas at Thermopylae (1814) by Jacques-Louis David, who chose the subject in the aftermath of the French Revolution as a model of "civic duty and self-sacrifice", but also as a contemplation of loss and death, with Leonidas quietly poised and heroically nude
Achaemenid king killing a Greek hoplite. Circa 500 BC–475 BC, at the time of Xerxes I. Metropolitan Museum of Art.