The end of ancient sparta :(

The end of Sparta


After the battle of Chaeronea (338 BC) Phillip of Macedon marched through the Peloponnese, welcomed by all the cities but when he reached Sparta they refused him to enter. Phillip did not try to take by force the city and left. Sparta was the only Greek city that did not take part in the League of Corinth, which was formed in 337 BC, under Macedonian control.
In 331 BC, king Agis, the grandson of Agesilaos, raised a revolt against Macedonia, but he was defeated and killed.
In the end of the 4th century BC, Sparta build a wall for the first time in her history, which was enclosing its four central villages and Acropolis.
When in 280 BC, the Celts invaded from the north overrunning Macedon, king Areus of Sparta, who had tried to unite the cities of Peloponnese, led an army into central Greece. During his reign the first coins of Sparta was issued, three hundred years later from the rest of Greece.
In 272 BC, king Pyrros of Epeiros could easily have taken the city after defeating the Spartans. Sparta became a dependency of Macedon, regained independence under the tyrants Machanidas (207 BC) and Nabis (195 - 192 BC).
In 265 BC again, having formed an alliance with Athens, Achaea and Elis and some Arcadian cities, gave battle against Macedon but lost it and in his retreat was killed (Chremonidean war).
The son of Areus, Akrotatos, in 260 BC leading the Spartan army against Megalopolitans, he was defeated and himself killed.
In 244 BC, Agis IV came to the throne and starting a series of changes. He proposed all debts to be cancelled, and to redistribute all land, in parts of 4500 citizens and 15000 Perioikoi. He also insisted on strict Lykurgian training in the citizens for the remained 700 equals (omioi) and 2000 hypomeiones and selected perioikoi. He found in his proposals strong resistance and Agis was put in trial and executed in 241 BC.
The next king of Sparta Kleomenes III, began to reign in 236 BC. He married the widow of king Agis and also tried to impose his ideas. In 227 BC, in a revolt he killed four ephors and exiled eighty of his opponents. That it was the first time the ephorate was abolished in Sparta. He then redistributed the land into 4000 lots and perioikoi as well as hypomeiones occupied them. He also started to enforce the Lykurgos training and habits, under the guidance of his friend philosopher Sphairos. All these changes brought results and Kleomenes had many military successes. Argos and most of Argolid and eastern Arcadia was conquered.
The Achaean league under Aratos of Sikyon, with the promise of giving him back Corinth, allied with king Antigonos of Macedon and recovered Argos and several Arcadian cities. In his turn Kleomenes captured and destroyed Megalopolis (223 BC).
In 222 BC, at Sellacia, between Sparta and Tegea, a battle took place. The Spartan army was numbering 10,000 and that of Antigonos and his allies 30,000. At this long and horrid battle, Spartans fought bravely. The whole Spartan army fell, except 200 men. King Kleomenes fled to Egypt.
The following years, a series of revolts started at Sparta, king's ephors were killed or exiled.
In 206 BC, the tyrant Nabis, a descendant of Demaratos, who had fled in Persia in 490 BC, took the throne. An able but ruthless man, he confiscated the properties of the wealthy and gave them to the poor. By setting free slaves, he managed to acquire an army of 10,000 men and he also extended his social reforms to Argos. It was Nabis who foreseeing the incoming dangers fortified Sparta for the first time in her history.
When the Roman commander Flamininus invaded Laconia and laid siege to Sparta, after a few days of fighting a non honorable truce was accepted by Sparta, in which was losing all the Perioikic cities on the coasts and her fleet.
Later with the pretence of helping Sparta, the Aitolians sent a thousand soldiers to kill Nabis and secure Sparta. They managed to kill him but they all were massacred from the Spartans. After Nabis assassination, Sparta was forced by Philopoemen to become a member of the Achaean league. Her walls were razed and the laws of Lykurgos repealed.
Under the Romans in the 2nd century AD, Laconia as a province of Achaea was allowed to revert to a Lykurgian regime.
In 396 AD, the city was destroyed by Alaric.
In the 9th century AD, the Slavs invaded and the population was forced to migrate to Mani.
The Byzantines refound a town and named her Lacedaemonia but her importance had been lost by 1248 AD and disappeared from history totally, by 1834 AD.
Today the city of modern Sparta occupies the very same territory of the ancient city.