This lecture on Sparta is the beginning of a few lectures in which we explore some of the poleis of Ancient Greece. As we saw in the previous lectures, the Ancient Greek world had many different poleis with many forms of government. In this lecture, I want to look at one specific polis, Sparta. In this lecture and the next two on Thebes and Athens, I want to pay particular attention to what made each polis unique. In other words, what made Sparta, Sparta and what made a Spartan, a Spartan.