The mythical conflict took place outside the walls of Troy, an ancient city on the coast of Asia Minor. But the seeds of war were sown far from there, in the city of Sparta on the Greek mainland.

King Agesilaus II—who led the Spartan Army at the peak of its power in the fourth century B.C.—proclaimed that one of Sparta’s greatest ... traditions, from ancient Rome to medieval France ...

Little remains of the ancient city of Sparta, capital of the Laconia region, situated on the Peloponnesus peninsula in modern Greece, but the impact of its unique culture is impossible to ignore.