SPARTA
Lakonia, Greece.
In the heart of
the fertile Eurotas valley ca. 56 km S of Tegea and
48 km N of Gytheion; the alluvial soil is fertile, the
climate auspicious, and the low hill site protected by
mountains and sea. Very few prehistoric remains are
known, but a major contemporary settlement has been
excavated about 3 km NE at the Menelaion. About
950 B.C. at the earliest Sparta was occupied by Dorians
and settled as an agglomeration of villages (Pitana, Limnai, Mesoa, and Kynosura); the city wall, not begun until
the late 4th c. and eventually completed in 184, measured 10 km in circumference and enclosed an elliptical area 3 x 2 km lying N-S.
In the 8th c. B.C. led by its two kings, the city embarked on the warmaking which by about 545 had brought “two-fifths of the Peloponnese” (Thuc.) under her immediate control. The inhabitants of the fertile Eurotas and Pamisos (Messenia) valleys were reduced to
serfdom (Helots); those occupying more marginal land
remained free but were denied political rights in Sparta
(perioikoi). Thereafter Sparta expanded through diplomacy and by 500 B.C. had organized its subject-allies into the Peloponnesian League. In 405, supported by its allies and Persian gold it defeated Athens, but its
supremacy in Greece was soon cut short by the Thebans:
defeat at Leuktra in 371 was followed by the very first
invasion of Lakonia and the liberation of Messenia in
369. After 243 Sparta was weakened by successive attempts, also led by its kings, at necessary social reform
and in 195 lost its perioikic dependencies. But under the
Roman Empire the city enjoyed a remarkable renascence
of prosperity and reverted superficially to the rigid self-discipline of its heyday. Having survived the incursion of the Heruli in A.D. 267, the city was ruined by the Goths in 395, and finally abandoned.
As Thucydides warned, the power of Sparta should
not be gauged from its surviving monuments. Of the
settlement all but the foundations of a few Classical
houses and some fine Roman mosaic floors is lost irreparably; only seven datable graves, four of about 600
B.C. and three Hellenistic, have been found, although
burial was permitted within the settlement area, contrary
to normal Greek practice; of the agora not even the
location is certain. The acropolis is comparably denuded
but at least its chief edifice, the Temple of Athena
Chalkioikos, has yielded a crude two-layer stratigraphy.
The material associated with part of the earliest altar
consisted of a fair quantity of Protogeometric and Geometric pottery, none certainly earlier than the 8th c.,
and a few bronze votives. The temple was rebuilt in the
6th c. and the richer “Classical” stratum contained, inter
alia, pottery, including Panathenaic amphora fragments;
objects in bronze, ivory, and lead; the fine late archaic
marble statue known as “Leonidas” (in the National
Museum of Athens); and a number of bronze plates,
some with nails still attached, which may have been
used to face the temple and have given rise to the epithet
of the goddess. The Hellenistic theater built into the foot
of the acropolis is remarkably well preserved.
Our main evidence for the early settlement and the
entire development of Spartan art is derived from careful
excavations at the Sanctuary of Ortheia (later assimilated to Artemis) situated on the W bank of the Eurotas in the village of Limnai; it remained throughout its history closely linked to the severe military and educational regime. The earliest known worship centered on
an earthen altar with a polar orientation, but toward
the end of the 8th c. (on the current interpretation of the
stratigraphy) the sacred area was paved with cobbles,
enclosed by a peribolos wall, and the altar was given a
stone casing; simultaneously a primitive temple, measuring at least 12.5 x 4.5 m, was built on an interpolar axis.
About 570 B.C. the entire sanctuary was remodeled, perhaps in consequence of a flood of the Eurotas. The
sacred area was enlarged and covered by a layer of sand,
the altar refurbished and the first temple replaced. Its successor, built entirely of limestone and measuring ca. 16.75
x 7.5 m, was in the Doric style; the scanty remains of the
substructure suggest it was prostyle in antis, and a few
gaily painted fragments probably belong to a pedimental
group of heraldic lions. The sand, besides being a clearcut
stratigraphical feature, has sealed in a treasury of early
Greek art from the late 8th to the early 6th c.; dedications
continued above the sand into the Roman era. The material includes bronze figurines, mainly of animals, and
other bronze objects; over 100,000 lead figurines; some of
the earliest and finest figural ivory carvings in Greece; a
plethora of mold-made terracotta figurines and masks;
finally, and most important for chronology, a continuous
pottery series.
The picture which seems to be emerging indicates
that Spartan craftsmen, especially bronzesmiths, shared
in the Greek cultural renaissance of the 8th c.; in the
7th, her ivory-carvers were quick to assimilate and
adapt oriental types and motifs, but the vase-painters
appear backward by comparison with those of Corinth
and Athens; in the 6th c. the roles are reversed and
the potters and painters, soon followed by the bronze-workers, produce high-quality wares both for domestic
and, more especially, foreign consumption. We know
from Pausanias the names of several Lakonian craftsmen and some were almost certainly Spartan citizens; Sparta was also the temporary domicile of foreign artists from at least the early 7th c.
But about 525 B.C. the whole picture changed; imports, which had never been plentiful, ceased—apparently
abruptly; so did exports, although painted pottery and
superior bronze figurines continued to be made for local
use. By the 5th c. Sparta seemed to have acquired the
sterile character for which she was praised or blamed
by other Greeks; her retention of an iron currency is
a symptom, though not a cause, of the change. Not altogether surprisingly the next major alteration to the
Sanctuary of Artemis was the construction of a semicircular theater to enable spectators, including foreign
tourists, to watch Spartan youths being flogged to death
in a painful simulacrum of the initiation rite which had
performed so useful a military and political function
in a better age.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. N. Tod & A.J.B. Wace,
A Catalogue
of the Sparta Museum (1906); A.J.B. Wace, M. S.
Thompson, & J. P. Droop in
BSA 15 (1908-9) 108-57
(Menelaion); R. M. Dawkins in
BSA 16 (1909-10) 4-11
(Mycenaean settlement at Menelaion); R. M. Dawkins,
ed.,
Artemis Orthia, JHS Suppl. Vol. V (1929)
PI; R. M.
Dawkins, J. P. Droop, & A.J.B. Wace, “A Note on the
Excavation of the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia,”
JHS 50
(1930) 329-36; E. A. Lane, “Lakonian Vase-Painting,”
BSA 34 (1933-34) 99-189
I; J. Boardman in
BSA 58
(1963) 1-7 (revised stratigraphy of Artemis Ortheia);
C. Christou in
Deltion 19.1 (1964) 123-63, 283-85
(archaic burials); B. Bergquist,
The Archaic Greek Temenos (1967)
P; L. Marangou,
Lakonische Elfenbein- Und
Beinschnitzereien (1969)
I; A. J. Toynbee,
Some Problems of Greek History (1969) Part 2
M.
P. CARTLEDGE