49 Fun Facts About Sparta

In which region of the Peloponnese was Sparta located?

Laconia: the region gave English the word 'laconic', because its Spartans were famous for saying a great deal in very few words.

On the banks of which river was ancient Sparta built?

Eurotas: Spartan boys in training slept on beds of rushes they had to break from its banks with their bare hands, because knives were not allowed.

How many kings ruled Sparta at the same time?

Two: one king came from the Agiad family and one from the Eurypontid, both claiming descent from Heracles and equal in authority, so neither could overrule the other.

Which semi-mythical lawgiver is credited with Sparta's constitution?

Lycurgus: in Plutarch's telling he made the Spartans swear to keep his laws until he returned from Delphi, then starved himself to death there so the oath could never lapse.

What was the state-owned enslaved population that made up most of Sparta's inhabitants called?

Helots: every year Sparta formally declared war on them, so that killing one counted as an act of war and brought no religious guilt.

What were the free non-citizen inhabitants of Spartan territory called?

Perioikoi: full citizens were forbidden to touch trade or manufacture, so these free outsiders made the army's weapons and armour and ran Sparta's commerce.

What was the Spartan military education system called?

The agoge: a boy had to come through it to become a full citizen, and the only ones the law excused were the heirs to the throne.

In legend, a Spartan boy let which stolen animal claw him to death?

Fox: Plutarch says the boy hid it under his cloak and kept silent rather than be caught, since boys in training from the age of seven were kept hungry, expected to steal food and beaten if found out.

Which Spartan council of elders, elected for life, sat alongside the kings?

The Gerousia: its members were chosen by shouting, with judges shut in a nearby room deciding which candidate drew the loudest cheer, a method one ancient critic called childish.

What were the annually elected Spartan officials called who eventually eclipsed the kings in power?

Ephors: every month the kings swore to obey the laws, and only on that condition did these officials swear in return to keep the kings in power.

According to legend, what did Spartan currency consist of, to discourage hoarding?

Iron bars: ancient writers say the money was so bulky that even a modest sum filled a storeroom and needed a wagon to move, so a bribe or a theft could never be hidden.

Which Spartan king led the last stand at Thermopylae in 480 BC?

Leonidas: Herodotus believed he sent most of the Greek army away and stayed with his 300 because an oracle had warned that either Sparta would be destroyed or a king must die.

Which Persian king led the invasion that the Spartans faced at Thermopylae?

Xerxes: he found it laughable when a scout reported the Spartans exercising and combing their hair, and would not believe the exiled Spartan king who said this was how they prepared to risk their lives.

What did the Spartan king reply at Thermopylae when the Persians demanded the Greeks surrender their weapons?

Molon labe: the phrase means 'come and take them', and in Plutarch's telling the words were no battlefield shout but a written answer to the Persian king's written demand.

Who revealed the mountain path that let the Persians outflank the Greeks at Thermopylae?

Ephialtes: he hoped the Persian king would reward him, but he had to flee with a price on his head and was later killed, and Sparta honoured the man who did it.

At Thermopylae, a Spartan joked about fighting in the shade when told what would blot out the sun?

Arrows: Herodotus credits the joke to a soldier named Dienekes, who called the warning good news, while Plutarch gives the same reply to the Spartan king instead.

At which battle in 479 BC did Sparta lead the Greek alliance to the decisive land victory over Persia?

Plataea: Sparta's commander that day, Pausanias, was only a regent, leading the army because the rightful king was still a boy.

What natural disaster struck Sparta in 464 BC, triggering a great slave revolt?

An earthquake: Sparta asked Athens for help against the rebels, then sent the Athenian troops home out of suspicion, an insult that ended the alliance between the cities.

Which alliance, founded by Sparta in the 6th century BC, gave it leadership over most of its neighbours?

The Peloponnesian League: the name is a modern one, since ancient Greeks spoke only of the Spartans 'and their allies', each member sworn to follow wherever Sparta led.

Which naval battle in 405 BC, won by the Spartan Lysander, effectively ended the long war against Athens?

Aegospotami: Lysander caught most of the Athenian fleet unready on the beach and captured it, leaving Athens with no navy to protect the grain it lived on.

Which Spartan king, lame from birth, campaigned against Persia in Anatolia after Sparta's victory over Athens?

Agesilaus II: an oracle had warned Sparta against a 'lame reign', but his ally Lysander argued it meant a king of doubtful birth, not one with a limp, and won him the throne.

At which battle in 371 BC did Thebes end Spartan military supremacy?

Leuctra: the Thebans massed their left wing fifty shields deep against the Spartan king's position, and some 400 of the 700 full Spartan citizens on the field were killed.

Which Theban general commanded the army that defeated Sparta in 371 BC?

Epaminondas: he followed the victory by marching into Sparta's own territory and freeing Messenia, ending the enslaved labour that had fed the Spartan army for centuries.

What one-word reply is Sparta said to have sent when Philip II of Macedon threatened to turn them out should he invade?

If: Sparta then refused to join the league Philip imposed on Greece, so his son Alexander dedicated his first Persian spoils from 'all the Greeks except' the Spartans.

Which dish was the prized staple of the Spartan common mess?

Black broth: Plutarch says a foreign king bought a Spartan cook just to taste it and disliked it, and was told that only those raised the Spartan way could enjoy it.

Which famous general failed to take Sparta by siege in 272 BC?

Pyrrhus of Epirus: with most of Sparta's army away in Crete, the city's women and old men dug a trench overnight to stop his elephants, and the defenders held out until help came.

Sparta lost its independence in 192 BC when forced into which federation after Nabis fell?

Achaean: four years later the league's general Philopoemen tore down Sparta's walls and abolished its ancient training, forcing Spartan boys into the Achaean system instead.

Which battle against Persia did the Spartans miss because a religious rule kept them home until the full moon?

Marathon: an Athenian runner reached Sparta the day after he set out to beg for help, but the 2,000 Spartans who marched after the full moon arrived only in time to view the Persian dead.

Which Visigothic king sacked Sparta in AD 396?

Alaric: fourteen years later the same king took Rome itself, a city no foreign enemy had captured for nearly 800 years.

Which Bavarian prince, the first king of modern Greece, re-founded the town of Sparta in 1834?

Otto: Sparta's people had long since drifted to nearby Mystras, so the teenage king's decree laid out a planned new town on the ancient site.

Which Spartan institution sent young men out to hunt and kill enslaved locals?

The Krypteia: Plutarch says its young men hid by day and came out at night armed only with daggers, killing any serf they met on the roads and often the strongest men in the fields.

What were the compulsory Spartan dining messes called, which citizens joined at 20?

Syssitia: a newcomer needed every member's vote, cast as balls of bread dropped in a bowl, and a single squashed ball was enough to keep him out.

Thucydides says Spartans advanced into battle slowly, keeping step to the music of which instrument?

Flutes: the pipers were a matter of drill rather than religion, Thucydides explains, keeping the line stepping in time so that it reached the enemy unbroken.

According to Plutarch, what did a Spartan mother say when handing her son his shield?

With this, or upon this: come home carrying the shield or carried dead on it, though in practice Sparta buried its war dead near the battlefield rather than bringing them home.

According to Plutarch, in what liquid did Spartan mothers bathe newborns to test their strength?

Wine: the belief, Plutarch says, was that strong wine would throw a sickly baby into convulsions while it hardened a healthy one like tempered steel.

What term did Spartan citizens use for themselves, meaning 'equals'?

Homoioi: the name wore thin as land piled up in a few hands, and a man too poor to pay his share of the common meals lost his place among the citizens.

Which Spartan queen, wife of the king killed at Thermopylae, is credited with decoding a wax-covered warning of Persian invasion?

Gorgo: asked why Spartan women were the only ones who could rule their men, she is said to have replied, 'Because we are the only women who are mothers of men.'

Which Spartan princess became the first woman to win an Olympic chariot race, in 396 BC?

Cynisca: she won as owner and breeder of the team, with hired charioteers driving, and her royal brother is said to have urged her to enter to show that such victories took wealth, not merit.

Which philosopher complained that women had come to own nearly two-fifths of Sparta's land?

Aristotle: he blamed Sparta's own laws, which let heiresses inherit and dowries swell, and held that the dwindling number of landed citizens was what brought the state down.

In Plutarch's account, what was done to a Spartan bride before she was dressed in a man's cloak?

Her head was shaved: the groom slipped in after dining at his mess as usual, then went back to his quarters, and for some time afterwards he visited his wife only in secret.

What colour were the cloaks Spartan hoplites wore into battle?

Red: ancient writers say the colour was chosen as the most warlike and the least like women's dress, and because it kept an enemy from seeing a wounded Spartan's blood.

At which goddess's altar in Sparta were boys flogged in a public test of endurance?

Artemis: at her sanctuary of Orthia the ordeal drew such crowds under Rome that a theatre was built around the altar, and Plutarch says he saw boys die under the lash.

A hilltop shrine east of Sparta was believed by Spartans to be the former home of which Homeric king?

Menelaus: Spartans worshipped him there alongside Helen, and digs around the shrine found Mycenaean mansions, so the legend may mark a real Bronze Age seat of power.

According to Thucydides, Sparta looked less like a great city and more like what?

A group of villages: he predicted that later ages, judging by its plain remains, would never believe Sparta's power matched its fame, while the ruins of Athens would make that city seem twice as strong as it was.

Which Athenian soldier and writer, an admirer of Sparta, had his own sons raised there?

Xenophon: he campaigned alongside a Spartan king and then lived for some twenty years on a country estate the Spartans gave him near Olympia.

Who directed the film 300, based on Frank Miller's comic about Thermopylae?

Zack Snyder: he had come up through commercials and music videos, and the film's stylised, blood-soaked look made his name and set the pattern for his later comic-book epics.

Which actor played the king of Sparta in the film 300?

Gerard Butler: the Scottish actor had earned a law degree and trained at a law firm before turning to the stage, and this was the part that made him widely known.

In classical antiquity, the Spartan state as a whole was known by what name?

Lacedaemon: in myth the land was named by a king called Lacedaemon, who then gave the city he founded the name of his wife, Sparta.

In Plutarch's account, weak Spartan newborns were left to die at the foot of which mountain?

Mount Taygetus: Plutarch is the only ancient writer to describe the custom, and a dig of the chasm there found only the bones of adults and adolescents, so researchers now call it probably a myth.