Major mint: Sparta (Lakadaemon)

Lakonia was the district in which was situated the second most famous city of ancient Greece, namely Sparta. Unlike Athens, Sparta never really developed much of a classical culture; the city retained its primitive government and culture up to the time of Alexander. This culture, involving a dual monarchy, with the two kings chosen as warlords, was in every way designed for one end: military superiority. The entire focus of Spartan society was on training its free citizens for war, from birth until death. The results were most obviously apparent at Thermopylae.

In legend this was the home of many of the central figures of the Trojan War. Menelaus and Helen were the king and queen of Sparta, and Odysseoss wife Penelope was from a family in this district. Originally the district of Laconia had been like most other areas: one or two large cities and a number of smaller ones, more or less independent. In Laconia, however, with the military emphasis of the Spartans, the district was soon brought under total Spartan control. In Laconia a person was either a citizen (a Spartiate) or a serf (viz., a Helot), or else a foreigner. Helots did all the manual labor, leaving the citizen elite free to train for war.

Unlike in Athens the Spartans were more noted for their deeds than for their oratory, the Spartans were much handier with their spears than with their speeches. Hence the term laconic, viz. short and to the point. The Spartan military training began at the earliest possible age, with the boys living in barracks with those of their age group; these accommodations were the sort aptly described as spartan. Life was basic training, and designed to build character of a certain sort. One of the most popular tourist attractions of the ancient world was an initiation ceremony, in which the youths were whipped to demonstrate their ability to stand pain; originally a secret ceremony, it was revived in Roman times as a spectacle. By then Sparta was as much a curiosity as anything; the nostalgic comments of Plutarch in his Moralia are examples of the romantic regard for a Sparta no longer dangerous.

The Spartans had no use for coinage, regarding it as a corrupting influence. As they needed something to use as currency they decreed that spits of iron were to pass, and possession of any other currency would be a criminal offense. Later, after Alexander, the Spartans introduced more normal coinage, beginning sometime after 300 BC.

Spartan military superiority tended to be an elusive goal. The finest hour of the Spartan force was its defeat by the Persians at Thermopylae, where a small force under Leonidas held off the entire might of the Persians long enough for the rest of the Greeks to escape from an outflanked position. Later in the century the Spartans and their allies defeated Athens and its empire; Spartan supremacy was short-lived, as the Spartan army in turn suffered crushing defeat at the hands of Epaminondas and the Thebans at Leuktra. From then on Sparta was, for all practical purposes, just another Greek city.