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Key Details
Type
CityMythology
Greek Pantheon
Coordinates
37.073°N, 22.43°E
About This Location
Menelaus's house, Helen's departure
Homeric Sparta is Lacedaemon, Menelaus's palace, where Telemachus hears the war's leftovers in Odyssey 4. The Iliad makes Helen's leaving that house the cause of Troy. Later Sparta is a military city with cults of Artemis Orthia, Apollo Hyakinthios, and the Dioscuri. Those cults are not the Homeric plot. Tyrtaeus and Alcman belong to the historical city; the abduction belongs to epic. Do not collapse the two Spartas.
Primary Sources
“They came to hollow Lacedaemon and drove to the palace of glorious Menelaus.”
More from Greek Pantheon
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River Styx
Body Of WaterThe principal river of the underworld, upon which even the gods swore binding oaths. Charon ferried the dead across its dark waters.