Spartan Mora regiments at Battle of Plataea

[Paralus]

To ancient and modern Greeks the terms of "Lacon", "Lakedemonian" amd "Spartiates" are synonymes.
If you want to consider them as meaning separate things you are naturally entitled to your opinion [...] The Greeks never adopted the distinction.

Kind regards.

That may well be so in some instances; in the instance I've quoted it is Herodotus who makes the distinction. Whilst the army (from Laconia) is refered as the "Lacedaemonians" (9.55.1 e.g.) or "the Lacedaemonian / Laconian army" (9.53.4 e.g.), the "Spartiates" are a distinct entity within this body. Herodotus lists the "ten thousand Lacedaemonians" as holding the right wing and then goes on to make plain that five thousand of these "were Spartiates" even unto stating that these were the ones with seven helots to each man. The distinction is, therefore, drawn by Herodotus between the Lacedaemonians (who number 10,000) and the "Spartiates" who number 5,000.

A similar distinction is made in other passages where only 91 "Lacedaemonians from Sparta" are killed along with seventeen Tegeans. Later, for the Spartan burials, there are tombs for the irens (where a few are named), the rest of "the Spartiates" and the helots. The Periocoi, who marched to Boeotia with these and were described as a distinct memeber of the "Laconian army", are not buried or did not suffer any killed. Again the distinction is Herodotus' rather than mine.