According to some ancient sources, the town of Amyclae was founded by Amyclas of Sparta, son of the mythological figure Lacedaemon. But the archaeology is older than the myth. Pausanias was told in the second century AD that Amyclae had its roots as an Achaean stronghold predating the Dorian arrival in the Peloponnese, and modern archaeology has supported that account. Sub-Mycenaean votive figures were found at the site, as well as figures from the later Geometric period — but with a notable gap between them that scholars interpret as evidence of a significant cultural rupture during the Greek Dark Ages. When the Spartans conquered Amyclae in the eighth century BC, as the fifth of the surrounding settlements they absorbed, its inhabitants did not become Spartan citizens. They became perioikoi — free people, but without citizen rights, dwelling in a kind of autonomous subservience.

At roughly the same time as the Spartan conquest, a sanctuary of Apollo was established at Amyclae. It enclosed something older: a tumulus, a burial mound, said to be the tomb of Hyacinthus. In Greek mythology, Hyacinthus was a beautiful youth beloved by Apollo, accidentally killed by a discus. The Amyclae sanctuary conflated an ancient pre-Hellenic cult of Hyacinthus — probably a vegetation deity associated with seasonal death and rebirth — with the worship of Apollo, and the annual festival of the Hyacinthia became one of the most important in the Spartan calendar. Scholar Walter Burkert noted that this kind of absorption and reinterpretation was common in the transition from the Greek Dark Ages, but Amyclae is one of the clearest examples: an older chthonic cult of the dead, formally incorporated beneath the worship of a Olympian god.

Later in the sixth century BC, an architect named Bathycles of Magnesia was commissioned to design a monumental enclosure for the cult statue and the altar of Hyacinthus. The result, known to posterity as the Throne of Apollo, was an extraordinary hybrid structure — Doric and Ionic architectural orders combined, stoa-like on three sides, with the colossal column-shaped statue rising at its center. The podium that enclosed the chthonic altar of Hyacinthus was faced with bas-reliefs, and more reliefs decorated the stoa-like building surrounding the statue. Pausanias catalogued the subjects depicted: a virtual encyclopedia of Greek mythology, scene by scene, figure by figure. By the mid-sixth century, the face of the Apollo statue had been sheathed in gold — a gift from Croesus of Lydia, the famously wealthy king who cultivated relationships with Greek sanctuaries across the Aegean. Architectural fragments from the Throne survive and are exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Sparta.

The Hyacinthia festival was held annually, probably in midsummer. It was one of Sparta's most important religious occasions — a three-day festival during which Spartan armies were traditionally recalled and military campaigns suspended. The first day was given to mourning for Hyacinthus, the dead beloved. The second and third were for celebration of Apollo. The Gymnopaideia, another great Spartan festival associated with Amyclae, was also held here after the Spartan conquest. Pausanias noted that the Spartans also worshipped Dionysus at Amyclae under the epithet Dionysos Psilax — *psila* being the Doric word for wings, with the idea that wine, like wings, lifts a person above the ordinary. Pausanias admitted he found the image of a winged Dionysus difficult to picture.

The modern village of Amykles lies 6 km south of Sparti along the Eurotas plain, at approximately 37.03°N, 22.45°E. The ruins of ancient Amyclae are about 2 km northeast of the village. The sanctuary area and its surrounding walls — the analemma and peribolos — have been excavated, along with the architectural fragments that confirm the combined Doric-Ionic structure Pausanias described. The site is unspectacular by the standards of Delphi or Olympia: a low hill above a farming plain, olive groves, the Taygetus range to the west. But the Hyacinthia was celebrated here when Sparta was the dominant power in Greece, when Athenian tragedies were first being performed, when the Persian Wars were a recent memory. The plain is quiet now. The tumulus of Hyacinthus is still there, beneath it all.