Sparta Worksheet Form

Instructions and help about Sparta Worksheet

The walls of ancient Sparta were said not to be made of brick, but of men! And like many things said about the Spartans this is almost as cool as it is misleading. By the classical period Sparta had earned a reputation for its brutal training program and singular focus on producing the best warriors possible. So women exercised rigorously to bear the strongest Spartans, and those boys began their training at age seven. The military machismo is palpable. Then in 480 came their crowning achievement of defending Thermopylae [Θερμοπύλαι] to the death against Persia and ousting them for good the following year, and so the myth of Spartan excellence was set forever. Sparta’s actual battle record is less impressive, but the badass “fear no death”-vibe was enough to convince most of mainland Greece to join the winner’s circle and ally with Sparta's Peloponnesian League. For a century and a half Sparta was the dominant polis in Greece, defeating even the Athenian empire in a 3