SOURCE: Forrest, W. G. “The Conquest of Laconia.” In A History of Sparta 950-192 B.C., pp. 28-34. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1968.

In the following essay, Forrest chronicles the period of early expansion in Spartan power over the Peloponnesian region of Laconia from the tenth to eight centuries b.c.

The Sparta which was founded in the tenth century was not a city like those of the rest of Greece; ‘if Sparta was deserted’, wrote Thucydides, ‘and only its temples and its ground plan left, future generations would never believe that its power had matched its reputation … without any urban unity, made up as it is of distinct villages in the old style, its effect would be trivial’. On us the effect is baffling—how many villages were there? How related to each other? Did they grow up together or were some later settlements?

Four were enclosed by a...