All 16 Uses of
ancient Sparta
in
The Odyssey, by Homer (translated by: Butcher & Lang)
- She bids him call an assembly of the people, dismiss the wooers to their homes, and his mother to her father's house, and go in quest of his own father, in Pylos, the city of Nestor, and Sparta, the home of Menelaus.†
Book Intr.Sparta = ancient Greek city famous for military prowess
- In the evening Telemachus (leaving his ship and friends at Pylos) drives his chariot into Pherae, half way to Sparta; Peisistratus, the soil of Nestor, accompanies him.†
Book Intr.
- Telemachus and Peisistratus arrive at Sparta, where Menelaus and Helen receive them kindly.†
Book Intr.
- It will later appear that he made an even longer stay at Sparta, though whether he changed his mind, or whether we have here an inadvertence of the poet's it is hard to determine.†
Book Intr.
- Book I In a Council of the Gods, Poseidon absent, Pallas procureth an order for the restitution of Odysseus; and appearing to his son Telemachus, in human shape, adviseth him to complain of the Wooers before the Council of the people, and then go to Pylos and Sparta to inquire about his father.†
Book 1
- And I will guide him to Sparta and to sandy Pylos to seek tidings of his dear father's return, if peradventure he may hear thereof and that so he may be had in good report among men.'†
Book 1
- Get thee first to Pylos and inquire of goodly Nestor, and from thence to Sparta to Menelaus of the fair hair, for he came home the last of the mail-coated Achaeans.†
Book 1
- For I will go to Sparta and to sandy Pylos to inquire concerning the return of my father that is long afar, if perchance any man shall tell me aught, or if I may hear the voice from Zeus, that chiefly brings tidings to men.†
Book 2
- He will bring a rescue either from sandy Pylos, or even it may be from Sparta, so terribly is he set on slaying us.†
Book 2
- Lo, to Sparta I go and to sandy Pylos to seek tidings of my dear father's return, if haply I may hear thereof.'†
Book 2 *
- Book III Nestor entertains Telemachus at Pylos and tells him how the Greeks departed from Troy; and sends him for further information to Sparta.†
Book 3
- Book IV Telemachus' entertainment at Sparta, where Menelaus tells him what befell many of the Greeks on their return; that Odysseus was with Calypso in the isle Ogygia, as he was told by Proteus.†
Book 4
- And for his son he was bringing to his home the daughter of Alector out of Sparta, for his well-beloved son, strong Megapenthes, (*) born of a slave woman, for the gods no more showed promise of seed to Helen, from the day that she bare a lovely child, Hermione, as fair as golden Aphrodite.†
Book 4
- But come, declare me this and plainly tell it all, if haply ye hear of my son as yet living, either, it may be, in Orchomenus or in sandy Pylos, or perchance with Menelaus in wide Sparta, for goodly Orestes hath not yet perished on the earth.†
Book 11
- There do thou abide and sit by the swine, and find out all, till I have gone to Sparta, the land of fair women, to call Telemachus thy dear son, Odysseus, who hath betaken himself to spacious Lacedaemon, to the house of Menelaus to seek tidings of thee, whether haply thou are yet alive.'†
Book 13
- Book XVII Telemachus relates to his mother what he had heard at Pylos and Sparta.†
Book 17
Definitions:
-
(1)
(ancient Sparta) an ancient Greek city famous for military prowess; the dominant city of the Peloponnesus prior to the 4th century BC
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, Sparta can refer to the modern town in Greece that is in the same location, or to any number or American cities with the same name. Similarly, many sports teams are called Spartans.