Figure 4.1. View over Sparta to Mount Taygetus from the Shrine of Helen and Menelaus (the Menelaum).

Figure 4.2. Peloponnesus.

Figure 4.3. ”Laconian Rider.” Cup depicting rider on horseback, waterbirds, and a winged demon or figure of Victory. London, The British Museum.

Figure 4.4. Spartan hoplite, so-called Leonidas. Third quarter of fifth century BC, found in temple of Athena of the Bronze House. Archaeological Museum of Sparta.

Figure 4.5. Bronze statuette of a Spartan girl running, wearing a racing dress that exposes her right breast. From Prizren or Dodona (c. 525–500 BC). London, The British Museum, 208.

Figure 4.6. Laconian bronze mirror with a handle in the form of a nude female figure standing on a lion; the winged griffins on her shoulders help support the mirror’s originally shiny and reflective disk (c. 520 BC). Such unusual portrayals of nude young women made at Sparta may depict the goddess Artemis Orthia or celebrants of her cult. Because female nudity is rare in early Greek art, mirror handles like this one have also been associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Figure 4.7. Laconian cup, attributed to the Naucratis Painter (c. 570–560 BC). These five reclining men served by a naked boy holding a wine pitcher are probably shown at a syssition, the Spartan version of the Greek symposion. Two winged male demons and two sirens hover above them. Paris, The Louvre.

Figure 4.8. Edgar Degas, Young Spartans Exercising (1860). In this painting, Lycurgus stands among the mothers in the group of adults in back. Degas stated that his source for his interpretation was Plutarch. Thus the painting reveals the power of the utopian, naturalistic view of Sparta. Compare the costume of the girls in this painting with the dress on the Greek bronze statuette in Figure 4.5. London, National Gallery.