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Sparta   /spˈɑrtə/   Listen
Sparta

noun
1.
An ancient Greek city famous for military prowess; the dominant city of the Peloponnesus prior to the 4th century BC.



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"Sparta" Quotes from Famous Books



... ten years. Its object was to punish Paris, son of the King of Troy, for eloping with Helen, the wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, and taking away a shipload of treasures to boot. The subject of Homer's Iliad is popularly supposed to be this Trojan War; in reality, however, it covers less than two months (fifty-two days) of those ten years, and its theme, as the first lines indicate, is the wrath of Achilles—the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... were all equal, till by the same consent they set rulers over themselves. So that their politic societies all began from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the choice of their governors, and forms of government. Sec. 103. And I hope those who went away from Sparta with Palantus, mentioned by Justin, 1. iii. c. 4. will be allowed to have been freemen independent one of another, and to have set up a government over themselves, by their own consent. Thus I have given several examples, out of history, of people free and in the ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... opponent was the famous Alaric, who now united the Gothic forces under his own command, and, having penetrated into Greece, ravaged and desolated that unhappy country. The barbarians plundered Athens, Corinth, Sparta, and Argos; and those cities, once so renowned for valor, seemed to offer him no resistance, so fallen was the ancient spirit of the Greeks. Stilicho, however, pursued Alaric into Elis, and would, perhaps, have totally destroyed the barbarians had not the feeble Arcadius ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... this King; I love this land,' she said, 'as Cato loved Rome or Leonidas his realm of Sparta.' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... CHILON, of Sparta, son of Damagetus, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, flourished about the beginning of the 6th century B.C. In 560 (or 556) he acted as ephor, an office which he is even said to have founded. The tradition ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... its armoury, magazine, and militia, and every citizen, like those of ancient Sparta, joined the military to the civil character. The officers of the militia are appointed by the Governor, who commonly nominates such men from among the inhabitants to command the rest as are most distinguished for their courage and ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... charmed him more than anything else in the world, he said that the third was the most beautiful—her name was Venus. The two others departed in great displeasure; but Venus bid him put on his knightly armour and his helmet adorned with waving feathers, and then she led him to a famous city called Sparta, where ruled the noble Duke Menelaus. His young Duchess Helen was the loveliest woman on earth, and the sorceress offered her to Paris in return for the golden apple. He was most ready to have her and wished ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... to tell us again how to save two shillings. When we started for Chippewa Falls, to attend the celebration, we only had a few hundred dollars along, and we felt like saving all that was possible. Just before arriving at Sparta, where we were to take supper, Dan McDonald got to telling about how to save twenty-five cents on meals at these eating houses, when traveling. He said that all you had to do when you come out from supper was to look like a bummer, or ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... the Lacedaemonians, put himself and those three hundred men, whom he had led from Sparta, in the way of the enemy of Thermopylae,(40) when the alternative was a base flight, or a glorious death. The deaths of generals are glorious, but philosophers usually die in their beds. But still Epicurus here mentions what, when dying, he considered great credit to himself. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... institutions of Sparta, the wisest legislators have disapproved an agrarian law as a false and dangerous innovation. Among the Romans the enormous disproportion of wealth surmounted the ideal restraints of a doubtful tradition and an obsolete statute; a tradition ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... arranged that the lot should fall upon the Lacedaemonians to make restitution first. When, however, the Corinthians and Boeotians, dissatisfied with the whole transaction, seemed likely by their complaints and menaces to rekindle the war, Nikias induced Athens and Sparta to confirm the peace by entering upon an alliance, which enabled them to deal with the malcontents with more authority, and give them more confidence ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... William Bankes's rooms. He was tolerated in this state among the young men for his talents, as the Turks think a madman inspired, and bear with him. He used to write, or rather vomit, pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot; and certainly Sparta never shocked her children with a grosser ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... fasted at Miletus, Colophon, and other places. National fasts were ordered in times of calamity or danger, and Tarentum kept a yearly fast of thankfulness for deliverance from a siege. The flagellation of boys at Sparta hardly comes into account, being probably a substitute for human sacrifice; but the continuance of the cruel rite till nearly the end of antiquity causes surprise. The worship of Dionysus Zagreus ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... the Revolution. Rarely are they quoted in the speeches of the time. Hypnotised by their classical memories of Greece and Rome, the new legislators re- read their Plato and their Plutarch. They wished to revive the constitution of Sparta, with its manners, its frugal ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... school founded in some single island by or for the sake of Homer. We hear that Lycurgus was the first who brought Homer—the works, not the man—into continental Greece; importing them from Crete. That means, probably, that he induced Homeridae to settle in Sparta. European continental Greece would in any case have been much behind the rest of the Greek world in culture; because furthest from and the least in touch with West Asian civilization. Crete was nearer to Egypt; the Greeks of Asia Minor to Lydia; as for the islanders of the Cyclades ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... and Athens joined in one; nothing but reviewing and poetry day by day. The Algarottis, the Maupertuises, are here; have each his work, serious for himself; then gay Supper with a King, who is a great man and the soul of good company."... Sparta and Athens, I tell you: "a Camp of Mars and the Garden of Epicurus; trumpets and violins, War and Philosophy. I have my time all to myself; am at Court and in freedom,—if I were not entirely free, neither an enormous Pension, nor a Gold Key tearing out one's pocket, nor a halter (LICOU), ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... Person of Sparta, Who had twenty-five sons and one "darter;" He fed them on Snails, and weighed them in scales, That ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... that of Menelaus, for both the European and the Asiatic heroes have had their wives carried off from them—although Sita, the bride of Rama, is chaste as an icicle from Diana's temple, while Helen is the infamous type of wanton wives, ancient and modern. The Hindoo Lanka is Troy, and Ayodhya is Sparta. The material civilization of the cities in the Hindoo epic is more luxurious and gorgeous than that which Homer attributes to Greece in the heroic age. Such splendor and refinement as invests social life at Lanka and Ayodhya ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... city, sent persons to bring up all the marine forces from Gythium; and, in the mean time, rode himself, with some military tribunes, round the walls, to take a view of the situation of the place. In former times, Sparta had no wall; of late, the tyrants had built walls in the places where the ground Was open and level; but the higher places, and those more difficult of access, they secured by placing guards of soldiers instead of fortifications. When he had sufficiently ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... which may, at least, have mixed itself with the recollections of Sheridan, and influenced the course of his fancy—it being often found that the images with which the memory is furnished, like those pictures hung up before the eyes of pregnant women at Sparta, produce insensibly a likeness to themselves in the offspring which the imagination brings forth. The admirable drollery in Congreve about Lady Froth's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... Greeks than from the Latins. The characters of the Russian alphabet, so similar to those of the Greeks, the ancient communication of the Russians with the Byzantine empire, their future destinies, which will probably lead them to the illustrious monuments of Athens and Sparta, all this ought to turn the Russians to the study of Greek: but it is above all necessary that their writers should draw their poetry from the deepest inspiration of their own soul. Their works, up to this time, have been composed, as one may say, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... Eurotas.—Ver. 247. The Eurotas was a river of Laconia, which flowed under the walls of the city of Sparta, and discharged itself into the sea near the promontory of Taenarus, now called Cape Matapan. The Eurotas is now called 'Basilipotamo,' ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... annoyance by invading and subjugating Greece. Before the final march of his army, Darius sent heralds throughout Greece demanding soil and water as an acknowledgment of the supremacy of Persia, but Herodotus says that at Sparta, when this impudent demand was made, the heralds were thrown into wells and told to help themselves to all the earth and water ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... pain, It rose a bubble from the plain. When he cometh, I shall shed, From this wellspring in my head, Fountain-drop of spicier worth Than all vintage of the earth. There's fruit upon my barren soil Costlier far than wine or oil. There's a berry blue and gold,— Autumn-ripe, its juices hold Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart, Asia's rancor, Athens' art, Slowsure Britain's secular might, And the German's inward sight. I will give my son to eat Best of Pan's immortal meat, Bread to eat, and juice to drain; So the coinage of his brain Shall not be ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... father of the sight of him, and perhaps will slay him as she slew his sire. It is now no world to trust a woman in. But what says fame? is my son yet alive? lives he in Orchomen, or in Pylus, or is he resident in Sparta, in his uncle's court? As yet, I see, divine Orestes is not ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... he speaks of truly virtuous men—the Washingtons and Franklins—those who preferred a quiet, retired life; so as better to walk in the paths of justice and goodness, like the ancient heroes of Sparta, one feels that his words come really from the heart. But if I wished to make extracts of all the proofs contained in his works, of respect and enthusiasm for true virtue, a volume of quotations would be requisite. Thus I have ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... most enlightened and flourishing periods of Greece; it is somewhat singular, however, that no people cherished them more devoutly than the Spartans, who depended altogether upon oracles in their weightiest affairs of state. Of all the civilized nations of Greece, Sparta always approved herself the most superstitious; her advancement was rather the effect of her policy, than of any stimulus given to her civilization by science. This consideration will enable us to account for the powerful influence which, even in the latest stages ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... Grand Duke Michael of Russia, the Duke of Aosta, representing Italy, the Duke of Sparta, Crown Prince of Greece, and the Crown ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... Trojan War, and all the evils and calamities to which that memorable struggle gave rise. His father subsequently received him at court, and treated him as his son. After spending some time in his native city among the Trojan princes, Paris set out for the court of Menelaus, king of Sparta, with a view to carry off his wife Helena, the most beautiful woman in the world, as the reward of the judgment which he had pronounced in favour of Venus. The young Trojan met with a most welcome reception at the Spartan court; but he abused the laws of hospitality ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... detected the hereditary Jewish taint, were thrown into prison; and such as were most fortunate purchased life by the sacrifice of half their treasures. At this time, however, there suddenly broke forth a formidable insurrection amongst these miserable subjects—the Messenians of the Iberian Sparta. The Jews were so far aroused from their long debasement by omnipotent despair, that a single spark, falling on the ashes of their ancient spirit, rekindled the flame of the descendants of the fierce warriors of Palestine. They ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and some other authors, reduce their number to 1000. The ships of the Boeotians were the largest; they carried 120 men each; those of the Philoctetae were the smallest, each carrying only fifty men. Agamemnon had 160 ships; the Athenians fifty; Menelaus, king of Sparta, sixty; but some of his ships seem to have been furnished by his allies; whereas all the Athenian vessels belonged to Athens alone. We have already mentioned that Thucydides is contradicted by Homer, in his assertion that the Greek ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... are more than a compensation for the loss of pagan mythology. The time chosen for his epopee in prose is the reign of the persecutor Diocletian; Rome and the provinces of the Empire, Gaul, Egypt, the deserts of the Thebaid, Jerusalem, Sparta, Athens, form only portions of the scene; heaven and hell are open to the reader, but Chateaubriand, whose faith was rather a sentiment than a passion, does not succeed in making his supernatural habitations and personages credible even ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... those excellent ports, drew all that traffic of the Ionian and Aegean seas to it; and yet the country about it was curva et superciliosa, as [560]Strabo terms it, rugged and harsh. We may say the same of Athens, Actium, Thebes, Sparta, and most of those towns in Greece. Nuremberg in Germany is sited in a most barren soil, yet a noble imperial city, by the sole industry of artificers, and cunning trades, they draw the riches of most countries to them, so expert in manufactures, that as Sallust long since gave out of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... in Sparta about 650 B. C. His mother was a Lydian slave in Sardes, and he came into the possession of Agesides, who gave him his freedom. His beautiful songs soon procured him the rights of a Lacedaemonian citizen. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... will set out for Greece on a tour of inspection: and when you get to Sparta, Helen will see you; and for the rest—her falling in love, and going back with you—that will ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... conceive of the enemy breaking through at Kingston and pushing for Kentucky. If they should, however, a new problem would be left for solution. Thomas has ordered a division of cavalry to the vicinity of Sparta. I will ascertain if they have started, and inform you. It will be entirely out of the question to send you ten thousand men, not because they cannot be spared, but how would they be fed after they got even one ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... the subject: Bruno Keil, Die Solonische Verfassung nach Aristoteles (Berlin, 1892); G. Gilbert, Constitutional Antiquities of Sparta and Athens (Eng. trans., 1895); U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Aristoteles und Athen (2 vols., Berlin, 1893), a work of great importance, in spite of many unsound conclusions; E. Meyer, Forschungen, vol. ii. pp. 406 ff. (the section dealing with the Four Hundred is especially valuable). ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... from the hands of one guide to those of another? Hast thou been in Rhodes to examine the site of the Colossus? Hast thou seen in Panopeus, in Phocis, the clay from which Prometheus shaped man; or in Sparta the eggs laid by Leda; or in Athens the famous Sarmatian armor made of horse-hoofs; or in Euboea the ship of Agamemnon; or the cup for whose pattern the left breast of Helen served? Hast thou seen Alexandria, Memphis, the Pyramids, the hair which Isis tore from her head in ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... to seek the assistance of his allies and prepare to meet Cyrus with a larger force. In overweening confidence in his own success, he dismissed his mercenary troops, and sent messengers to Babylon, to Egypt, and to Sparta, calling on them to come with troops to his assistance within five months. No sooner had he shut himself up in Sardis, and dismissed his mercenaries, depending upon his own forces until assistance should come from his allies, than Cyrus advanced against him so swiftly that there ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... place of assembly, and charge them that they depart to their homes. And do thou thyself fit out a ship, with twenty rowers, and get thee to Pylos, where the aged Nestor dwells, and inquire of him concerning thy father. From Pylos proceed to Sparta, the kingdom of Menelaus; he was the last of the Greeks to reach home, after the fall of Troy; and perchance thou mayest learn something from him. And if thou hearest sure tidings of thy father's death, then get thee home, and raise a tomb to his memory, and keep his funeral feast. Then ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... to him every night, bidding him "go to the fate which pride and lust prepare." He is said to have visited a temple at Heraclea, where he had her spirit called up and implored her pardon. She duly appeared, and told him that "he would soon be delivered from all his troubles after his return to Sparta"—an ambiguous way of prophesying his death, which occurred soon afterwards. She was certainly avenged in the ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley

... the cupidity of territory or dominion? Has not the spirit of commerce, in many instances, administered new incentives to the appetite, both for the one and for the other? Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries. Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. Yet were they as often engaged in wars, offensive and defensive, as the neighboring monarchies of the same times. Sparta was ...
— The Federalist Papers

... governments not founded on the Contrat Social, or the Profession de Foi.—They are an age removed from the useful literature and general information of the middle classes in their own country—they talk familiarly of Sparta and Lacedemon, and have about the same idea of Russia as they have ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... angry with her. Defending herself, she said, "Thou shouldst not reproach me, husband, nor wouldst thou in thy heart if thou knewst what is in mine, or what my portion has been since with fair words in many-mansioned Sparta he did beguile me. With words smoother than honey, and sweeter than the comb of it he did beguile me, and with false words made me believe that I was forsaken and betrayed; and urged me to take ship with him in search of thee. ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett

... between these states, sovereign and vassal alike, as described in contemporary annals, often remind the reader of the relations which prevailed between the various political divisions of ancient Greece. The rivalries of Athens and Sparta, whose capitals were only one hundred and fifty miles apart—though a perusal of Thucydides makes one feel that at least half the world was involved—find their exact equivalent in the jealousies and animosities which stirred the feudal ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... beauties of the world" and the utter absorption of the ascetic by the intangible world beyond. The vision of "Queen Hellas," the classic age of Greece, is followed by the conquering spirit of Hellenism spreading triumphantly from the democracies of Athens and Sparta to the Golden ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... thus afford scope for the intervention of natural selection. Of the exercise of ARTIFICIAL selection in the human race, there is nothing to be said, unless we cite such cases as the grenadiers of Frederick William I, or the population of ancient Sparta. In the passages already referred to and in those which follow, the transmission of acquired characters, upon which Darwin does not dwell, is taken for granted. In man, direct effects of changed conditions can be demonstrated (for instance in regard to bodily size), ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... bold adventure on June 27, 1863, with a force of several thousand mounted men, and with four pieces of artillery. The start was made from Sparta, Tennessee, where the swollen Cumberland was crossed in boats and canoes on the 1st and 2d of July, the horses, with some difficulty, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... colour of the skin constitute always, as it now does, a most marked distinction between the master and the slave, so as to increase this stigma and to perpetuate antipathies between them. Nor did the slaves of antiquity, except perhaps once in Sparta, form the whole labouring population of the land; nor did they work incessantly, like the Africans, under the whip; nor were they generally so behind their masters in cultivated intellect. Neither does ancient history give us in the cases of manumission, which it ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... Jupiter or Zeus, the Pelasgi worshipped Gaia or Mother Earth, in Athens, Sparta, Olympia, and other places. One of her names was Dione; another was Rhea. In Asia she was Cybele; but everywhere she typified the great productive power ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... town Their kings intreat condolence to bestow, And all to Thebes repair. First Argos sends; Sparta; Mycene; Calydon, not yet By stern Diana hated; Corinth, fam'd For beauteous brass; Orchomenus the fierce; Messene fertile; Patrae; Pylos, rul'd By Neleus; Troezen, yet unus'd to own The sway of Pittheus; Cleona the low; And all those towns the two-sea'd isthmus holds; And all those ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... race-experience in which men and women were for the most part so separated from, each other in functioning that the education of boys and girls was made wholly unlike after sex-differentiation began, and sometimes, as in Sparta, before that period. The difference in ideal and in method of training was not, as some have said, that "boys were trained for human and socialized work" and "girls were fitted for personal and generally menial service alone." Both were trained for personal character ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... jingling over her arm came shivering into the room. "Oo-oo-ooh!" Her teeth chattered. "Wynnie's freezing. Do shut that window and turn on the heat, Agnes. It is hard lines to live in a double with a regular Polar bear direct from the land of Sparta. You ought to keep it up as ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... Many a Christian might feel honored at resembling some Jews. It is only a misfortune to be born a Hebrew, and be deprived of eating ham. The Jews are compelled to wear an offensive badge, but many a Christian child is born with one. For instance, in Sparta they would have hurled me into the gulf, on account of my big head, and deformed shoulder. Nowadays, people are less merciful, and let men like us drag the cripple's mark through life. God sees the heart; but men cannot forget their ancestor, the clod of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the cause of the superiority of antiquity, whenever you go to hear Berlioz's Funeral March, the least that can happen to you will be to confess that this music is rather better than what they used to give us in Sparta, when we served under Lycurgus; you will think that Apollo, displeased to see us sacrificing to Pallas exclusively, has played us a trick in giving lessons to that Babylonian, so that by the exercise of a magnetic and disastrous power over us, he ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... Cercyon, Sciro, Sinnis slain, The Epidaurian giant's bones dispersed, Crete reeking with the blood of Minotaur. But when you told me of less glorious deeds, Troth plighted here and there and everywhere, Young Helen stolen from her home at Sparta, And Periboea's tears in Salamis, With many another trusting heart deceived Whose very names have 'scaped his memory, Forsaken Ariadne to the rocks Complaining, last this Phaedra, bound to him By better ties,—you know ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... compelled to alight and walk, being in momentary expectation of an overturn: and so we journeyed on, our numbers reduced to six, in order that a lighter vehicle might be adopted. The way in which this drafting was effected was on principles perfectly fair, and submitted to without a murmur: at Sparta, the agent informed us that only six passengers could be taken on; and that, unless we arranged otherwise, he should strike off the last three names entered in the way-bill, as being the juniors in this hard service: luckily for me, I had just the magic three under my name,—a ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... subjectes, given by the disposicion of order and lawe, did never harme, but rather alwaies it doeth good, and mainteineth the citee, moche lenger in suretie, through helpe of this armure, then without. Rome continued free CCCC. yeres, and was armed. Sparta viii.C. Many other citees have been disarmed, and have remained free, lesse then xl. For as moche as citees have nede of defence, and when thei have no defence of their owne, thei hire straungers, and the straunges defence, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... reconquer their independence by forming themselves into confederations, but were powerless to unite in the defense of a common cause. The Achaean and Etolian leagues were weakened by internal discords; and it was in vain that Sparta tried ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... once every nine years, watched the sky during a whole cloudless, moonless night, in profound silence; and, if they saw a shooting star, it was understood to indicate that the kings of Sparta had disobeyed the gods, and their authority was, in consequence, suspended till they had been purified by an oracle from Delphi or Olympia. [W. H. S.] This statement rests on the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... trouble of saving. As Mr. Cox well observes, "It is of the very essence of the narrative that Paris, who has deserted Oinone, the child of the stream Kebren, and before whom Here, Athene, and Aphrodite had appeared as claimants for the golden apple, steals from Sparta the beautiful sister of the Dioskouroi; that the chiefs are summoned together for no other purpose than to avenge her woes and wrongs; that Achilleus, the son of the sea-nymph Thetis, the wielder of invincible weapons and the lord of undying ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... pleasure in seconding the resolution which has just been read. The eminent historian of the Dutch Republic, who has made the story of its earlier days as interesting as that of Athens and Sparta, and who has infused into the narrative the generous glow of his own genius, has the highest of titles to be heard with respectful attention by the citizens of a community which, in its origin, was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Helen, who had, of her own free will, belonged successively to Paris, and to Deiphobus, afterwards returned to Menelaus, who never offered her any reproach. That conduct of Menelaus was so natural that Telemachus, who, in his trip to Sparta found Helen again with Menelaus, just as she was before her abduction, did not ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... Helenus foretells the future to him, and Aphrodite order Aeneas to sail with him, while Cassandra prophesies as to what will happen afterwards. Alexandrus next lands in Lacedaemon and is entertained by the sons of Tyndareus, and afterwards by Menelaus in Sparta, where in the course of a feast he gives gifts ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... by him to Sparta; where he is told by Menel[a]us that Odysseus is detained in the island ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... costs more than bread to many families, and even provinces. It may appear withal, that the rule of equality, as it would be highly USEFUL, is not altogether IMPRACTICABLE; but has taken place, at least in an imperfect degree, in some republics; particularly that of Sparta; where it was attended, it is said, with the most beneficial consequences. Not to mention that the Agrarian laws, so frequently claimed in Rome, and carried into execution in many Greek cities, proceeded, all of them, from a general idea of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... which are brick, although on the outside the entablature and columns of the temple are of stone; in Italy, at Arezzo, an ancient wall excellently built; at Tralles, the house built for the kings of the dynasty of Attalus, which is now always granted to the man who holds the state priesthood. In Sparta, paintings have been taken out of certain walls by cutting through the bricks, then have been placed in wooden frames, and so brought to the Comitium to adorn the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... canons by which he criticises the works of other authors, in the majority of cases he employs simply his own geographical and military knowledge, showing, for instance, the impossibility in the accounts given of Nabis's march from Sparta simply by his acquaintance with the spots in question; or the inconsistency of those of the battle of Issus; or of the accounts given by Ephorus of the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea. In the latter case he ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... Pyrrhus marched to Sparta to reinstate the deposed Cleonymus, and quietly pitched his tents before Laconia, not anticipating resistance. In consternation, the Spartans in council decided to send their women to Crete for safety. But the women ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... ago "last gone June" Uncle Henry was born in the Mt. Zion community in Hancock county (Georgia), seven miles from Sparta. His mother was Molly Navery Hunt, his father, Jim Rogers. They belonged to Mr. Jenkins Hunt and his wife "Miss Rebecca". Henry was the third of eight children. He has to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... there all night,—doth, as it were, confirm the accusation, and believe the fellow was a thief. And therefore an impertinent jeerer makes the whole company seem ill-natured and abusive, as being pleased with and consenting to the scurrility of the jeer. It was one of the excellent laws in Sparta, that none should be bitter in their jests, and the jeered should patiently endure; but if he took offence, the other was to forbear, and pursue the frolic no farther. How is it possible therefore to determine such raillery as shall delight and please ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... by combining it with the others would avert the natural process of self-destruction, and endow the State with perpetual youth. But this harmony of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy blended together, which was the ideal of many writers, and which they supposed to be exhibited by Sparta, by Carthage, and by Rome, was a chimera of philosophers never realised by antiquity. At last Tacitus, wiser than the rest, confessed that the mixed Constitution, however admirable in theory, was difficult to establish and impossible ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... septs were distinguished from their Celtic conquerors by social organisation, racial character, and probably still to some extent by religion and language. They had much the same position as the perioeci in ancient Sparta. The following are the evidences of ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous

... part, to the lack of intelligence and self-consciousness among the mass of those who were given a voice in the government of their country. Citizenship, like morality, was allowed to grow by instinct; it was never systematised as a science, or applied as an art. Sparta and Athens approached towards a system of civics much less elaborate than that expounded by Professor Geddes; but in Sparta citizenship became inseparable from Nationalism, and in Athens it scarcely rose above ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... Mrs. Maxwell's courage never flagged. She entertained her guests as well as a woman of Sparta could have done. She even had the coolness to prosecute other projects which she had in mind. She kept Mrs. Field and Lois behind the rest, and walked home with the mother, that Francis might have the girl to himself. And she went into the house with Mrs. Field, and slipped a parcel ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... could easily discover the deep and bloody traces of the march of the Goths. The whole territory of Attica was blasted by his baneful presence; and if we may use the comparison of a cotemporary philosopher, Athens itself resembled the bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered victim. Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded without resistance to the arms of the Goths; and the most fortunate of the inhabitants were saved, by death, from beholding the slavery of their families, and the conflagration of their cities."—Gibbon's Rome, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... will be then that the Republic will take its revenge! Mistrust the journey! Are you going to believe everything that is said? Both the Suffets are agreed, and this one is imposing on you! Remember the Island of Bones, and Xanthippus, whom they sent back to Sparta in ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... troops were sent to the quarries, where the plague and the hard labour lessened their numbers and increased their miseries. When this bad news reached Rhodes, the islanders rose in revolt against the supremacy of Athens, and resolved to side with Sparta. Balaustion[96:1] was there, and she passionately protested against this decision, crying to "who would hear, and those who loved ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... control, so must the temper and the hands. All this is of extreme importance, as I will show by examples. To begin with the last case, some who have put their hands to unjust gains, have lost all the fruits of their former life, as the Lacedaemonian Gylippus,[28] who was exiled from Sparta for embezzling the public money. To be able to govern the temper also argues a wise man. For Socrates, when a very impudent and disgusting young fellow kicked him on one occasion, seeing all the rest of his class vexed and impatient, even to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... children who could scarce have been mar- ried at Sparta, and those provident states who studied strong and healthful generations; which happen but contingently in mere pecuniary matches or marriages made by the candle, wherein notwithstanding there is little redress to be hoped from an astrologer or a lawyer, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... helplessness, endure All flouts and outrage; nor in our own land Abide we till the storm of Argive war O'erwhelm us. Nay, even now, late though it be, Better it were for us to render back Unto the Danaans Helen and her wealth, Even all that glory of women brought with her From Sparta, and add other treasure—yea, Repay it twofold, so to save our Troy And our own souls, while yet the spoiler's hand Is laid not on our substance, and while yet Troy hath not sunk in gulfs of ravening ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... his parents' sins!—the living, loving, helpless child, sacrificed by his parents. I saw the bent skull of the Flathead Indian child, the crippled feet of the Chinese girl child, the age-long, hideous life and death of the child-wife and the child-widow of Hindoostan. I saw The Child in Sparta, and The Child in Rome, The Child in the Dark Ages, The Child scourged, imprisoned, starved, its mind filled with all manner of black falsehoods, its body misunderstood, and maltreated; and my heart ached, and I cried out, "Were there no Mothers ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... When Sparta's heroes, tired of truce, The fires of battle woke, TYRTAEUS sang them golden lays And bravely on their marching days His queenly Muse outspoke. TYRTAEUS' name's come down the years And did deserve to do, For ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various

... for you to pass some time among them, to learn as much as you can of their language, and to acquaint yourself with their customs. Their towns are virtually independent republics, like those of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. The power lies wholly in the hands of the democracy, and rough fellows are they. The nobles have little or no influence, save in the country districts. The Flemings are at present on ill terms with France, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... native land Depart he cannot; ship, arrayed with oars, And seamen has he none, to bear him o'er The breast of the broad ocean. Nay, even now, Against his well-beloved son a plot Is laid, to slay him as he journeys home From Pylos the divine, and from the walls Of famous Sparta, whither he had gone To gather tidings of his father's fate." Then answered her the ruler of the storms: "My child, what words are these that pass thy lips? Was not thy long-determined counsel this, That, in good time, Ulysses should return, To be avenged? Guide, then, Telemachus, Wisely, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... whom he had killed, —"Do you call me related by blood to my mother?"], and Orestes gains his cause by the casting vote of Athene." According to tradition, "in Greece, before the time of Cecrops, children always bore the name of their mothers," in marked contrast to tha state of affairs in Sparta, where, according to Philo, "the marriage tie was so loose that men lent their wives to one another, and cared little by whom children were begotten, provided they turned ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... his treasure-chest the beautiful golden armour of unhappy Paris, son of Priam, the false love of fair Helen. These arms had been taken at the sack of Troy, and had lain long in the treasury of Menelaus in Sparta; but on a day he had given them to Odysseus, the dearest of all his guests. The Wanderer clad himself in this golden gear, and took the sword called "Euryalus's Gift," a bronze blade with a silver hilt, and a sheath of ivory, which a stranger ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... General JATRAKO, is just dead at Athens. He was one of the primates of Marna; his family, as his name indicates, have for many generations back been famous for their hereditary medical talents, and the tradition exists among them that a branch of their family formerly passed from Sparta to Italy, translated their name into Medici, and gave rise to the celebrated family of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... noticed during my first visit. They were portraits of great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion to a great human ideal: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words had been Finis Poloniae;* Markos Botzaris, for modern Greece the reincarnation of Sparta's King Leonidas; Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a believer in slavery; and finally, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... permitted to live, to be fruitful, to replenish the earth; but they were doomed to be what the Helots were in Sparta, what the Greeks were under the Ottoman, what the blacks now are at New York. Every man of the subject caste was strictly excluded from any public trust. Take what path he might in life, he was crossed at every step by some vexatious restriction. It was only ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... IV.35: A Mountain)—Ver. 1. Tachos, King of Egypt, is said by Plutarch to have said to Agesilaus, King of Sparta, when he came to his assistance: "The mountain has been in labour, Jupiter has been in alarm, but it has brought forth a mouse," alluding to the diminutive stature of Agesilaus; who contented himself with replying, in answer to this rude remark: ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... of defence, by avoiding a thrust or a cast, retreating, springing up, and crouching-as also the opposite movements of attack with arrows and lances, and also of every kind of thrust. So strong was the attachment to this dance at Sparta that, long after it had in the other Greek states degenerated into a Bacchanalian revel, it was still danced by the Spartans as a warlike exercise, and boys of fifteen were instructed in it." Of the Hunting-dance ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... (and perhaps for many centuries before) the nominal kingdoms were virtually republics, the princes being evidently limited in their authority by the 'sensus communis' of the body politic almost as much as the Kings of Sparta were from the time of Lycurgus to the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... [Greek: nomos], was used for custom and law as for song. The [Greek: rhetra] (declared law) of Sparta and Taras was in verse; the laws of Charondas were sung as [Greek: skolia] at Athens,[125] and Strabo refers to the Mazacenes of Cappadocia as using the laws of Charondas and appointing some person to be their law-singer ([Greek: nomodos]), who is among them ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... indifferent to the fortunes of the sisal and rubber planters. True they built the railway; but what use to a planter to build a line and rob him of his profits in the freight? This gentleman of ancient Sparta frankly liked the Germans and found them just; and he was in complete agreement with the native policy that made every black brother do his job of work, the whole year round, at a rate of pay that fully satisfied this Greek employer's views on the ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, was the most beautiful woman in the world. And from her beauty and faithlessness came the most celebrated of ancient wars, with death and disaster to numbers of famous heroes and the final ruin of the ancient city of Troy. The story of these striking events ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake—as supposed—of religion; seen chiefly in the Middle Ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Ecclesia of Athens, and the Apella of Sparta—the Comitia Centuriata of Rome, have no more resemblance to democracy in the twentieth century than the Witenagemot has to the British Parliament; and the democracy which has arisen in modern times is neither to ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... mightiest fleets of iron framed; Vain, those all-shattering guns; Unless proud England keep, untamed, The strong heart of her sons. So, let his name through Europe ring— A man of mean estate, Who died, as firm as Sparta's king, Because his ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... Each hardy Greek, and valiant Trojan knight, So dreadful late, and furious for the fight, Now rest their spears, or lean upon their shields; Ceased is the war, and silent all the fields. Paris alone and Sparta's king advance, In single fight to toss the beamy lance; Each met in arms, the fate of combat tries, Thy love the motive, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... revolution in appliances and economic organisation incredible, our minds play freely about possibilities that would have struck the men of the Academy as outrageous extravagance, and it is in regard to politico-social expedients that our imaginations fail. Sparta, for all the evidence of history, is scarcely more credible to us than a motor-car throbbing in the agora ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... all that we have made a part of our nature by education and custom. We would give more to know what Xenophon's soldiers gossiped about round their camp-fires, than for all the particulars of their retreat. Sparta becomes human to us when we think of Agesilaus on his hobby-horse. Finding that those heroic figures romped with their children, we begin for the first time to suspect that they ever really existed as much as Robinson Crusoe. Without these personal traits, antiquity seems as unreal to us as Sir ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... and go in search of his destined bride. The prince said nothing of this quest, but urged his kindred to let him go; and giving out a rumor that he was to find his father's lost sister Hesione, he set sail for Greece, and finally landed at Sparta. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... and set them at Strife with one another, that by those early Discoveries they might see how their several Talents lay, and without any regard to their Quality, dispose of them accordingly for the Service of the Commonwealth. By this Means Sparta soon became the Mistress of Greece, and famous through the whole World for her Civil and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... back from the Isthmus, he then no longer paid obedience to their commands, but sailed away to the Hellespont, 4. and was in consequence condemned to death, for disobedience, by the chief magistrates at Sparta. Being then an exile, he went to Cyrus; and by what methods he conciliated the favour of Cyrus, has been told in another place. Cyrus presented him with ten thousand darics; 5. and he, on receiving that sum, did not give himself up to idleness, but having collected ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... borrowed partly from the Greeks and partly from Geneva, of the omnipotence of the Lawgiver in moulding a social state after his own purpose and ideal. We shall presently quote the passage in which he holds up for our envy and imitation the policy of Lycurgus at Sparta, who swept away all that he found existing and constructed the social edifice afresh from foundation to roof.[167] It is true that there was an unmistakable decay of Greek literary studies in France from the beginning of the eighteenth century, and Rousseau seems to have read Plato ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... hurriedly established a defensive position and kept at bay the whole Austrian Army, while the Prussian Army emerged in security from a defile and manoeuvred into battle array. The Pass of Thermopylae was occupied in B.C. 480 by 1,400 Greeks under Leonidas, King of Sparta, to withstand the Persian hosts of Xerxes, and although the Greek force was destroyed by an attack from the rear (through the disclosure of a secret path by a renegade in the Persian service), the resistance offered to ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... me again the principal direction of all their affairs. Had I lived I should have so conducted the war as to have ended it with advantage and honour to my country. For, having secured to her the sovereignty of the sea by the defeat of the Samians, before I let her engage with the power of Sparta, I knew that our enemies would be at length wearied out and compelled to sue for a peace, because the city, from the strength of its fortifications and the great army within it, being on the land side impregnable ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... claptrap of the heroes of the passing hour? To answer the latter on this occasion, especially when we consider the nature of the present assembly, would be highly injudicious; at any rate, if I do not wish to meet with the fate of that sophist who, when in Sparta, publicly undertook to praise and defend Herakles, when he was interrupted with the query: "But who then has found fault with him?" I cannot help thinking, however, that some of these scruples are still sounding in the ears of not a few in this gathering; for they may still be frequently ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche

... in the whole world was Helen, step-daughter of King Tyndarus of Sparta, and sister of Castor and Pollux: neither before her nor after her has there been any to compare with her for beauty. Thirty-one of the noblest princes in Greece came to her father's Court at the same time to seek her in marriage, so that Tyndarus knew not what to do, seeing that, whomsoever ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Aethalides; Mercurius his son, Where it had the gift to remember all that ever was done. From thence it fled forth, and made quick transmigration To goldy-lock'd Euphorbus, who was killed in good fashion, At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta. Hermotimus was next (I find it in my charta) To whom it did pass, where no sooner it was missing But with one Pyrrhus of Delos it learn'd to go a fishing; And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... says "Rebekah took a veil when she saw Isaac coming towards her, and covered herself;" it being customary even in those early times to wear them, especially with brides. Now, by referring to the History of Greece, it appears that Sparta, near which this scene of Penelope's is said to have taken place, was not founded or instituted till about A.M. 2650, or before Christ 1354, which alone makes a difference of 500 years, setting aside the time from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various

... Lacedaemonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... each. Tribe and nation, however, are not strict equivalents. A nation does not arise, under gentile institutions, until the tribes united under the same government have coalesced into one people, as the four Athenian tribes coalesced in Attica, three Dorian tribes at Sparta, and three Latin and Sabine tribes at Rome. Federation requires independent tribes in separate territorial areas; but coalescence unites them by a higher process in the same area, although the tendency to ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... an established, legalized custom in Greece, is well summed up by Westermark, who says: "The exposure of deformed or sickly infants was undoubtedly an ancient custom in Greece; in Sparta, at least, it was enjoined by law. It was also approved of by the most enlightened among the Greek philosophers. Plato condemns all those children who are imperfect in limbs as well as those who are born ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... in 1854. That was in slavery times. That wasn't yistiday was it? Born in Louisiana, in Sparta—that ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... occurred during this contest of eight years, between the feeble colonies and the strong mother-land, of a courage that ancient Sparta would have applauded. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... mortality Have being, are Aphrodite; and the name She bears in heaven is born and writ of them. Thou sawest him in gold and orient vest Shining, and lo, a fire about thy breast Leapt! Thou hadst fed upon such little things, Pacing thy ways in Argos. But now wings Were come! Once free from Sparta, and there rolled The Ilian glory, like broad streams of gold, To steep thine arms and splash the towers! How small, How cold that day was Menelaus' hall! Enough of that. It was by force my son Took ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides

... I was not always thus,—a hired butcher, a savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors came from old Sparta, and settled among the vine-clad rocks and citron groves of Syrasella. My early life ran quiet as the brooks by which I sported; and when, at noon, I gathered the sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... Soveraign. The Soveraignty therefore was alwaies in that Assembly which had the Right to Limit him; and by consequence the government not Monarchy, but either Democracy, or Aristocracy; as of old time in Sparta; where the Kings had a priviledge to lead their Armies; but the Soveraignty was in ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... her coming, by day, might go so far as to stone her; but she is within bewailing her sister, and the calamity of her family. She has however some consolation in her woes, for the virgin Hermione, whom Menelaus bringing from Sparta, left at our palace, when he sailed to Troy, and gave as a charge to my mother to bring up, in her she rejoices, and forgets her miseries. But I am looking at each avenue when I shall see Menelaus present, since, for ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... to our view future prospects of war and dissension among ourselves. If an equal vote be refused, the smaller states will become vassals to the larger; and all experience has shown that the vassals and subjects of free states are the most enslaved. He instanced the Helots of Sparta, and the provinces of Rome. He observed that foreign powers, discovering this blemish, would make it a handle for disengaging the smaller states from so unequal a confederacy. That the colonies should in fact be considered as individuals; and that, as such, in all disputes, they should ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... a republic in France. A royalist by inborn inclination, I have now, in France, become one from conviction. For I am convinced that the French could never tolerate any republic, neither according to the constitution of Athens or of Sparta, nor, least of all, to that of the United States. The Athenians were the student-youths of mankind; their constitution was a species of academic freedom, and it would be mere folly to seek to introduce it in this our matured age, to revive it in our senile Europe. And how could ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... that besides the races here enumerated, there are Slavic tribes scattered through Germany, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Walachia, nay, through the whole of Turkey. Thus, for instance, the Tchaconic dialect, spoken in the eastern part of ancient Sparta and unintelligible to the other Greeks, has been proved by one of the most distinguished philologists to have been of Slavic origin.[12] But to ascertain their number, at any rate very small, would be a matter of impossibility, and in every respect ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... of the whole world," has sunk under the power of Sparta, and it can be henceforth no home for Balaustion and her Euthukles. The bark that bears them is bounding Rhodesward, and the verse has in it the leap and race of the prow. Balaustion, stricken at heart, yet feels ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... care very little whether he was popular or not; all he asked was a chance to learn the art of warfare. He was happiest when he was left alone to study history. Plutarch's "Lives" was his favorite book, and his favorite nation among the ancient peoples was that of Sparta, because he admired the Spartans' stern sense of heroism and hoped to copy them. That was the reason Monsieur Pichegru had given him the nickname of "The Spartan," and the name stuck ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... the history of the wars of Rome and Carthage, of Sparta and Messina, of Athens and Syracuse, of the Hebrews and the Phoenicians: yet these are the nations of which antiquity boasts as being ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... to make laws for Sparta, in what condition did he find this republic? On this point all historians agree. The people and the nobles were at war. The city was in a confused state, and divided by two parties,—the party of the poor, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... his Republic, followed the divisions of the Zodiac and the planets. So also did Lycurgus at Sparta, and Cecrops in the Athenian Commonwealth. Chun, the Chinese legislator, divided China into twelve Tcheou, and specially designated twelve mountains. The Etruscans divided themselves into twelve Cantons. Romulus appointed twelve Lictors. There were twelve tribes of Ishmael and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the head of an army of fellows like myself, and out of Germany shall spring a republic compared to which Rome and Sparta will be but as nunneries. (Rises and flings ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... course this is meant only of the modern citizen or country-gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old Florence. I leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of the art of war" may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense, be predicated of the English nation. War, without art, we seem, with God's help, able ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... recorded. The palace of Minos is ancient enough to make the Homeric age seem modern. With the Dorian invasion of Greece about 1000 B.C., begins that Greek civilization of which we have so much authentic knowledge. Dorian influence was confined largely to Sparta, but it spread to many Greek colonies in the central Mediterranean and in the Levant. It became a powerful influence, alike in art, in domestic life, and in political supremacy. One of its noblest achievements was its help in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... some surprisal of thy foes; As now I find thee by the seaward camp, Where Aias holds the last place in your line, Lingering in quest, and scanning the fresh print Of his late footsteps, to be certified If he keep house or no. Right well thy sense Hath led thee forth, like some keen hound of Sparta! The man is even but now come home, his head And slaughterous hands reeking with ardent toil. Thou, then, no longer strain thy gaze within Yon gateway, but declare what eager chase Thou followest, that a god may give ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... of Paris, and to influence his judgment. Juno promised him a kingdom; Minerva, military glory; and Venus, the fairest woman in the world for his wife." (Lempriere.) Paris accorded the apple to Aphrodite, abandoned Oenone, and after he had been acknowledged the son of Priam went to Sparta, where he persuaded Helen, the wife of Menelaus, to flee with him to Troy. The ten years' siege, and the destruction of Troy, resulted from this rash act. Oenone's significant words at the close of the poem foreshadow this disaster. Tennyson, in his ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... ones in others. The gathering of information about the enemy was also industriously pursued, and Card and his brothers were used constantly on expeditions within the Confederate lines, frequently visiting Murfreesboro', Sparta, Tullahoma, Shelbyville, and other points. What they learned was reported to army headquarters, often orally through me or personally communicated by Card himself, but much was forwarded in official letters, beginning with November 24, when I transmitted accurate information of the concentration ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan

... that score. He must have been a great liar, indeed, to have excelled or even equalled the most ordinary story-teller in the Comanche nation; for the mendacity of these Indians would have been a match for Sparta herself. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... leading Greek heroes in the siege of Troy, famous for his size, physical strength, and beauty. In bravery and feats of valor he was second only to Achilles. Not being awarded the armor of Achilles after that hero's death, he slew himself. [190] 16. Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, was celebrated for her beauty, by reason of which frequent references are made to her by both classic and modern writers. Goethe introduces her in the second part of Faust, and Faustus, in Marlowe's play of that ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... now in the National museum in Athens. They were found in a "bee-hive" tomb at Vaphio, an ancient site in Greece, not far from Sparta. It is thought that they were not made there, ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall

... of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return! See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no specter that speaks! 10 Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you, "Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid! Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed, Ran and raced; like stubble, some field which a fire runs through, Was the space between city and city. Two days, two nights did ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... corps, that extinction of self, and absorption of the individual in the Order, which has marked the Jesuits from their first existence as a body, was no whit changed or lessened; a principle, which, though different, was no less strong than the self-devoted patriotism of Sparta or ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... eligible who were under seventy. But in all governments, the councils of power were held by the old; and patricians or patres, senate or senes, seigneurs or seniors, gerousia, the senate of Sparta, the presbytery of the Church, and the like, all signify ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... owner of the watch may be soulless, without mind-fire, a mere creature. No benefit to the heart or to the body accrues from the most accurate mechanism. Hence I debated whether the third division should be included. But I reflected that time cannot be put back on the dial, we cannot return to Sparta; there is an existent state of things, and existent multitudes; and possibly a more powerful engine, flexible to the will, might give them that freedom which is the one, and the one only, political or social idea I possess. For liberty, therefore, ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies

... names which appear conspicuous on the page of history, and have been praised by the united voices of successive generations. We cannot hear, without an instinctive glow, of the cities of Rome, Athens, Sparta, Syracuse, and others which respectively produced a Cæsar, a Demosthenes, a Lycurgus, and an Archimedes; of the islands of Samos and Ægina, whence emanated the resplendent genius of a Pythagoras and a Plato; of the villages ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More—a very fine man was Sir Thomas More—Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of characters who came to the same magnificent end. Do you know, however," continued he musingly, "that at Sparta (which is now Palae; ochori,) at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which are still legible the letters 7!9. They are ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... held in high esteem in Greece. To be sure, barbaric Sparta made a bold stand for equality, and almost instituted a gynecocracy, but the usual idea was that a woman's opinion was not worth considering. Hence the caricaturists of the day made sly sport of the love of Pericles and Aspasia. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... foresee all this. No great or inspired man can foresee all the consequences of his deeds: but these men were, as I hold, inspired to see somewhat at least of the mighty stake for which they played; and to count their lives worthless, if Sparta had sent them thither to ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... commerce and by industry. They cite Lacedaemon; why do they not cite also the republic of San Marino? What good did Sparto to Greece? Did she ever have Demosthenes, Sophocles, Apelles, Phidias? The luxury of Athens produced great men in every sphere; Sparta had a few captains, and in less number even than other towns. But how fine it is that as small a republic as Lacedaemon retains ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... found in classical history, and which some of the greatest of modern commanders have been proud merely to imitate. After that action, but not immediately after it, he invaded the Peloponnesus, and led his forces to the vicinity of Sparta, and then effected a revolution that bridled that power perpetually. Nine years after Leuctra he won the Battle of Mantinea, dying on the field. He must then have been an old man, but the last of his campaigns was a miracle of military skill in all respects; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... or eff[ae]minate crysping: crowned and dressed, with garlands and wreathes of diuers flowers, and red Roses, with leauye Myrtle, with purple Amaranth or flower gentle, and Melliot: and with them a great company of yonge maydes, more fayre and delicate then bee to bee founde in Sparta; Both kindes apparelled very richly, in silkes of changable collours, hyding the perfect collour; some in Purple & Murry, and some in white curled Sendall, such as [Ae]gipt neuer affoorded, and of dyuers other collours: ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... which served as some counterpoise to the Macedonian supremacy. Of these the most important was the ACHAEAN LEAGUE, which embraced Corinth, Arcadia, and the greater part of the Peloponnesus.[36] The AETOLIAN LEAGUE included at this time a considerable portion of Central Greece. ATHENS and SPARTA still retained their independence, but with scarcely a shadow of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... Sparta may be vanquished by the imperial democrats assailing her from East and West. But let the world ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... went to Corinth, and then explored the Islands of AEgina and Methana, Sparta, the Island of Cerigo, Messene, Achaia, Arcadia, Boeotia, and Phocis. The roads in the provinces and even the streets in the towns, are mentioned in his narrative, as well as the general character of the country ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... having offered the customary libations and funeral effusions, called upon the spirit of Cleonice, and conjured her to renounce her anger against him. Cleonice at last appeared, and told him that very soon, when he should be arrived at Sparta, he would be freed from his woes, wishing apparently by these mysterious words to indicate that death which ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... a kinsman's; for the Stephanopouli were of blood the emperors did not disdain to mate with. In the last rally the Turks had much ado with them as leaders of the Moreote tribes around Maina, and north along Taygetus to Sparta. Yes, and there were some who revived the Spartan name in those days, maintaining the fight among the mountains until the Turks swarmed across from Crete, overran Maina and closed the struggle. Yet there was a man, Constantine Stephanopoulos, the grandfather of this ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine



Words linked to "Sparta" :   Peloponnesian Peninsula, spartan, city, metropolis, Peloponnesus, urban center, Peloponnese



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