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Eurotas River. According to myth, the first king of the region later to be called Laconia, but then called Lelegia was the eponymous King Lelex.He was followed, according to tradition, by a series of kings allegorizing several traits of later-to-be Sparta and Laconia, such as the Kings Myles, Eurotas, Lacedaemon and Amyclas of Sparta.
Sparta never fully recovered from its losses at Leuctra in 371 BC and the subsequent helot revolts. In 338, Philip II invaded and devastated much of Laconia, turning the Spartans out, though he did not seize Sparta itself. [52] Even during its decline, Sparta never forgot its claim to be the "defender of Hellenism" and its Laconic wit.
A full 40 years after the battle, Leonidas' bones were returned to Sparta, where he was buried again with full honours; funeral games were held every year in his memory. [ 116 ] [ 123 ] With Thermopylae now opened to the Persian army, the continuation of the blockade at Artemisium by the Greek fleet became irrelevant.
Sparta was later defeated by Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. A few decades later, the rivalry between Athens and Sparta ended when Macedonia became the most powerful entity in Greece and Philip II of Macedon unified all of the Greek world except Sparta, which was later subjugated by Philip's son Alexander in 331 BC. [32]
The defeat of the pro-Athens forces and the triumph of Sparta in the preceding Corinthian War (394–386 BC) was especially disastrous to Thebes, as the general settlement of 387 BC, called the Peace of Antalcidas or "King's Peace", stipulated the complete autonomy of all Greek towns and so withdrew the other Boeotians from the political control of Thebes.
The Ionians refused to capitulate and called upon Sparta for assistance, which she provided, in 396–395 BC. [212] Athens, however, sided with the Persians, which led in turn to another large-scale conflict in Greece, the Corinthian War. Towards the end of that conflict, in 387 BC, Sparta sought the aid of Persia to shore up her position.
In Greece, the First Peloponnesian War between the power-blocs of Athens and Sparta, which had continued on and off since 460 BC, finally ended in 445 BC, with the agreement of a thirty-year truce. [115] However, the growing enmity between Sparta and Athens would lead, just 14 years later, to the outbreak of the Second Peloponnesian War. [116]
When Athens started to rebuild its walls and the strength of its naval power, Sparta and its allies began to fear that Athens was becoming too powerful. [6] Different policies made it difficult for Athens and Sparta to avoid going to war, since Athens wanted to expand its territory and Sparta wanted to dismantle the Athenian democratic regime. [7]