{"id":44320,"date":"2020-01-02T12:02:05","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T12:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/?p=44320"},"modified":"2026-04-25T07:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:08:12","slug":"lacedaemon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/lacedaemon\/","title":{"rendered":"Lacedaemon"},"content":{"rendered":"

L<\/strong>acedaemon <\/strong>and Laconia were the ancient names for a city state centred on Sparta, whose name eventually superseded theirs. Lacedaemon is the \"\"<\/a>preferred location of Atlantis of Dr Theodore Spyropoulos, <\/strong>a Greek archaeologist, who is author of a three-volume work entitled Lacedaemon. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>He was one of the archaeologists who discovered the ruins of Akrotiri on Santorini in 1967. In 2007, he was took part in the excavations at Pellana(c)<\/sup>, now a village 27 km north of Sparta. Spyropoulos believes that Pellana was the Mycenaean capital of Lyconia, mentioned by Homer.<\/p>\n

In June 2014 he published two short papers(a)<\/sup>(b) <\/sup> on the Ancient Origins <\/em>website arguing for Lacedaemon as the location of Plato\u2019s Atlantis. In his own words;<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a vast bibliography about Atlantis, but the modern scholarship concluded that to locate Atlantis and to prove the validity of its identification, four points of agreement must be met and generally accepted. (See E. Bloedow. \u2018Fire and Flood from Heaven: Was Atlantis at Troy?\u2019 La Parola del Passato 48, 1993, pp.109-160<\/em><\/p>\n

Atlantis was an island.<\/em><\/p>\n

It lay beyond the ‘Pillars of Hercules’.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was larger than Asia and Libya together.<\/em><\/p>\n

Its destruction (sinking) produced a barrier of impassable mud.<\/em><\/p>\n

These four prerequisites are completely fulfilled in the case of Lacedaemon.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

His contention is that in ancient times, Lacedaemon had been a large lake or lagoon containing a number of islands, both natural and artificial, one of which was the island of Atlantis.<\/p>\n

His explanation for Atlantis being greater than Asia and Libya combined is that they were local names for two of the other islands in Lake Lacedaemon! He alone has identified the \u2018Pillars of Heracles\u2019 with Columns on Mt. Thornax, 2 km from the Lagoon of Lacedaemon! For example, Atlantis attacked Athens and Egypt from their base in the west<\/em><\/strong> (Tim.25b & Crit.114c), not something that could be attributed to Lacedaemon.<\/p>\n

I would have expected something more convincing from such an experienced academic, considering the range of other details on offer in Plato\u2019s narrative. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

(a) <\/sup> https:\/\/www.ancient-origins.net\/opinion-guest-authors\/ancient-city-lacedaemon-it-legendary-atlantis-001723<\/a><\/p>\n

(b) <\/sup> https:\/\/www.ancient-origins.net\/opinion-guest-authors\/ancient-city-lacedaemon-it-legendary-atlantis-part-two-001725<\/a><\/p>\n

(c)<\/sup> https:\/\/www.ancient-origins.net\/ancient-places-europe\/greek-government-blocks-discovery-mythical-city-lacedaemon-00848<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lacedaemon and Laconia were the ancient names for a city state centred on Sparta, whose name eventually superseded theirs. Lacedaemon is the preferred location of Atlantis of Dr Theodore Spyropoulos, a Greek archaeologist, who is author of a three-volume work entitled Lacedaemon. \u00a0He was one of the archaeologists who discovered the ruins of Akrotiri on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[781,105,123,3193,3194,6216,3197,2175,130,6215,3195],"class_list":["post-44320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-akrotiri","tag-egypt","tag-homer","tag-lacedaemon","tag-laconia","tag-mt-thornax","tag-pellana","tag-pillars-odf-heracles","tag-santorini","tag-sparta","tag-theodore-spyropoulos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44320"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67193,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44320\/revisions\/67193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}