ABSTRACT
The history of Lakonia in the late Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods deserves a book to itself. Here I shall give only a chronological sketch of the years from 362 BC to AD 78, in order to indicate how Sparta lost its remaining Helots and Perioikoi, how what we have for convenience labelled ‘Lakonia’ shrank in size correspondingly, and how the Spartans by the first century AD had become exhibits in a museum of their past.
