But the glorious chorus mistress forbids me to either praise or blame her. I see it like the sun, whom Agido summons to appear and witness for us. Happy is he who, sound of mind, weaves through the day unwept. There is such a thing as retribution from the gods. It refers to a choir girl named 'Agido.' Alcman was a Spartan poet who lived in the seventh century B.C. This fragment from the poet Alcman, which he composed for a Spartan festival, stands out.

While much of this poetry survives in fragmentary form and some of it, such as from Tyrtaeus, reflects the development of the martial values that Sparta would become famous for, there is also work that appears to reflect a society concerned with art, rather than just war. 'In reality we have more testimony to poetic activity at Sparta in the seventh century than for any other Greek state, including Athens,' writes historian Chester Starr in a chapter of the book 'Sparta' (Edinburgh University Press, 2002). Poetry was another key early Spartan achievement. Surviving ivories from the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta depict birds, male and female figures and even a 'tree of life' or 'sacred tree.'

Researcher Konstantinos Kopanias notes in a 2009 journal article that, up until the sixth century B.C., Sparta appears to have had an ivory workshop. Sparta was known for its poetry and it pottery, its wares being found in places as far flung as Cyrene (in Libya) and the island of Samos, not far from the coast of modern-day Turkey. Even the name Sparta is from a verb meaning 'I sow' or 'to sow.'ДЄlthough Sparta made efforts to consolidate its territory in Laconia, we also know that, at this early stage, the people of the city appear to have taken pride in their artistic skills. Historian Nigel Kennell writes in his book 'Spartans: A New History' (John Wiley & Sons, 2010) that the city's location in the fertile Eurotas valley gave its inhabitants access to an abundance of food, something its local rivals did not enjoy. Recent research suggests that a drought that lasted for three centuries afflicted Greece around the time the Spartan palace burned down.ДЄrchaeologists do know that sometime in the early Iron Age, after 1000 B.C., Four villages - Limnae, Pitana, Mesoa and Cynosoura, which are located near what would be the Spartan acropolis - came together to form a new Sparta. It's not clear how many people continued to live in the area after the palace burned down. Future excavations may reveal where this older city is. Presumably there was an older Spartan city located somewhere near the 3,500-year-old palace but not where the first millennium B.C. The palace burned down in the 14th century B.C.

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