A city in the southern Peloponnese in Greece. In ancient Greece, Sparta was a powerful city-state, capital of the state of Laconia. Invading Dorian Greeks occupied Laconia c.950 bc, and by about 700 bc the Spartans had emerged as the dominant element among them, with a large slave class of helots working on the land. Sparta had also, in the late 8th century, defeated and annexed the territory of Messenia, its western neighbour, reducing its population to helotry and dividing its land among the full Spartiate citizens. The stark austerity, militarism, and discipline of Spartan society were traditionally ascribed to a single great legislator, Lycurgus, variously dated c.900 and c.700 bc; it is likeliest that the fully developed Spartan system took shape somewhere between 700 and 600 bc.

From the 6th century, Sparta became the hub of an alliance comprising most of Peloponnesian and Isthmian states except its traditional rival, Argos; but many of these allies in the ‘Peloponnesian League’ were little more than puppets of Sparta. Sparta led the successful Greek resistance in the Greek-Persian wars, but later came into protracted conflict with Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Its final victory in 404 bc left it dominant in Greece and the Aegean; but after crushing defeats by Thebes at Leuctra (371) and Mantinea (362) and the loss of Messina it declined in importance.