Lacedaemon
lass-eh-DEE-mun
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe formal name of the Spartan state, and the reason a Spartan shield carried a lambda rather than a sigma.
Pausanias gives the tradition that Lacedaemon was a son of Zeus and Taygete, married Sparta the daughter of Eurotas, and gave his name to the land and hers to the city.
Greeks outside Sparta usually wrote Lacedaemonians where a modern reader expects Spartans. The two are not quite the same: the term covers the whole state, including populations that were not full citizens.
Sources
- Paus. 3.1.2
- Thuc. 1.10
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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