Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Sparte.
The gallery
Leda and the Swan (panel with the personifications of the River Eurotas and Sparta)
Unknown (Roman mosaicist), 4th century AD
In this richly figured floor mosaic from the House of Aion at Nea Paphos, Cyprus, the Spartan queen Leda prepares to bathe in the river while Zeus, transformed into a swan, approaches her. Framing the mythic scene, the artist personified the landscape itself: at the lower edge reclines the river-god Eurotas, and beside him stands the female personification of the city, labelled in Greek as Lakedaimonia — Sparta herself, the eponymous nymph who is daughter of Eurotas and wife of Lacedaemon, and after whom the city was named. Set among five great panels of the pavement, the mosaic dates to the 4th century AD and survives as one of the very few ancient images in which Sparte appears in personified form, embodying the land of Lacedaemon as the genealogical ancestor of its royal line.