History glossary
Sparta
an ancient Greek city-state in the Peloponnese, famous for military discipline and rule over helots.
- Category
- City-state
- Region
- Modern Greece
What it means
Sparta was a powerful polis in southern Greece, in the region of Laconia. Unlike Athens, it built its society around military training, oligarchic institutions, and control over the helots, an unfree population that worked Spartan land.
Related terms
Stories using this term
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a civilisation of city-states, sailors, philosophers, soldiers, artists, and political experiments whose influence reached far beyond the Aegean world. From Athens and Sparta to the Persian Wars, democracy, philosophy, drama, and Alexander the Great, Greek history helped shape ideas about citizenship, empire, knowledge, and culture. Its legacy survived through Rome, Byzantium, Islam, and modern Europe, making Ancient Greece central to the story of the classical world.
Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic World
From Philip II's military reforms to the fall of the last Hellenistic kingdom, this story follows Alexander's conquests, the wars of his successors, and the spread of Greek culture across the ancient Near East.
