King Croesus of Lydia established an alliance with them, and later, the Greek cities of Asia Minor appealed to her for help in the Ionian Revolt. Marble statue of a helmed hoplite (5th century BC), possibly Leonidas, Sparta, Archaeological Museum of Sparta, Greeceīy the late 6th century BC, Sparta was recognized as the preeminent Greek city-state. By the early 5th century BC, Sparta was left the unchallenged master in southern Greece, as the leading power ( hegemon) of the newly established Peloponnesian League (which was more characteristically known to its contemporaries as "the Lacedaemonians and their allies"). 546 and suffered a further crippling blow by Cleomenes I at Sepeia in 494, while repeated expeditions against tyrannical regimes throughout Greece greatly raised their prestige. Over the course of the 6th century BC, Sparta secured her control of the Peloponnese peninsula: Arcadia was forced to recognize Spartan overlordship, Argos lost Cynuria (the SE coast of the Peloponnese) in ca. Initial Argive successes, such as the victory at the Battle of Hysiai in 669 BC, led to an uprising of the Messenians, which tied down the Spartan army for almost twenty years.
Establishment of Spartan hegemony over the Peloponnese By the beginning of the 7th century BC, Sparta was, along with Argos, the dominant power in the Peloponnese. 750 BC, Sparta embarked on a steady expansion, first by subduing Amyclae and the other settlements of Laconia, and later, in the First Messenian War, conquering the fertile country of Messenia. This " constitution of Lycurgus" would remain unchanged in its essence for the next five centuries. The reforms, which were ascribed by later tradition to the possibly mythical figure of Lycurgus, created new institutions and established the military nature of the Spartan state. In the early 8th century BC however, Spartan society was transformed. During this time, Sparta or Lacedaemon was merely a Doric village on the banks of the river Eurotas in Laconia. Mycenaean Sparta, like much of Greece, was soon engulfed in the Dorian invasions, which ended the Mycenaean civilization and ushered in the so-called "Greek Dark Ages". The reforms of the Archaic Age and expansion War chariots were used by the elite, but unlike their counterparts in the Middle East, they appear to have been used mostly for transport, with the warrior dismounting to fight on foot and then remounting it to withdraw from combat, although some accounts show warriors throwing their spear from the chariot before dismounting.
In the tradition of "heroic" warfare as portrayed by Homer, the bow was looked down on as unmanly, testified by the quote: It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. The basic tactic of battle was 'free for all'. This was an age of heroic warfare with simple tactics, often little more than a general charge and a great deal of killing-it was common for entire armies to be chased down and killed after a rout. Like the rest of the Mycenaean armies, it was composed largely of infantry, equipped with short spears, swords, Dyplon and a simple rounded bronze shield. The first reference to the Spartans at war is in the Iliad, where they participate among the other Greek contingents.
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