The Peloponnesian war ended with Sparta's defeat of Athens, leaving Sparta in control of not only the mainland, but of the Aegean as well. In 395 BC she was attacked by a coalition led by Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Argos and the Spartan fleet was defeated at Knidos in 394. Ultimately, it was the Achaian League and the Macedonians ushered in the end of Spartan hegemony and Sparta became a dependent of Macedon. Though the Lycugian laws had been repealed after Sparta's fall to the Achaian League, were reinstated for a time during Roman rule, but the city was destroyed in 396BC by Alaric and when the Slavs invaded in the 9th Century AD the population migrated to the Mani. The Byzantines refounded a town with the name Lakedaimonia, but by 1248 Mystra superceded it totally in importance. Until the British carried out excavations in 1906-10 and during the 1920s, the town vanished from history.
The ruins of Ancient Sparta are to the north and northeast of the modern town. At the top of Odhos Stadiou(Stadium Street) is a modern memorial to Leonidas, who was the Spartan king and leader of three hundred soldiers who made a last stand against Xerxes 30,000 Persians at the Pass of Thermopylae in 480BC, an event described by Herodotus. Leonidas was standing guard over the pass with a mixed army of 7,000 Greeks, believing that this was the only place from which the Persian army would attack, but Xerxes decided to attack the Greek army from the rear instead. Leonidas ordered the main army to retreat while he and his Spartan guard (consisting of Spartans, Thespians, and Thebans) remained in the pass to delay the Persians' progress. He and all but two of his guard died in this courageous effort. There is a grave mound halfway through the pass where Leonidas' soldiers are buried, though the tomb of Leonidas himself, lies near the ancient theater in the ruins of Sparta, where a broken statue of him was found. The Acropolis is on a hill only 20 metres high , reachable from a track that leads through olive groves from the left of the stadium. Its walls were built between 267AD and 386AD, with the east side completed after the Slav invasion in the 8th century. This was the center of Byzantine Lakedaimonia.
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