Greece

Greece was the first area in Europe where advanced early civilizations emerged, beginning with the Cycladic civilization of the Aegean Sea, the Minoan civilization in Crete and then the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland. Later, city-states emerged across the Greek peninsula and spread to the shores of the Black Sea, South Italy and Asia Minor, reaching great levels of prosperity that resulted in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science and philosophy, and nurtured in Athens under a democratic environment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece  

Sparta was generally referred to by the ancient Greeks as Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων) or Lacedaemonia (Λακεδαιμονία); these are the names commonly used in the works of Homer and the Athenian historians Herodotus and Thucydides. Herodotus uses only the former and in some passages seems to denote by it the Mycenaean Greek citadel at Therapne, in contrast to the lower town of Sparta. The immediate area around the town of Sparta, the plateau east of the Taygetos mountains, was generally referred as Laconia (Λακωνία). This term was sometimes used to refer to all the regions under direct Spartan control, including Messenia. The earliest attested term referring to Lacedaemon is the Mycenaean Greek ra-ke-da-mi-ni-jo, transliterated as "Lacedaemonian", written in Linear B syllabic script
reputation for “exposing” their children at birth, due to a number of physical defects (eugenics),[2] and their emphasis on rearing children, particularly boys, with a focus on war has led many to believe that their society was harshly patriarchal. However, much of the ancient world observed Sparta with great confusion due to their perceived leniency when governing their female population    
                                                                          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Ancient_Sparta