The Spartans prepare to send out an army against this new alliance, and order Agesilaus to return to Greece.

Non-religious ( or not specifically religious ) practices might be seen in such an example as Spartans undertaking regimens of severe physical discipline to prepare for battle.

The Spartans also occupied Attica for periods of only three weeks at a time ; in the tradition of earlier hoplite warfare the soldiers were expected to go home to participate in the harvest.

The Spartans sent ambassadors to Admetus, threatening that the whole of Greece would go to war with the Molossians unless they surrendered Themistocles.

These exiles go to the Spartans, based at this time at Sicyon, for support, while the Athenians and Boeotians support the democrats.

Meanwhile, the Spartans, with Persian funding, quickly rebuilt their fleet, and would go on to undermine the Athenian advantage.

The narrowness of the straits, which ensured that the Peloponnesians had only a short way to go to safety, limited the damage the Athenians could inflict, but by day's end they had captured 21 Spartan ships to the 15 of theirs that the Spartans had taken in the early fighting.

: Let ’ s go Spartans, keep that pride.

Thucydides documents the example of Melos, a small island, neutral in the war, though originally founded by Spartans.

Athens's empire was not very stable, and only 27 years of war with the Spartans, aided by the Persians and internal strife, were able to defeat it.

The Spartans, whose intervention would have been the trigger for a massive war to determine the fate of the empire, called a congress of their allies to discuss the possibility of war with Athens.

* The civil war in Corcyra, in which the Athenians and the Spartans have interfered ineffectually, results in a victory of the democrats ( who support an alliance with Athens ) over the oligarchs.

Each year when the Ephors took office they ritually declared war on the helots, thereby allowing Spartans to kill them without the risk of ritual pollution.

Thucydides reports that when a Spartan man went to war, his wife ( or another woman of some significance ) would customarily present him with his shield and say: " With this, or upon this " ( Ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς, Èi tàn èi èpì tàs ), meaning that true Spartans could only return to Sparta either victorious ( with their shield in hand ) or dead ( carried upon it ).

* King Darius II of Persia decides to continue the war against Athens and give support to the Spartans.

* The Athenians and Spartans, worn down by several years of war and the devastation of their lands, make peace with Antigonus II of Macedonia who thus retains his hold on Greece.

In 408 BC, after the victories of Alcibiades, Darius II decided to continue the war against Athens and give strong support to the Spartans.

According to another story, he was taken prisoner in a war between the Spartans and Cnossians, and put to death by his captors, because he refused to prophesy favourably for them.

There, the Spartans and Persians worked out the form of an agreement to end the war.

This led to the Spartans declaring war on Mantinea, whereupon the majority of Arcadian cities grouped together to oppose the Spartans ( thus forming the confederation that the Spartans were trying to prevent ), and requested assistance from the Thebans.

He became involved in a war with Persia's erstwhile allies, the Spartans, who, under Agesilaus II, invaded Asia Minor.

In 404 BC, the Spartan fleet under Lysander blockaded Piraeus and subsequently Athens surrenderred to the Spartans, who put an end to the Delian League and the war itself.

The Spartans, who were also fined in that war, actually never fought in it as they were later pardoned.

According to Pausanias, the Athenians sent the lame, mentally defective teacher / poet to Sparta as a compromise, wishing to obey the oracle, which had demanded an Athenian, but not wishing to help the Spartans in their war, which would have required a more capable individual.

The Spartans simply asked each of the prisoners if they had done the Lacedaemonians and allies any service in the war, to which the prisoners, after a heated debate, ultimately had to answer " no.

On the advice of the Delphic Oracle, the Spartans searched for the bones of Orestes and brought them home, without which they had been told they could not expect victory in their war against the neighboring Tegeans.

According to Aristotle, the ephors annually declared war on the Helots, thereby allowing Spartans to kill them without fear of religious pollution.

During the same war and after the capitulation of the Spartans besieged in Sphacteria, the Athenians installed a garrison in Pylos composed of Messenians from Naupactus.

In 267 BC, probably with encouragement from Egypt, an Athenian by the name of Chremonides persuaded the Athenians to join the Spartans in declaring war on Antigonus ( see Chremonidean War ).

When Amyntas sought Spartan aid against the growing threat of Olynthus, the Spartans eagerly responded.

However, this depends on when exactly the Spartans held their festival and it is possible that the Spartan calendar was one month ahead of that of Athens.

At the request of the Corinthians, the Spartans summoned members of the Peloponnesian League to Sparta in 432 BC, especially those who had grievances with Athens to make their complaints to the Spartan assembly.

Demosthenes, however, outmanoeuvred the Spartans in the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and trapped a group of Spartan soldiers on Sphacteria as he waited for them to surrender.

Furthermore, after the treason and disgrace of the Spartan general Pausanias, the Spartans tried to implicate Themistocles in the plot ; he was, however, acquitted of these charges.

* 422 BC: The Spartans defeat the Athenians in the Battle of Amphipolis, where the Athenian Cleon and the Spartan Brasidas are both killed.

Its inhabitants were classified as Spartiates ( Spartan citizens, who enjoyed full rights ), Mothakes ( non-Spartan free men raised as Spartans ), Perioikoi ( freedmen ), and Helots ( state-owned serfs, enslaved non-Spartan local population ).

When Philip created the league of the Greeks on the pretext of unifying Greece against Persia, the Spartans chose not to join — they had no interest in joining a pan-Greek expedition if it was not under Spartan leadership.

During the Roman conquest, Spartans continued their way of life, and the city became a tourist attraction for the Roman elite who came to observe exotic Spartan customs.

Spartiates, on the other hand, were forbidden ( in theory ) from engaging in menial labor or trade, although there is evidence of Spartan sculptors, and Spartans were certainly poets, magistrates, ambassadors, and governors as well as soldiers.

Allegedly, Spartans were prohibited from possessing gold and silver coins, and according to legend Spartan currency consisted of iron bars to discourage hoarding.

A new element of Laconophilia by Karl Otfried Müller, who linked Spartan ideals to the supposed racial superiority of the Dorians, the ethnic sub-group of the Greeks to which the Spartans belonged.

His army engulfs a force of 300 Spartans and 700 Thespiae under the Spartan King, Leonidas I.

* 480 Leonidas, Spartan, makes sacrifice of 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae so main force can escape ; Xerxes son of Darius is leading the Persians

The blockade of Conon by the Spartans was broken, the Spartan force was soundly defeated and Callicratidas was killed during the battle.

He was able to persuade the Spartans to select Agesilaus II as the new Eurypontid Spartan king following the death of Agis II.

Taranto was founded in 706 BC by Dorian Greek immigrants as the only Spartan colony, and its origin is peculiar: the founders were Partheniae (" sons of virgins "), sons of unmarried Spartan women and Perioeci ( free men, but not citizens of Sparta ); these out-of-wedlock unions were permitted extraordinarily by the Spartans to increase the prospective number of soldiers ( only the citizens of Sparta could become soldiers ) during the bloody Messenian wars, but later they were retroactively nullified, and the sons were then obliged to leave Greece forever.

* After their victory in the Battle of Arginusae over the Spartans, the Athenian fleet follows the reappointed Spartan admiral, Lysander, to the Hellespont.

His army then crushes the Spartans under the Spartan regent and general, Machanidas, in the battle of Mantinea.

* The Spartans arrange for two armies, one under the Spartan general Lysander and the other under the Spartan King Pausanias, to rendezvous at and attack the Boeotian city of Haliartus.

In this battle, the Athenians drew the Spartan fleet out to pursue a small force led by Alcibiades ; when the Spartans had gotten a good distance from land, two squadrons under the command of Thrasybulus and Theramenes appeared in their rear to cut off their retreat.

The Spartans were forced to flee to a nearby beach, where Alcibiades landed his men in an attempt to seize the Spartan ships.