Poseidon is one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and mythology, presiding over the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses. He was the protector of seafarers and the guardian of many Hellenic cities and colonies. In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, Poseidon was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes, with the cult title "earth shaker"; in the myths of isolated Arcadia, he is related to Demeter and Persephone and was venerated as a horse, and as a god of the waters. Poseidon maintained both associations among most Greeks: he was regarded as the tamer or father of horses, who, with a strike of his trident, created springs. His Roman equivalent is Neptune.
Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon, 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.
Ancient Greece was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity, that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.
Tyrtaeus was a Greek elegiac poet from Sparta whose works were speculated to fill five books. His works survive from quotations and papyri, and include 250 lines or parts of lines. He wrote at a time of two crises affecting the city: a civic unrest threatening the authority of kings and elders, later recalled in a poem named Eunomia, where he reminded citizens to respect the divine and constitutional roles of kings, council, and demos; and the Second Messenian War, during which he served as a sort of "state poet", exhorting Spartans to fight to the death for their city. In the 4th century BC, when Tyrtaeus was an established classic, Spartan armies on campaign were made to listen to his poetry. The Suda states that he wrote martial songs; these were important in Spartan festivals and were done through anapaestic and iambic chants that accompanied armed dances and processions.
The helots were a subjugated population that constituted a majority of the population of Laconia and Messenia – the territories ruled by Sparta. There has been controversy since antiquity as to their exact characteristics, such as whether they constituted an Ancient Greek tribe, a social class, or both. For example, Critias described helots as "slaves to the utmost", whereas according to Pollux, they occupied a status "between free men and slaves". Tied to the land, they primarily worked in agriculture as a majority and economically supported the Spartan citizens.
Pausanias was a Spartan regent and a general. In 479 BC, as a leader of the Hellenic League's combined land forces, he won a pivotal victory against the Achaemenid Empire in the Battle of Plataea. Despite his role in ending the Second Persian invasion of Greece, Pausanias subsequently fell under suspicion of conspiring with the Persian king Xerxes I. After an interval of repeated arrests and debates about his guilt, he was starved to death by his fellow Spartans in 477 BC. What is known of his life is largely according to Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Diodorus' Bibliotheca historica and a handful of other classical sources.
The Crypteia, also referred to as Krypteia or Krupteia, was an ancient Spartan rural armed group. The kryptai either principally sought out and killed helot Laconians, part of a policy of terrorising and intimidating the enslaved population; or they principally did a form of military training, or they principally endured hardships as an initiation ordeal, or the Crypteia served a combination of these purposes, possibly varying over time. The Krypteia was an element of Sparta's state child-rearing system for upper-class males.
Cape Sounion is the promontory at the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula, 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of the town of Lavrio, and 69.5 km southeast of Athens in the Athens Riviera. It is part of Lavreotiki municipality, East Attica, Greece.
Agis I was a king of Sparta and eponym of the Agiad dynasty. He was possibly the first historical king of Sparta, reigning at the end of the tenth century BC, during the emergence of the Dorians in Laconia. He is said by most ancient authors to have conquered the region and enslaved the helots.
Cape Matapan, also called Cape Tainaron or Taenarum, or Cape Tenaro, is situated at the end of the Mani Peninsula, Greece. Cape Matapan is the southernmost point of mainland Greece, and the second southernmost point in mainland Europe. It separates the Messenian Gulf in the west from the Laconian Gulf in the east.
The Perioeci or Perioikoi were the second-tier citizens of the polis of Sparta until c. 200 BC. They lived in several dozen cities within Spartan territories, which were dependent on Sparta. The perioeci only had political rights in their own city, while the course of the Spartan state exclusively belonged to Spartan citizens, or Spartiates.
The Panionium was an Ionian sanctuary dedicated to Poseidon Helikonios and the meeting place of the Ionian League. It was on the peninsula of Mt. Mycale, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) south of Smyrna—now İzmir, in Turkey. Herodotus describes it as follows:
The Panionion is a sacred ground in Mykale, facing north; it was set apart for Poseidon of Helicon by the joint will of the Ionians. Mykale is a western promontory of the mainland opposite Samos; the Ionians used to assemble there from their cities and keep the festival to which they gave the name of Panionia.
The cities of refuge were six Levitical towns in the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah in which the perpetrators of accidental manslaughter could claim the right of asylum. Maimonides, invoking talmudic literature, expands the city of refuge count to all 48 Levitical cities. Outside of these cities, blood vengeance against such perpetrators was allowed by law. The Bible names the six cities of refuge as follows: Golan, Ramoth, and Bosor to the east of the Jordan River; and Kedesh, Shechem, and Hebron on the western (right) side.
The Temple of Isthmia is an ancient Greek temple on the Isthmus of Corinth dedicated to the god Poseidon and built in the Archaic Period. It is about 16 kilometers (9.9 mi) east of ancient Corinth, at the site of ancient Isthmia. It appears to have been constructed in the seventh century BC though was later destroyed in 470 BC and rebuilt as the Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia in c. 440 BC during the Classical period.
The Second Messenian War was a war which occurred ca. 660–650 BC between the Ancient Greek states of Messenia and Sparta, with localized resistance possibly lasting until the end of the century. It started around 40 years after the end of the First Messenian War with the uprising of a slave rebellion. Other scholars, however, assign earlier dates, claiming, for example, that 668 BC is the date of the war's start, pointing at Sparta's defeat at the First Battle of Hysiae as a possible catalyst for the uprising. Current events concerning this war are stated, too.
In ancient Greece and Rome, an asylum referred to a place where people facing persecution could seek refuge. These locations were largely religious in nature, such as temples and other religious sites. A similar concept, the Cities of Refuge, existed in the ancient Levant.
Spartan women were famous in ancient Greece for seemingly having more freedom than women elsewhere in the Greek world. To contemporaries outside of Sparta, Spartan women had a reputation for promiscuity and controlling their husbands. Spartan women could legally own and inherit property, and they were usually better educated than their Athenian counterparts. The surviving written sources are limited and largely from a non-Spartan viewpoint. Anton Powell wrote that to say the written sources are "'not without problems'... as an understatement would be hard to beat".
Slavery was a widely accepted practice in ancient Greece, as it was in contemporaneous societies. The principal use of slaves was in agriculture, but they were also used in stone quarries or mines, and as domestic servants.
The Alepotrypa Cave is an archaeological site in the Mani region of the Peloponnese peninsula. In addition to being inhabited by early farmers, this site was used for burial and cult purposes. Archaeological evidence has revealed that this is one of the largest Neolithic burial sites ever found in Europe. Two adult human skeletons were found at the site from a burial dating to the 4th millennium BC, as well as remains from at least 170 separate persons. Archaeologists are uncertain about the significance of a Mycenaen ossuary, which has been dated to the 2nd millennium BC and appears to have been reburied at Alepotrypa. While there is no direct evidence, it is possible that the ossuary may link Alepotrypa to Tainaron, which was regarded as the entrance to Hades in classical mythology.
The 464 BC Spartan earthquake occurred along the Sparta fault in the year 464 BC destroying much of what was Sparta and many other city-states in ancient Greece. Historical sources suggest that the death toll may have been as high as 20,000, although modern scholars suggest that this figure is likely an exaggeration. The earthquake gave Spartan helots an opportunity to revolt against their aristocratic rulers, and the Athenians were called to their aid. Their immediate dismissal upon arrival is said to have been a key event that lead up to the First Peloponnesian War.
