Agesilaus II

Agesilaus II (/əˌdʒɛsəˈleɪəs/; Greek: Ἀγησίλαος Agesilaos; 445/4 – 360/59 BC) was king of Sparta from c. 400 to c. 360 BC. Generally considered the most important king in the history of Sparta, Agesilaus was the main actor during the period of Spartan hegemony that followed the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Although brave in combat, Agesilaus lacked the diplomatic skills to preserve Sparta's position, especially against the rising power of Thebes, which reduced Sparta to a secondary power after its victory at Leuctra in 371 BC.

Despite the traditional secrecy fostered by the Spartiates, the reign of Agesilaus is particularly well-known thanks to the works of his friend Xenophon, who wrote a large history of Greece (the Hellenica) covering the years 411 to 362 BC, therefore extensively dealing with Agesilaus' rule. Xenophon furthermore composed a panegyric biography of his friend, perhaps to clean his memory from the criticisms voiced against him. Another historical tradition—much more hostile to Agesilaus than Xenophon's writings—has been preserved in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, and later continued by Diodorus of Sicily. Moreover, Plutarch wrote a biography of Agesilaus in his Parallel Lives, which contains many elements deliberately omitted by Xenophon.

Early life

Youth

Agesilaus' father was King

Agesilaus was born lame, a fact that should have cost him his life, since in Sparta deformed babies were thrown into a chasm.[14] As he was not heir-apparent, he might have received some leniency from the tribal elders who examined male infants,^[14] or perhaps the first effects of the demographic decline of Sparta were already felt at the time, and only the most severely impaired babies were killed.^[15][16]

Starting at the age of 7, Agesilaus had to go through the rigorous education system of Sparta, called the agoge.^[17][18] Despite his disability, he brilliantly completed the training,^[14] which massively enhanced his prestige, especially after he became king.^[19] Indeed, as heirs-apparent were exempted of the agoge, few Spartan kings had gone through the same training as the citizens;^[20] another notable exception was Leonidas, the embodiment of the "hero-king".^[21] Between 433 and 428, Agesilaus also became the younger lover of Lysander, an aristocrat from the circle of Archidamos, whose family had some influence in Libya.^[22][23]

Spartan prince

Little is known of Agesilaus' adult life before his reign, principally because Xenophon—his friend and main biographer—only wrote about his reign.^[24] Due to his special status, Agesilaus likely became a member of the Krypteia, an elite corps of young Spartans going undercover in Spartan territory to kill some helots deemed dangerous.^[25] Once he turned 20 and became a full citizen, Agesilaus was elected to a common mess, presumably that of his elder half-brother Agis II, who had become king in 427, of which Lysander was perhaps a member.^[26]

Agesilaus probably served during the Peloponnesian War (431–404) against Athens, likely at the Battle of Mantinea in 418.^[27] Agesilaus married Kleora at some point between 408 and 400.^[28] Despite the influence she apparently had on her husband, she is mostly unknown. Her father was Aristomenidas, an influential noble with connections in Thebes.^[29]

Thanks to three treaties signed with

Agis II died while returning from Delphi between 400 and 398.^[ii] After his funeral, Agesilaus contested the claim of Leotychidas, the son of Agis II, using the widespread belief in Sparta that Leotychidas was an illegitimate son of Alcibiades—a famous Athenian statesman and nephew of Pericles, who had gone into exile in Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, and then seduced the queen. The rumours were strengthened by the fact that even Agis only recognised Leotychidas as his son on his deathbed.^[36][37]

Diopeithes, a supporter of Leotychidas, however quoted an old oracle telling that a Spartan king could not be lame, thus refuting Agesilaus' claim, but Lysander cunningly returned the objection by saying that the oracle had to be understood figuratively. The lameness warned against by the oracle would therefore refer to the doubt on Leotychidas' paternity, and this reasoning won the argument.^[38][39] The role of Lysander in the accession of Agesilaus has been debated among historians, principally because Plutarch makes him the main instigator of the plot, while Xenophon downplays Lysander's influence.^[40][41] Lysander doubtless supported Agesilaus' accession because he hoped that the new king would in return help him to regain the importance that he lost in 403.^[42]

Conspiracy of Cinadon (399 BC)

The

According to the treaties signed in 412 and 411 between Sparta and the Persian Empire, the latter became the overlord of the Greek city-states of Asia Minor.^[52][53] In 401, these cities and Sparta supported the bid of Cyrus the Younger (the Persian Emperor's younger son and a good friend of Lysander) against his elder brother, the new emperor Artaxerxes II, who nevertheless defeated Cyrus at Cunaxa.^[54] As a result, Sparta remained at war with Artaxerxes, and supported the Greek cities of Asia, which fought against Tissaphernes, the satrap of Lydia and Caria.^[55] In 397 Lysander engineered a large expedition in Asia headed by Agesilaus, likely to recover the influence he had over the Asian cities at the end of the Peloponnesian War.^[56][57] In order to win the approval of the Spartan assembly, Lysander built an army with only 30 Spartan citizens, so the risk would be limited; the bulk of the army consisted of 2,000 neodamodes (freed helots) and 6,000 Greek allies.^[58][59] In addition, Agesilaus obtained the support of the oracles of Zeus at Olympia and Apollo at Delphi.^[60]

The sacrifice at Aulis (396 BC)

Lysander and Agesilaus had intended the expedition to be a Panhellenic enterprise,^[61] but Athens, Corinth, and especially Thebes, refused to participate.^[62][63] In Spring 396, Agesilaus came to Aulis (in Boeotian territory) to sacrifice on the place where Agamemnon had done so just before his departure to Troy at the head of the Greek army in the Iliad, thus giving a grandiose aspect to the expedition. However he did not inform the Boeotians and brought his own seer to perform the sacrifice, instead of the local one. Learning this, the Boeotians prevented him from sacrificing and further humiliated him by casting away the victim; they perhaps intended to provoke a confrontation, as the relations between Sparta and Thebes had become execrable. Agesilaus then left to Asia, but Thebes remained hateful to him for the rest of his life.^[64]

Campaign in Asia (396–394 BC)

Once Agesilaus landed in Ephesus, the Spartan main base, he concluded a three months' truce with Tissaphernes, likely to settle the affairs among the Greek allies.^[65] He integrated some of the Greek mercenaries formerly hired by Cyrus the Younger (the Ten Thousand) in his army. They had returned from Persia under the leadership of Xenophon, who also remained in Agesilaus' staff.^[66] In Ephesus, Agesilaus' authority was nevertheless overshadowed by Lysander, who was reacquainted with many of his supporters, men he had placed in control of the Greek cities at the end of the Peloponnesian War. Angered by his local aura, Agesilaus humiliated Lysander several times to force him to leave the army, despite his former relationship and Lysander's role in his accession to the throne.^[67][68] Plutarch adds that after Agesilaus' emancipation from him, Lysander returned to his undercover scheme to make the monarchy elective.^[69]

After Lysander's departure, Agesilaus raided

Agesilaus returned to Greece by land, crossing the Hellespont and from there along the coast of the Aegean Sea. In Thessaly he won a cavalry battle near Narthacium against the Pharsalians who had made an alliance with Thebes.^[93][94][95] He then entered Boeotia by the Thermopylae, where he received reinforcements from Sparta.^[96] Meanwhile, Aristodamos—the regent of the young Agiad king Agesipolis—won a major victory at Nemea near Argos, which was offset by the disaster of the Spartan navy at Knidos against the Persian fleet led by Konon, an exiled Athenian general. Agesilaus lied to his men about the outcome of the battle of Knidos to avoid demoralising them as they were about to fight a large engagement against the combined armies of Thebes, Athens, Argos and Corinth. The following Battle of Coroneia was a classic clash between two lines of hoplites.^[97] The anti-Spartan allies were rapidly defeated, but the Thebans managed to retreat in good order, despite Agesilaus' activity on the front line, which caused him several injuries. The next day the Thebans requested a truce to recover their dead, therefore conceding defeat, although they had not been bested on the battlefield.^[98] Agesilaus appears to have tried to win an honourable victory, by risking his life and being merciful with some Thebans who had sought shelter in the nearby Temple of Athena Itonia.^[99] He then moved to Delphi, where he offered one tenth of the booty he had amassed since his landing at Ephesos, and returned to Sparta.^[98]

No pitched battle took place in Greece in 393. Perhaps Agesilaus was still recovering from his wounds, or he was deprived of command because of the opposition of Lysander's and Pausanias' friends, who were disappointed by his lack of decisive victory and his appointment of Peisander as navarch before the disaster of Knidos.^[100] The loss of the Spartan fleet besides allowed Konon to capture the island of Kythera, in the south of the Peloponnese, from where he could raid Spartan territory.^[101] In 392, Sparta sent Antalcidas to Asia in order to negotiate a general peace with Tiribazus, the satrap of Lydia, while Sparta would recognise Persia's sovereignty over the Asian Greek cities. However, the Greek allies also sent emissaries to Sardis to refuse Antalcidas' plan, and Artaxerxes likewise rejected it. A second peace conference in Sparta failed the following year because of Athens.^[102] A personal enemy of Antalcidas, Agesilaus likely disapproved these talks, which show that his influence at home had waned.^[103] Plutarch says that he befriended the young Agiad king Agesipolis, possibly to prevent his opponents from coalescing behind him.^[104]

By 391 Agesilaus had apparently recovered his influence as he was appointed at the head of the army, while his half-brother

When war broke out afresh with Thebes, Agesilaus twice invaded Boeotia (in 378 and 377 BC), although he spent the next five years largely out of action due to an unspecified but apparently grave illness. In the congress of 371 an altercation is recorded between him and the Theban general Epaminondas, and due to his influence, Thebes was peremptorily excluded from the peace, and orders given for Agesilaus's royal colleague Cleombrotus to march against Thebes in 371. Cleombrotus was defeated and killed at the Battle of Leuctra and the Spartan supremacy overthrown.^[108]

In 370 Agesilaus was engaged in an embassy to

Again, in 362, Epaminondas almost succeeded in seizing the city of Sparta with a rapid and unexpected march. The Battle of Mantinea, in which Agesilaus took no part, was followed by a general peace: Sparta, however, stood aloof, hoping even yet to recover her supremacy.

Expedition to Egypt

Sometime after the Battle of Mantineia, Agesilaus went to Egypt at the head of a mercenary force to aid the king Nectanebo I and his regent Teos against Persia. In the summer of 358, he transferred his services to Teos's cousin and rival, Nectanebo II, who, in return for his help, gave him a sum of over 200 talents. On his way home Agesilaus died in Cyrenaica, around the age of 84, after a reign of some 41 years.^[iii] His body was embalmed in wax, and buried at Sparta.^[107]

He was succeeded by his son Archidamus III.

Legacy

Agesilaus was of small stature and unimpressive appearance, and was lame from birth. These facts were used as an argument against his succession, an

As a statesman he won himself both enthusiastic adherents and bitter enemies. Agesilaus was most successful in the opening and closing periods of his reign: commencing but then surrendering a glorious career in Asia; and in extreme age, maintaining his prostrate country. Other writers acknowledge his extremely high popularity at home, but suggest his occasionally rigid and arguably irrational political loyalties and convictions contributed greatly to Spartan decline, notably his unremitting hatred of Thebes, which led to Sparta's humiliation at the Battle of Leuctra and thus the end of Spartan hegemony.^[116] Historian J. B. Bury remarks that "there is something melancholy about his career:" born into a Sparta that was the unquestioned continental power of Hellas, the Sparta which mourned him eighty four years later had suffered a series of military defeats which would have been unthinkable to his forebears, had seen its population severely decline, and had run so short of money that its soldiers were increasingly sent on campaigns fought more for money than for defense or glory.^[117] Plutarch also describes how often, to remove the threat of instigators of internal dissension, Agesilaus would send his enemies abroad with governorships, where they often were corrupt and procured themselves enemies. Agesilaus would then protect them against these new enemies of theirs, so as to make them his friends. As a result, he no longer had to face internal opposition, as his enemies had henceforth become allies.

As for his personal life, though he had two daughters, Eupolia and Prolyta, and a wife, Cleora, he nontheless had the habbit of forming homoosexual "attachments for young men".

Other historical accounts paint Agesilaus as a prototype for the ideal leader. His awareness, thoughtfulness, and wisdom were all traits to be emulated diplomatically, while his bravery and shrewdness in battle epitomised the heroic Greek commander. These historians point towards the unstable oligarchies established by Lysander in the former Athenian Empire and the failures of Spartan leaders (such as Pausanias and Kleombrotos) for the eventual suppression of Spartan power. The ancient historian

If I have done any noble action, that is a sufficient memorial; if I have done nothing noble, all the statues in the world will not preserve my memory.[iv]

Agesilaus lived in the most frugal style alike at home and in the field, and though his campaigns were undertaken largely to secure booty, he was content to enrich the state and his friends and to return as poor as he had set forth.^{[87][118][119][120][121]}

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