The common assumption that Sparta lacked artistic achievements is incorrect.
- Pausanias, traveling through Sparta in the second century AD, recorded hundreds of significant buildings – temples, monuments, tombs, and public buildings – that were part and parcel of Spartan art and culture.
- According to contemporary sources, Sparta was particularly renowned for its music and dance.
- Spartan sculptors were active in pan-European sites such as Delphi and Olympia.
- Spartan bronze works were coveted as gifts and imports.
- Spartan poets were admired throughout the ancient world – and it was one of these who wrote the first recorded heterosexual love poems known today.