List of forms of government
143-618: Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece . In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon ( Λακεδαίμων , Lakedaímōn ), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in the Eurotas valley of Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese . Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta
286-552: A Macedonian phalanx . Despite this, a gravestone of a fallen legionary named Marcus Aurelius Alexys shows him lightly armed, with a pilos-like cap and a wooden club. The unit was presumably discharged in 217 after Caracalla was assassinated. An exchange of letters in the deutero-canonical First Book of Maccabees expresses a Jewish claim to kinship with the Spartans: Areus king of the Lacedemonians to Onias
429-534: A "place in Lacedaemonia" named after Agis. The actual transition may be captured by Isidore of Seville 's Etymologiae (7th century AD), an etymological dictionary . Isidore relied heavily on Orosius ' Historiarum Adversum Paganos (5th century AD) and Eusebius of Caesarea 's Chronicon (early 5th century AD), as did Orosius. The latter defines Sparta to be Lacedaemonia Civitas , but Isidore defines Lacedaemonia as founded by Lacedaemon, son of Semele, which
572-601: A Greek alliance against the Persians at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. The decisive Greek victory at Plataea put an end to the Greco-Persian War along with Persian ambitions to expand into Europe. Even though this war was won by a pan-Greek army, credit was given to Sparta, who besides providing the leading forces at Thermopylae and Plataea, had been the de facto leader of the entire Greek expedition. In 464 BC,
715-702: A Jerusalem city-state under the control of United Nations Trusteeship Council . Although the plan had some international support and the UN accepted this proposal (and still officially holds the stance that Jerusalem should be held under this regime), implementation of the plan failed as the 1948 Palestine war broke out with the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine , ultimately resulting in Jerusalem being split into West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem . Israel would eventually gain control of East Jerusalem in
858-453: A canonical text. The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles . Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows
1001-593: A city-state separate from the United Kingdom. Homer This is an accepted version of this page Homer ( / ˈ h oʊ m ər / ; Ancient Greek : Ὅμηρος [hómɛːros] , Hómēros ; born c. 8th century BCE ) was an Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey , two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature . Homer
1144-670: A city-state. In Northern and Central Italy during the medieval and Renaissance periods, city-states — with various amounts of associated land — became the standard form of polity. Some of them, despite being de facto independent states, were formally part of the Holy Roman Empire . The era of the Italian states, in particular from the 11th to the 15th centuries, featured remarkable economic development, trade, manufacture, and mercantile capitalism, together with increasing urbanization, with remarkable influence throughout much of
1287-610: A clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs. It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet. Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to
1430-484: A considerable number of votive offerings. The city-wall , built in successive stages from the 4th to the 2nd century, was traced for a great part of its circuit, which measured 48 stades or nearly 10 km (6 miles) (Polyb. 1X. 21). The late Roman wall enclosing the acropolis, part of which probably dates from the years following the Gothic raid of 262 AD, was also investigated. Besides the actual buildings discovered,
1573-531: A discredited dead end. Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord , after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas. This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance and explained many previously puzzling features of
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#17327661422201716-466: A double effect on Greek thought: through the reality, and through the myth.... The reality enabled the Spartans to defeat Athens in war; the myth influenced Plato's political theory, and that of countless subsequent writers.... [The] ideals that it favors had a great part in framing the doctrines of Rousseau , Nietzsche , and National Socialism . The ancient Greeks used one of three words to refer to
1859-669: A federation, and as such can be accurately described as non-sovereign city-states with a high degree of autonomy, include: The Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order is a proposed city-state in Albanian capital of Tirana which will be established if approved by the Albanian Parliament and a national referendum. The state, which would be led by the Bektashi Order , is planned to be similar in structure to
2002-554: A high degree of autonomy and are often confused for city-states. Hong Kong , Macau , and cities of the United Arab Emirates —most notably Dubai and Abu Dhabi —are often cited as such. Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur ; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis ; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon ); the five Philistine city-states;
2145-460: A long period of decline, especially in the Middle Ages , when many of its citizens moved to Mystras . Modern Sparta is the capital of the southern Greek region of Laconia and a center for processing citrus and olives. Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution , which were supposedly introduced by the semi-mythical legislator Lycurgus . His laws configured
2288-457: A message to Sparta saying "If I invade Laconia, I shall turn you out.", the Spartans responded with the single, terse reply: αἴκα , "if". When Philip created the League of Corinth on the pretext of unifying Greece against Persia, the Spartans chose not to join, since they had no interest in joining a pan-Greek expedition unless it were under Spartan leadership. Thus, upon defeating the Persians at
2431-585: A number of points were situated and mapped in a general study of Spartan topography, based upon the description of Pausanias . In terms of domestic archaeology, little is known about Spartan houses and villages before the Archaic period, but the best evidence comes from excavations at Nichoria in Messenia where postholes have been found. These villages were open and consisted of small and simple houses built with stone foundations and clay walls. The Menelaion
2574-404: A part of it. Until September 1870, the city of Rome had been controlled by the pope as part of his Papal States . When King Victor Emmanuel II seized the city in 1870, Pope Pius IX refused to recognize the newly formed Kingdom of Italy . Because he could not travel without effectively acknowledging the authority of the king, Pius IX and his successors each claimed to be a " Prisoner in
2717-415: A phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling. Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to
2860-450: A population of less than 1,000 (mostly clergymen), it is by far the smallest sovereign country in the world. The Principality of Monaco is a very small independent city-state bordering France. Monaco-Ville (the ancient fortified city) and Monaco's well-known area Monte Carlo are districts of a continuous urban zone, not distinct cities, though they were three separate municipalities ( communes ) until 1917. The Principality of Monaco and
3003-563: A regional power at the time, needed to define their territories for negotiation with the European powers so the Siamese government established a nation-state system, incorporated their tributary cities ( Lan Xang , Cambodia and some Malay cities) into their territory and abolished the mueang and the tributary system. In early Philippine history, the barangay was a complex sociopolitical unit which scholars have historically considered
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#17327661422203146-665: A result of the so-called Lycurgan Reforms. Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaimonians, chapter 1 In the Second Messenian War , Sparta established itself as a local power in the Peloponnesus and the rest of Greece. During the following centuries, Sparta's reputation as a land-fighting force was unequalled. At its peak around 500 BC, Sparta had some 20,000–35,000 citizens, plus numerous helots and perioikoi. The likely total of 40,000–50,000 made Sparta one of
3289-540: A single city; in the cases of Luxembourg, Djibouti and Kuwait, this primate city is so dominant as to give its name to the country. These countries are distinct from true city-states such as Singapore in that they comprise both their primate city (such as Luxembourg City ) and a number of peripheral cities and towns (such as Esch-sur-Alzette and ten other towns in Luxembourg) with autonomous municipal authorities , and may also include substantial rural areas (such as
3432-414: A tributary relationship now described as mandala or as over-lapping sovereignty , in which smaller city-states paid tribute to larger ones that paid tribute to still larger ones—until reaching the apex in cities like Ayutthaya , Bagan , Bangkok and others that served as centers of Southeast Asian royalty. The system existed until the 19th century, when colonization by European powers occurred. Siam ,
3575-462: A vassal harbor, Gytheio , on the Laconian Gulf . Lacedaemon (Greek: Λακεδαίμων ) was a mythical king of Laconia. The son of Zeus by the nymph Taygete , he married Sparta , the daughter of Eurotas , by whom he became the father of Amyclas , Eurydice , and Asine. As king, he named his country after himself and the city after his wife. He was believed to have built the sanctuary of
3718-534: A violent earthquake occurred along the Sparta faultline destroying much of what was Sparta and many other city-states in ancient Greece. This earthquake is marked by scholars as one of the key events that led to the First Peloponnesian War . In later Classical times, Sparta along with Athens , Thebes , and Persia were the main powers fighting for supremacy in the northeastern Mediterranean. In
3861-530: Is a shrine associated with Menelaus , located east of Sparta, by the river Eurotas, on the hill Profitis Ilias ( Coordinates : 37°03′57″N 22°27′13″E / 37.0659°N 22.4536°E / 37.0659; 22.4536 ). Built around the early 8th century BC, the Spartans believed it had been the former residence of Menelaus. In 1970, the British School in Athens started excavations around
4004-566: Is called parataxis . The so-called ' type scenes ' ( typische Szenen ), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, praying , fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures. 'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when
4147-547: Is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War . The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus , king of Ithaca , back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the Odyssey especially so as Odysseus perseveres through punishment of
4290-474: Is consistent with Eusebius' explanation. There is a rare use, perhaps the earliest of "Lacedaemonia", in Diodorus Siculus ' The Library of History, but probably with Χώρα (‘’chōra’’, "country") suppressed. Lakedaimona was until 2006 the name of a province in the modern Greek prefecture of Laconia . Sparta is located in the region of Laconia, in the south-eastern Peloponnese . Ancient Sparta
4433-423: Is described as "the country of lovely women", an epithet for people. The residents of Sparta were often called Lacedaemonians. This epithet utilized the plural of the adjective Lacedaemonius (Greek: Λακεδαιμόνιοι ; Latin: Lacedaemonii , but also Lacedaemones ). The ancients sometimes used a back-formation , referring to the land of Lacedaemon as Lacedaemonian country . As most words for "country" were feminine,
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4576-503: Is difficult to reconstruct because the literary evidence was written far later than the events it describes and is distorted by oral tradition. The earliest certain evidence of human settlement in the region of Sparta consists of pottery dating from the Middle Neolithic period, found in the vicinity of Kouphovouno some two kilometres (1.2 miles) south-southwest of Sparta. This civilization seems to have fallen into decline by
4719-604: Is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek , in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems. The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter ; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus ', 'rosy-fingered Dawn ', 'owl-eyed Athena ', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when
4862-505: The Capture of Oechalia , and the Phocais . These claims are not considered authentic today and were not universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture. Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer
5005-486: The 2nd-most-densely populated country in the world after Monaco. Singapore was part of the Federation of Malaysia for two years before it was expelled from the federation in 1965, becoming an independent republic , a city and a sovereign country. The Economist refers to the nation as the "world's only fully functioning city-state". In particular, it has its own currency , a large commercial airport , one of
5148-999: The Arcadian Achaeans to the northwest. The evidence suggests that Sparta, relatively inaccessible because of the topography of the Taygetan plain, was secure from early on: it was never fortified. Nothing distinctive in the archaeology of the Eurotas River Valley identifies the Dorians or the Dorian Spartan state. The prehistory of the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the Dark Age (the Early Iron Age) at this moment must be treated apart from
5291-679: The Battle of the Granicus , Alexander the Great sent to Athens 300 suits of Persian armour with the following inscription: "Alexander, son of Philip, and all the Greeks except the Spartans, give these offerings taken from the foreigners who live in Asia". Sparta continued to be one of the Peloponesian powers until its eventual loss of independence in 192 BC. During Alexander's campaigns in the east,
5434-765: The Berber city-states of the Garamantes ; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens , Sparta , Thebes , and Corinth ); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence , Siena , Ferrara , Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice , which became powerful thalassocracies ;
5577-592: The Charites , which stood between Sparta and Amyclae , and to have given to those divinities the names of Cleta and Phaenna . A shrine was erected to him in the neighborhood of Therapne . Tyrtaeus , an archaic era Spartan writer, is the earliest source to connect the origin myth of the Spartans to the lineage of the hero Heracles ; later authors, such as Diodorus Siculus , Herodotus, and Apollodorus , also made mention of Spartans understanding themselves to be descendants of Heracles. Thucydides wrote: Suppose
5720-584: The Corinthian War , Sparta faced a coalition of the leading Greek states: Thebes , Athens , Corinth , and Argos . The alliance was initially backed by Persia, which feared further Spartan expansion into Asia. Sparta achieved a series of land victories, but many of her ships were destroyed at the Battle of Cnidus by a Greek-Phoenician mercenary fleet that Persia had provided to Athens. The event severely damaged Sparta's naval power but did not end its aspirations of invading further into Persia, until Conon
5863-649: The Décapole (1354–1679) in the Alsace, or the Old Swiss Confederacy ( c. 1300 – 1798). The Swiss cantons of Zürich , Bern , Lucerne , Fribourg , Solothurn , Basel , Schaffhausen , and Geneva originated as city-states. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, some cities – then members of different confederacies – officially became sovereign city-states, such as
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6006-651: The Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (1806–11 and again 1813–71), the Free City of Frankfurt upon Main (1815–66), the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (1806–11 and again 1814–71), the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck (1806–11 and again 1813–71), and the Free City of Kraków (1815–1846). Under Habsburg rule the city of Fiume had the status of a corpus separatum (1779–1919), which – while falling short of an independent sovereignty – had many attributes of
6149-573: The Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000. In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published in Florence the editio princeps of the Homeric poems. The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of
6292-510: The Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars generally regard the two poems as the works of separate authors. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity , the most widespread that he was a blind bard from Ionia , a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary . Today, only
6435-844: The Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns , the Contest of Homer and Hesiod , several epigrams , the Little Iliad , the Nostoi , the Thebaid , the Cypria , the Epigoni , the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites ,
6578-443: The Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors. After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities. Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences. Within
6721-827: The Kingdom of Dublin , as city-states. In Cyprus , the Phoenician settlement of Kition (in present-day Larnaca) was a city-state that existed from around 800 BC until the end of the 4th century BC. Some of the most well-known examples of city-state culture in human history are the ancient Greek city-states and the merchant city-states of Renaissance Italy , which organised themselves as independent centers. The success of regional units coexisting as autonomous actors in loose geographical and cultural unity, as in Italy and Greece , often prevented their amalgamation into larger national units. However, such small political entities often survived only for short periods because they lacked
6864-648: The Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza , Tikal , Copán and Monte Albán ); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road ; the city-states of the Swahili coast ; Ragusa ; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov ; and many others. Danish historian Poul Holm has classed the Viking colonial cities in medieval Ireland , most importantly
7007-462: The Muse . In the Iliad , the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles", and in the Odyssey , he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways". A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid . The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by
7150-532: The Mycenaean Greek citadel at Therapne , in contrast to the lower town of Sparta. This term could be used synonymously with Sparta, but typically it denoted the terrain in which the city was located. In Homer it is typically combined with epithets of the countryside: wide, lovely, shining and most often hollow and broken (full of ravines), suggesting the Eurotas Valley . "Sparta" on the other hand
7293-468: The Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics , who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom. Perhaps partially because of
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#17327661422207436-469: The Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors. Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about
7579-426: The Peace of Westphalia of 1648. Some, like three of the earlier Hanseatic cities – Bremen , Hamburg and Lübeck – pooled their economic relations with foreign powers and were able to wield considerable diplomatic clout. Individual cities often made protective alliances with other cities or with neighbouring regions, including the Hanseatic League (1358 – 17th century), the Swabian League of Cities (1331–1389),
7722-505: The Six-Day War in 1967. The Klaipėda Region or Memel Territory was defined by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 when it was put under the administration of the Council of Ambassadors . The Memel Territory was to remain under the control of the League of Nations until a future day when the people of the region would be allowed to vote on whether the land would return to Germany or not. The then predominantly ethnic German Memel Territory ( Prussian Lithuanians and Memellanders constituted
7865-427: The Trojan War ; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards. Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems. A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date. At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics. Barry B. Powell dates
8008-417: The Vatican City . The idea has been proposed by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and leader of the Bektashi Order Baba Mondi in the hope that sovereignty would help promote moderate Muslim values instead of radical ideologies. The Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order would be surrounded by the suburbs of eastern Tirana and would be the smallest nation in the world . The London independence movement seeks
8151-455: The 20th century West Berlin , though lacking sovereignty, functioned from 1948 until 1990 as a state legally not belonging to any other state, but ruled by the Western Allies . They allowed – notwithstanding their overlordship as occupant powers – its internal organisation as one state simultaneously being a city, officially called Berlin (West). Though West Berlin maintained close ties to the West German Federal Republic, it never legally formed
8294-434: The Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs, and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey , which later poets expanded and revised. A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw
8437-486: The Athenian ravaged the Spartan coastline and provoked the old Spartan fear of a helot revolt. After a few more years of fighting, in 387 BC the Peace of Antalcidas was established, according to which all Greek cities of Ionia would return to Persian control, and Persia's Asian border would be free of the Spartan threat. The effects of the war were to reaffirm Persia's ability to interfere successfully in Greek politics and to affirm Sparta's weakened hegemonic position in
8580-433: The British-led occupation of Istanbul recognised Turkey as de jure sovereign, while the Greek occupation of Smyrna was an attempted annexation . The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne re-established Turkish control of both areas. The Shanghai International Settlement (1845–1943) was an international zone with its own legal system, postal service, and currency. The international zone within the city of Tangier , in North Africa
8723-732: The Bronze Age Aegean civilisation , which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up; for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold. It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles. Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed. The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but
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#17327661422208866-449: The Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus ' time, about 500 Years after." Friedrich August Wolf 's Prolegomena ad Homerum , published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs, which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of
9009-403: The Greek political system. Sparta entered its long-term decline after a severe military defeat to Epaminondas of Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra . This was the first time that a full strength Spartan army lost a land battle. As Spartan citizenship was inherited by blood, Sparta increasingly faced a helot population that vastly outnumbered its citizens. The alarming decline of Spartan citizens
9152-417: The Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance . Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance , Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens. In 1664, contradicting
9295-433: The Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate. Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher. Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century. Eustathius's commentary on
9438-563: The Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features. Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered. Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge. Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of
9581-451: The Jews and the Spartans." Rappaport is clear that "the authenticity of [the reply] letter of Arius is based on even less firm foundations than the letter of Jonathan". Spartans long spurned the idea of building a defensive wall around their city, believing they made the city's men soft in terms of their warrior abilities. A wall was finally erected after 184 BCE, after the peak of the city-state's power had come and gone. In 396 AD, Sparta
9724-454: The Mediterranean world and Europe as a whole. During this time, most of the Italian city-states were ruled by one person, such as the Signoria or by a dynasty, such as the House of Gonzaga and the House of Sforza . In the history of Mainland Southeast Asia , aristocratic groups, Buddhist leaders, and others organized settlements into autonomous or semi-autonomous city-states. These were referred to as mueang , and were usually related in
9867-408: The Menelaion in an attempt to locate Mycenaean remains in the area. Among other findings, they uncovered the remains of two Mycenaean mansions and found the first offerings dedicated to Helen and Menelaus. These mansions were destroyed by earthquake and fire, and archaeologists consider them the possible palace of Menelaus himself. Excavations made from the early 1990s to the present suggest that
10010-508: The Persian invasion from their deposed king Demaratus , which prompted them to consult the Delphic oracle. According to Herodotus, the Pythia proclaimed that either one of the kings of Sparta had to die or Sparta would be destroyed. This prophecy was fulfilled after king Leonidas died in the battle. The superior weaponry, strategy, and bronze armour of the Greek hoplites and their phalanx fighting formation again proved their worth one year later when Sparta assembled its full strength and led
10153-418: The Spartan society to maximize military proficiency at all costs, focusing all social institutions on military training and physical development. The inhabitants of Sparta were stratified as Spartiates (citizens with full rights), mothakes (free non-Spartiate people descended from Spartans), perioikoi (free non-Spartiates), and helots (state-owned enslaved non-Spartan locals). Spartiate men underwent
10296-459: The Spartan city-state and its location. First, "Sparta" refers primarily to the main cluster of settlements in the valley of the Eurotas River . The second word, "Lacedaemon" ( Λακεδαίμων ), was often used as an adjective and is the name referenced in the works of Homer and the historians Herodotus and Thucydides . The third term, "Laconice" ( Λακωνική ), referred to the immediate area around
10439-675: The Spartan king Agis III sent a force to Crete in 333 BC to secure the island for the Persian interest. Agis next took command of allied Greek forces against Macedon, gaining early successes, before laying siege to Megalopolis in 331 BC. A large Macedonian army under general Antipater marched to its relief and defeated the Spartan-led force in a pitched battle. More than 5,300 of the Spartans and their allies were killed in battle, and 3,500 of Antipater's troops. Agis, now wounded and unable to stand, ordered his men to leave him behind to face
10582-680: The Vatican ", unable to leave the 0.44 km (0.17 sq mi) papal enclave once they had ascended the papal throne . The impasse was resolved in 1929 by the Lateran Treaties negotiated by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini between King Victor Emmanuel III and Pope Pius XI . Under this treaty, Vatican City was recognized as an independent state, with the Pope as its head. The Vatican City State has its own citizenship , diplomatic corps , flag , and postage stamps . With
10725-517: The adjective was in the feminine: Lacedaemonia ( Λακεδαιμονία , Lakedaimonia ). Eventually, the adjective came to be used alone. "Lacedaemonia" was not in general use during the classical period and before. It does occur in Greek as an equivalent of Laconia and Messenia during the Roman and early Byzantine periods, mostly in ethnographers and lexica of place names. For example, Hesychius of Alexandria 's Lexicon (5th century AD) defines Agiadae as
10868-534: The advancing Macedonian army so that he could buy them time to retreat. On his knees, the Spartan king slew several enemy soldiers before being finally killed by a javelin. Alexander was merciful, and he only forced the Spartans to join the League of Corinth, which they had previously refused. During the Punic Wars , Sparta was an ally of the Roman Republic . Spartan political independence was put to an end when it
11011-581: The area around the Menelaion in the southern part of the Eurotas valley seems to have been the center of Mycenaean Laconia . The Mycenaean settlement was roughly triangular in shape, with its apex pointed towards the north. Its area was approximately equal to that of the "newer" Sparta, but denudation has wreaked havoc with its buildings and nothing is left of its original structures save for ruined foundations and broken potsherds . The prehistory of Sparta
11154-516: The busiest trans-shipment maritime ports in the world , and fully fledged armed forces to safeguard the nation's sovereignty against potential regional aggressors. Singapore is also referred to as the only island city-state in the world by WorldAtlas. A number of other small states share many of these characteristics, and are sometimes cited as modern city-states. Luxembourg , Djibouti , Qatar , Brunei , Kuwait , Bahrain , and Malta are each politically and economically centered on
11297-450: The candidates most commonly discussed. Out of these, Singapore is the largest and most populous, and is generally considered to be the last real city-state left in the world, with full sovereignty, international borders, its own currency , a robust military , and substantial international influence in its own right. The Economist refers to the nation as the "world's only fully functioning city-state". Several non-sovereign cities enjoy
11440-572: The city of Fiume (now in Croatia and, since the end of World War II, known as Rijeka ) and rural areas to its north, with a corridor to its west connecting it to Italy . Under the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine of 1947, Mandatory Palestine was to be partitioned into three states: a Jewish state of Israel , an Arab state of Palestine , and a corpus separatum ( Latin for " separated body ") consisting of
11583-522: The city of Monaco (each having specific powers) govern the same territory. Though they maintain a small military , largely for ceremonial purposes, they would still have to rely on France for defence in the face of an aggressive power. Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia bordering Malaysia to the north and Indonesia to the south. 6 million people live and work within 728.3 square kilometres (281.2 sq mi), making Singapore
11726-475: The city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame. Their city is not built continuously, and has no splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages, like the ancient towns of Hellas, and would therefore make a poor show. Until
11869-637: The city-state maintained its political independence until its forced integration into the Achaean League in 192 BC. The city nevertheless recovered much autonomy after the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC and prospered during the Roman Empire , as its antiquarian customs attracted many Roman tourists. However, Sparta was sacked in 396 AD by the Visigothic king Alaric , and underwent
12012-482: The composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus , who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" ( καὶ οὐ πλέοσι ) and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation , or literacy. Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes
12155-468: The context of the sovereign state to which they belong. Historian Mogens Herman Hansen describes this aspect of self-government as: "The city-state is a self-governing, but not necessarily independent political unit." A city with more limited self-government may be referred to as an independent city . Some non-sovereign cities which have a high degree of autonomy, and have been described as city-states, include: Some cities that are constituent states in
12298-656: The course of the Peloponnesian War , Sparta, a traditional land power, acquired a navy which managed to overpower the previously dominant flotilla of Athens, ending the Athenian Empire . At the peak of its power in the early 4th century BC, Sparta had subdued many of the main Greek states and even invaded the Persian provinces in Anatolia (modern day Turkey), a period known as the Spartan hegemony . During
12441-544: The days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor ) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus ) were the parents of Homer. The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod . In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod . Homer
12584-492: The divisions back further to the Classical period. Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions. In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BCE by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BCE), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension". The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during
12727-474: The dominant organizational pattern among the various peoples of the Philippine archipelago . These sociopolitical units were sometimes also referred to as barangay states, but are more properly referred to using the technical term polity . Evidence suggests a considerable degree of independence as city states ruled by Datus , Rajahs and Sultans . Early chroniclers record that the name evolved from
12870-604: The early 20th century, the chief ancient buildings at Sparta were the theatre , of which, however, little showed above ground except portions of the retaining walls ; the so-called Tomb of Leonidas , a quadrangular building, perhaps a temple, constructed of immense blocks of stone and containing two chambers; the foundation of an ancient bridge over the Eurotas; the ruins of a circular structure; some remains of late Roman fortifications ; several brick buildings and mosaic pavements. The remaining archaeological wealth consisted of inscriptions, sculptures, and other objects collected in
13013-479: The early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile , type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique
13156-511: The epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey . These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of
13299-457: The famous flogging ordeal administered to Spartan boys ( diamastigosis ). The temple, which can be dated to the 2nd century BC, rests on the foundation of an older temple of the 6th century, and close beside it were found the remains of a yet earlier temple, dating from the 9th or even the 10th century. The votive offerings in clay, amber, bronze, ivory and lead dating from the 9th to the 4th centuries BC, which were found in great profusion within
13442-477: The first credible history. Between the 8th and 7th centuries BC the Spartans experienced a period of lawlessness and civil strife, later attested by both Herodotus and Thucydides. As a result, they carried out a series of political and social reforms of their own society which they later attributed to a semi-mythical lawgiver, Lycurgus . Several writers throughout antiquity, including Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plutarch have attempted to explain Spartan exceptionalism as
13585-459: The following year excavations were made at Thalamae , Geronthrae , and Angelona near Monemvasia . In 1906, excavations began in Sparta itself. A "small circus" (as described by Leake ) proved to be a theatre-like building constructed soon after 200 AD around the altar and in front of the Temple of Artemis Orthia . It is believed that musical and gymnastic contests took place here, as well as
13728-432: The genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad ." Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows
13871-706: The gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek , also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally . Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter . Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato , Homer
14014-440: The high priest, greeting: It is found in writing, that the Lacedemonians and Jews are brethren, and that they are of the stock of Abraham : Now therefore, since this is come to our knowledge, ye shall do well to write unto us of your prosperity. We do write back again to you, that your cattle and goods are ours, and ours are yours. The letters are reproduced in a variant form by Josephus . Jewish historian Uriel Rappaport notes that
14157-414: The institutions of Lycurgus were restored, and the city became a tourist attraction for the Roman elite who came to observe exotic Spartan customs. In 214 AD, Roman emperor Caracalla , in his preparation for his campaign against Parthia , recruited a 500-man Spartan cohort ( lokhos ). Herodian described this unit as a phalanx , implying it fought like the old Spartans as hoplites, or even as
14300-434: The judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry , he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter. The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as
14443-502: The kingship at Sparta as "a kind of unlimited and perpetual generalship" (Pol. iii. 1285a), while Isocrates refers to the Spartans as "subject to an oligarchy at home, to a kingship on campaign" (iii. 24). Civil and criminal cases were decided by a group of officials known as the ephors , as well as a council of elders known as the Gerousia . The Gerousia consisted of 28 elders over the age of 60, elected for life and usually part of
14586-465: The larger Greek city-states; however, according to Thucydides, the population of Athens in 431 BC was 360,000–610,000, making it much larger. In 480 BC, a small force led by King Leonidas (about 300 full Spartiates, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans, although these numbers were lessened by earlier casualties) made a legendary last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae against the massive Persian army, led by Xerxes . The Spartans received advance warning of
14729-539: The late Bronze Age , when, according to Herodotus, Macedonian tribes from the north (called Dorians by those they conquered) marched into the Peloponnese and, subjugating the local tribes, settled there. The Dorians seem to have set about expanding the frontiers of Spartan territory almost before they had established their own state. They fought against the Argive Dorians to the east and southeast, and also
14872-535: The later Iron Age during which they were composed; yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age). In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period , but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during
15015-658: The later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet. By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question". Following World War I , the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars. It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as
15158-539: The local museum, founded by Stamatakis in 1872 and enlarged in 1907. Partial excavation of the round building was undertaken in 1892 and 1893 by the American School at Athens . The structure has been since found to be a semicircular retaining wall of Hellenic origin that was partly restored during the Roman period. In 1904, the British School at Athens began a thorough exploration of Laconia , and in
15301-535: The myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries. Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history. For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than
15444-541: The other ethnic groups), situated between the river and the town of that name, was occupied by Lithuania in the Klaipėda Revolt of 1923. Some proposals for the partition of the Ottoman Empire envisaged international zones at Istanbul /Constantinople or the wider Turkish straits , and possibly also at İzmir /Smyrna. Although the allies of World War I occupied both after the 1918 Armistice of Mudros ,
15587-416: The other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC. "'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage
15730-587: The poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the Greek alphabet . Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria , in Egypt. Some trace
15873-429: The poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral. The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories . The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures. They were the first literary works taught to all students. The Iliad , particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than
16016-457: The poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts. Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating. Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down. Other scholars hold that, after
16159-486: The poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later. He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC. At
16302-530: The precinct range, supply invaluable information about early Spartan art. In 1907, the location of the sanctuary of Athena "of the Brazen House" (Χαλκίοικος, Chalkioikos) was determined to be on the acropolis immediately above the theatre. Though the actual temple is almost completely destroyed, the site has produced the longest extant archaic inscription in Laconia, numerous bronze nails and plates, and
16445-600: The reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BCE Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer . From around 150 BCE, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the Library of Alexandria , Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish
16588-560: The relationship between the Jews and the Spartans expressed in this correspondence has "intrigued many scholars, and various explanations have been suggested for the problems raised ... including the historicity of the Jewish leader and high priest Jonathan 's letter to the Spartans, the authenticity of the letter of Arius to Onias, cited in Jonathan's letter, and the supposed 'brotherhood' of
16731-426: The resources to defend themselves against incursions by larger states (such as Roman conquest of Greece). Thus they inevitably gave way to larger organisations of society, including the empire and the nation-state . In the Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) over 80 Free Imperial Cities came to enjoy considerable autonomy in the Middle Ages and in early modern times, buttressed legally by international law following
16874-506: The rigorous agoge training regimen, and Spartan phalanx brigades were widely considered to be among the best in battle. Spartan women enjoyed considerably more rights than elsewhere in classical antiquity . Sparta was frequently a subject of fascination in its own day, as well as in Western culture following the revival of classical learning. The admiration of Sparta is known as Laconophilia . Bertrand Russell wrote: Sparta had
17017-447: The royal households, and the two kings. High state decisions were discussed by this council, who could then propose policies to the damos , the collective body of Spartan citizenry, who would select one of the alternatives by vote . City-state A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory. They have existed in many parts of
17160-412: The sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa c. 1220 BC was the origin of
17303-516: The society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterranean , with some scattered references to Egypt , Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition. In ancient Greek chronology,
17446-412: The sparsely-populated Éislek forest of northern Luxembourg). Occasionally, microstates with high population densities such as San Marino are cited as city-states, despite lacking a large urban centre. Some cities or urban areas, while not sovereign states, may nevertheless be constituent states of a federation , or enjoy a high degree of autonomy. As such, they function as "city-states" within
17589-538: The state, they maintained communication with the Delphian sanctuary, whose pronouncements exercised great authority in Spartan politics. In the time of Herodotus c. 450 BC, their judicial functions had been restricted to cases dealing with heiresses ( epikleroi ), adoptions and the public roads (the meaning of the last term is unclear in Herodotus' text and has been interpreted in a number of ways). Aristotle describes
17732-511: The stream of Dorian Spartan history. The legendary period of Spartan history is believed to fall into the Dark Age. It treats the mythic heroes such as the Heraclids and the Perseids , offering a view of the occupation of the Peloponnesus that contains both fantastic and possibly historical elements. The subsequent proto-historic period, combining both legend and historical fragments, offers
17875-534: The term balangay , which refers to a plank boat widely used by various cultures of the Philippine archipelago prior to the arrival of European colonizers. The Free City of Danzig was a semi- autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk , Poland ) and nearly 200 towns in the surrounding areas. It was created on 15 November 1920 under
18018-425: The terms of Article 100 (Section XI of Part III) of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the end of World War I . After a prolonged period where the city of Fiume enjoyed considerable autonomy under Habsburg rule (see Corpus separatum (Fiume) ), The Free State of Fiume was proclaimed as a fully independent free state which existed between 1920 and 1924. Its territory of 28 km (11 sq mi) comprised
18161-484: The time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age. In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks . Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of
18304-569: The town of Sparta, the plateau east of the Taygetos mountains, and sometimes to all the regions under direct Spartan control, including Messenia . The earliest attested term referring to Lacedaemon is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀨𐀐𐀅𐀖𐀛𐀍 , ra-ke-da-mi-ni-jo , "Lakedaimonian", written in Linear B syllabic script, the equivalent of the later Greek Λακεδαιμόνιος , Lakedaimonios ( Latin : Lacedaemonius ). Herodotus seems to use "Lacedaemon" for
18447-495: The widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs. Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he
18590-405: The world since the dawn of history, including cities such as Rome , Carthage , Athens and Sparta and the Italian city-states during the Middle Ages and Renaissance , such as Florence , Venice , Genoa and Milan . With the rise of nation states worldwide, there remains some disagreement on the number of modern city-states that still exist; Singapore , Monaco and Vatican City are
18733-724: Was an independent territory situated in Central Europe between northern Italy and Yugoslavia, facing the north part of the Adriatic Sea, under direct responsibility of the United Nations Security Council in the aftermath of World War II, from 1947 to 1954. The UN attempted to make the Free Territory of Trieste into a city state, but it never gained real independence and in 1954 its territory was divided between Italy and Yugoslavia . In
18876-532: Was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down. According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in
19019-571: Was approximately 373 km (144 sq mi). It was at first under the joint administration of France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, plus later Portugal, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. The international zone was initially attached to Morocco. It then became a French-Spanish protectorate from 1923 until 29 October 1956, when it was reintegrated into the state of Morocco. The Free Territory of Trieste
19162-509: Was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus ), that he resided at Chios , that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs , that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" ( Ὅμηρος , Hómēros ). Another tradition from
19305-479: Was built on the banks of the Eurotas , the largest river of Laconia, which provided it with a source of fresh water. The Eurotas valley was a natural fortress, bounded to the west by Mt. Taygetus (2,407 m) and to the east by Mt. Parnon (1,935 m). To the north, Laconia is separated from Arcadia by hilly uplands reaching 1000 m in altitude. These natural defenses worked to Sparta's advantage and protected it from sacking and invasion . Though landlocked, Sparta had
19448-417: Was commented on by Aristotle . 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. Even during its decline, Sparta never forgot its claim to be the "defender of Hellenism" and its Laconic wit . An anecdote has it that when Philip II sent
19591-540: Was eventually forced into the Achaean League after its defeat in the decisive Laconian War by a coalition of other Greek city-states and Rome, and the resultant overthrow of its final king Nabis , in 192 BC. Sparta played no active part in the Achaean War in 146 BC when the Achaean League was defeated by the Roman general Lucius Mummius . Subsequently, Sparta became a free city under Roman rule, some of
19734-477: Was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days : "When the Pleiades born of Atlas ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad . Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor,
19877-478: Was re-founded in 1834, by a decree of King Otto of Greece . Sparta was an oligarchy . The state was ruled by two hereditary kings of the Agiad and Eurypontid families , both supposedly descendants of Heracles and equal in authority, so that one could not act against the power and political enactments of his colleague. The duties of the kings were primarily religious, judicial, and military. As chief priests of
20020-478: Was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars , in rivalry with the rising naval power of Athens . Sparta was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it emerged victorious after the Battle of Aegospotami . The decisive Battle of Leuctra against Thebes in 371 BC ended the Spartan hegemony , although
20163-569: Was sacked by Visigoths under Alaric I . According to Byzantine sources, some parts of the Laconian region remained pagan until well into the 10th century. The Tsakonian language still spoken in Tsakonia is the only surviving descendant of the ancient Doric language . In the Middle Ages, the political and cultural center of Laconia shifted to the nearby settlement of Mystras , and Sparta fell further in even local importance. Modern Sparta
20306-544: Was simply the one who "has taught Greece" ( τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν , tēn Helláda pepaídeuken ). In Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy , Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in the preface to his translation of the Iliad , Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film. The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances
20449-449: Was to the Greek ὅμηρος ( hómēros ' hostage ' or ' surety ' ). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies. Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent
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