a noble city of Peloponnesus, called also Sparta, names which differed in this, that the latter was the proper and ancient name of the city, whereas the former was that of the country, though it afterwards came to be applied to the city. Homer also makes this distinction, when he calls the country holy, because encompassed with mountains. It has likewise been known by the name of Lelexia, from the Lelexes, the first inhabitants of the country, or from Lelex, one of their kings; and Oebalos, from Oebalos, the sixth king after Eurotas. It was called Hecatoopolis, from the hundred cities which the whole province once contained. This city was the capital of Laconia, situated on the right or western side of the Eurotas; and it was less in compass than Athens. Polybius makes it forty-eight stadia, a circuit much inferior to that of Athens. Lelex is supposed to have been the first king of Lacedaemon. His descendants, thirteen in number, reigned successively after him, till the reign of the sons of Orestes, when the Heraclidae recovered the Peloponnesus, about eighty years after the Trojan war. Procles and Eurysthenes, the descendants of the Heraclidae, usurped the crown; and after them it was decreed that the two families should always sit on the throne together. The monarchical power was abolished, and the race of the Heraclidae extinguished, at Sparta, about 219 years before Christ. Lacedaemon in its flourishing state remained without walls, the bravery of its citizens forming its only defence. At length, in Cassander's time, and afterwards, when the city was in the hands of tyrants, the latter, distrusting the defence by arms and bravery, built a wall around it, which the tyrant Nabis made very strong. Pausanias ascribes the first walls to the times of Demetrius and Pyrrhus, under Nabis. More than a century and a half before Christ, the walls of the city were pulled down by Philopoemen, who was then at the head of the Achaean League; and Laconia some time afterwards became a Roman province, when reduced by Mummius. (See Sparta.) The present city is called Mistra.