article_snippet: But while this might have been the stomping ground of Spartans Leonidas, Helen, latterly of Troy, and Menelaus, there was very little that was Spartan about that.
article_snippet: Away from the beach, the landscape looks much the same as the landscape did during Spartan times .
article_snippet: Ancient villages and an even older landscape surround Costa Navarino, a harsh, barren and ultimately beautiful place pocked with olive groves that still looks very much as it would have to the Spartans.