List of Famous people born in Sparti, Greece

Claudius Agathemerus was an ancient Greek physician who lived in the 1st century. He was born in the Lacedaemon, and was a pupil of the philosopher Cornutus, in whose house he became acquainted with the poet Persius about 50 AD. In the old editions of Suetonius he is called Agaternus, a mistake which was first corrected by Reinesius, from the epitaph upon him and his wife, Myrtale, which is preserved in the Marmora Oxoniensia and the Greek Anthology. The apparent anomaly of a Roman praenomen being given to a Greek may be accounted for by the fact which we learn from Suetonius, that the Spartans were the hereditary clients of the gens Claudia.

Chilon of Sparta was a Spartan and one of the Seven Sages of Greece.

Cinaethon of Sparta was a legendary Greek poet to whom different sources ascribe the lost epics Oedipodea, Little Iliad and Telegony. Eusebius says that he flourished in 764/3 BC.

Dienekes or Dieneces was a Spartan soldier who fought and died at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. He was acclaimed the bravest of all the Greeks who fought in that battle. Herodotus (7.226) related the following anecdote about Dienekes:

"(...) the Spartan Dienekes is said to have proved himself the best man of all, the same who, as they report, uttered this saying before they engaged battle with the Medes:— being informed by one of the men of Trachis that when the Barbarians discharged their arrows they obscured the light of the sun by the multitude of the arrows, so great was the number of their host, he was not dismayed by this, but making small account of the number of the Medes, he said that their guest from Trachis brought them very good news, for if the Medes obscured the light of the sun, the battle against them would be in the shade and not in the sun."