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Pleistarchus
Pleistarchus ( grc-gre, Πλείσταρχος ; died c. 458 BC) was the List of kings of Sparta, Agiad King of Sparta from 480 to 458 BC. Biography Pleistarchus was born as a prince, likely the only son of King Leonidas I and Gorgo, Queen of Sparta, Queen Gorgo. His grandparents were Kings Anaxandridas II and Cleomenes I. He was born from an avunculate marriage – his parents were uncle and Nephew and niece, niece. His uncle Cleombrotus (regent), Cleombrotus was his tutor. Pleistarchus' father King Leonidas perished in 480 BC at the Battle of Thermopylae. For the early part of Pleistarchus's reign, his uncle Cleombrotus acted as regent; after Cleombrotus's death in 479 BC, Pleistarchus's cousin Pausanias the Regent, Pausanias was regent. It is unknown whether Pleistarchus was married. He died without an heir, and was succeeded by Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias. Notes {{Kings of Sparta 458 BC deaths 5th-century BC rulers 5th-century BC Spartans Agi ...
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Agiad Kings Of Sparta
The Agiad dynasty was one of the two royal families of Sparta, a powerful city-state of Ancient Greece. The Agiads were seniors to the other royal house, the Eurypontids, with whom they had an enduring rivalry. Their hypothetical founder was Agis I, possibly the first king of Sparta at the end of the 10th century, who gave his name to the dynasty. The last Agiad king was Agesipolis III, deposed by the Eurypontid Lycurgus in 215 BC. Their most famous member was probably Leonidas I, known for his heroic death at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. History In order to explain the peculiarity of the Spartan two kings, the Spartans elaborated a legend saying that Aristodemos—the first king of Sparta—had twins, Eurysthenes and Prokles. Since the Spartans did not know who was born first, they opted for a diarchy, a college of two kings with the same power; Eurysthenes being the first Agiad, Prokles the first Eurypontid.Hard, ''Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology'', p. 291. M ...
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Pleistoanax
Pleistoanax, also spelled Plistoanax, ( grc-gre, Πλειστοάναξ) was Agiad king of Sparta from 458 to 409 BC. He was the leader of the peace party in Sparta at a time of violent confrontations against Athens for the hegemony over Greece. The son of Pausanias, Pleistoanax was still a minor in 458 BC, so his uncle Nicomedes acted as regent. His first recorded action was the invasion of Athens in 446 BC as part of the First Peloponnesian War (460–445 BC), but he chose instead to negotiate with Pericles a settlement that became the Thirty Years' Peace. However, Pleistoanax was sued in Sparta for his failure to take Athens and went into exile in Arcadia to avoid punishment. He lived on the sacred ground of Zeus in Mt. Lykaion for the next 18 years. The death of the rival king Archidamus II in 427 enabled his return to Sparta, while the city was again at war against Athens in the Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Pleistoanax renewed his efforts to make peace with A ...
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Leonidas I
Leonidas I (; grc-gre, Λεωνίδας; died 19 September 480 BC) was a king of the Greek city-state of Sparta, and the 17th of the Agiad line, a dynasty which claimed descent from the mythological demigod Heracles. Leonidas I was son of King Anaxandridas II. He succeeded his half-brother King Cleomenes I to the throne in c. 489 BC. His co-ruler was King Leotychidas. He was succeeded by his son, King Pleistarchus. Leonidas had a notable participation in the Second Greco-Persian War, where he led the allied Greek forces to a last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC) while attempting to defend the pass from the invading Persian army; he died at the battle and entered myth as the leader of the 300 Spartans. While the Greeks lost this battle, they were able to expel the Persian invaders in the following year. Life According to Herodotus, Leonidas' mother was not only his father's wife but also his father's niece and had been barren for so long that the ephors, the five ...
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Pausanias The Regent
Pausanias ( grc-gre, Παυσανίας; died c. 477 BC) was a Spartan regent and a general. In 479 BC, as a leader of the Hellenic League's combined land forces, Pausanias won a pivotal victory in the Battle of Plataea ending the Second Persian invasion of Greece. One year after the victories over the Persians and the Persians' allies, Pausanias fell under suspicion of conspiring with the Persian king, Xerxes I to betray Greeks and died in 477 BC in Sparta starved to death by fellow citizens. What is known of his life is largely according to Thucydides' ''History of the Peloponnesian War'', Diodorus' '' Bibliotheca historica'' and a handful of other classical sources. Early life Pausanias like all Spartan citizens (Spartiate), would have gone through intense training from the age of seven and was required to be a regular soldier until the age of thirty. Pausanias was from the royal house of the Agiads. Yet this did not exempt him from going through the same training as eve ...
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Gorgo, Queen Of Sparta
Gorgo (; el, Γοργώ ; fl. 480 BC) was a Spartan woman and wife to King Leonidas I (r. 489–480 BC). She was the daughter and the only known child of Cleomenes I, Leonidas' half-brother and King of Sparta (r. 520–490 BC). Gorgo was also the mother of King Pleistarchus, her only son with King Leonidas I. She is notably one of the few female historical figures actually named by Herodotus, and is depicted in sources as intelligent and wise. Her birth date is uncertain, but based on Herodotus' dating, it is most likely to have been between 518 and 508 BC. Early life and education According to Herodotus, Gorgo was the only child of King Cleomenes I of Sparta. The earliest anecdote of her life that he provides in '' The Histories'' comes when Aristagoras, seeking allies after the Ionian revolt, came to Sparta to try to convince Cleomenes to invade the Persian Empire. He cited the "disgrace" suffered by the Ionians in Anatolia and weaved further tales of the wealth and resou ...
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List Of Kings Of Sparta
For most of its history, the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta in the Peloponnese was ruled by kings. Sparta was unusual among the Greek city-states in that it maintained its kingship past the Archaic age. It was even more unusual in that it had two kings simultaneously, who were called the ''archagetai'', coming from two separate lines. According to tradition, the two lines, the Agiads (, ) and Eurypontids (, ), were respectively descended from the twins Eurysthenes and Procles, the descendants of Heracles, who supposedly conquered Sparta two generations after the Trojan War. The dynasties themselves, however, were named after the twins' grandsons, the kings Agis I and Eurypon, respectively. The Agiad line was regarded as being senior to the Eurypontid line.Cartledge, Paul, ''The Spartans'', Vintage Books, 2003. Although there are lists of the earlier purported Kings of Sparta, there is little evidence for the existence of any kings before the middle of the sixth century BC ...
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King Of Sparta
For most of its history, the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta in the Peloponnese was ruled by kings. Sparta was unusual among the Greek city-states in that it maintained its kingship past the Archaic age. It was even more unusual in that it had two kings simultaneously, who were called the ''archagetai'', coming from two separate lines. According to tradition, the two lines, the Agiads (, ) and Eurypontids (, ), were respectively descended from the twins Eurysthenes and Procles, the descendants of Heracles, who supposedly conquered Sparta two generations after the Trojan War. The dynasties themselves, however, were named after the twins' grandsons, the kings Agis I and Eurypon, respectively. The Agiad line was regarded as being senior to the Eurypontid line.Cartledge, Paul, ''The Spartans'', Vintage Books, 2003. Although there are lists of the earlier purported Kings of Sparta, there is little evidence for the existence of any kings before the middle of the sixth century BC o ...
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Anaxandridas II
Anaxandridas II ( grc-gre, Ἀναξανδρίδας) was an Agiad king of Sparta between c. 560 BC and c. 524 BC, father of Leonidas I and grandfather of Pleistarchus. Under the leadership of the ephor Chilon, in office during the middle of the 6th century, Sparta ended its streak of violent conquests, such as in Messenia, and adopted a pro-Achaea policy based on diplomacy. Anaxandridas was succeeded by Cleomenes I. Biography Anaxandridas was the son of Leon, who reigned during the first half of the 6th century, between 590 and 560 BC. He belonged to the Agiads, one of the two royal dynasties of Sparta (the other being the Eurypontids). In c. 560 BC, Anaxandridas II, the new Agiad king of the Spartans, defeated the Acadian Tegeatae and compelled them to acknowledge the supremacy of Sparta. By the time when the Lydian king Croesus sent his embassy to form an alliance with "the mightiest of the Greeks" (about 554 BC), the war with Tegea, which during the reigns of previo ...
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Cleombrotus (regent)
Cleombrotus ( el, Κλεόμβροτος, ''Kleómbrotos''), regent of Sparta between 480 and 479 BC. He was a member of the Agiad dynasty, the son of Anaxandridas II and the brother of Cleomenes I, Dorieus and of Leonidas I. When the latter died, he became the tutor of his nephew Pleistarchus, son of Leonidas, and leader of the Greek infantry at the beginning of the second phase of the Greco-Persian Wars. Cleombrotus was in command of the Spartan and Peloponnesian troops who built the wall across the Isthmus of Corinth The Isthmus of Corinth ( Greek: Ισθμός της Κορίνθου) is the narrow land bridge which connects the Peloponnese peninsula with the rest of the mainland of Greece, near the city of Corinth. The word " isthmus" comes from the Anci ... that was intended to keep the Persian army out of the Peloponnese. He died soon after returning to Sparta from the Isthmus. He was the father of Pausanias and the Spartan general Nicomedes.Thucydides I,107. Not ...
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Battle Of Thermopylae
The Battle of Thermopylae ( ; grc, Μάχη τῶν Θερμοπυλῶν, label= Greek, ) was fought in 480 BC between the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Xerxes I and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Sparta under Leonidas I. Lasting over the course of three days, it was one of the most prominent battles of both the second Persian invasion of Greece and the wider Greco-Persian Wars. The engagement at Thermopylae occurred simultaneously with the Battle of Artemisium: between July and September 480 BC. The second Persian invasion under Xerxes I was a delayed response to the failure of the first Persian invasion, which had been initiated by Darius I and ended in 490 BC by an Athenian-led Greek victory at the Battle of Marathon. By 480 BC, a decade after the Persian defeat at Marathon, Xerxes had amassed a massive land and naval force, and subsequently set out to conquer all of Greece. In response, the Athenian politician and general Themistocles proposed that th ...
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5th-century BC Spartans
The 5th century is the time period from 401 ( CDI) through 500 ( D) ''Anno Domini'' (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia. It saw the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which came to an end in 476 AD. This empire had been ruled by a succession of weak emperors, with the real political might being increasingly concentrated among military leaders. Internal instability allowed a Visigoth army to reach and ransack Rome in 410. Some recovery took place during the following decades, but the Western Empire received another serious blow when a second foreign group, the Vandals, occupied Carthage, capital of an extremely important province in Africa. Attempts to retake the province were interrupted by the invasion of the Huns under Attila. After Attila's defeat, both Eastern and Western empires joined forces for a final assault on Vandal North Africa, but this campaign was ...
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5th-century BC Rulers
The 5th century is the time period from 401 ( CDI) through 500 ( D) ''Anno Domini'' (AD) or Common Era (CE) in the Julian calendar. The 5th century is noted for being a period of migration and political instability throughout Eurasia. It saw the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which came to an end in 476 AD. This empire had been ruled by a succession of weak emperors, with the real political might being increasingly concentrated among military leaders. Internal instability allowed a Visigoth army to reach and ransack Rome in 410. Some recovery took place during the following decades, but the Western Empire received another serious blow when a second foreign group, the Vandals, occupied Carthage, capital of an extremely important province in Africa. Attempts to retake the province were interrupted by the invasion of the Huns under Attila. After Attila's defeat, both Eastern and Western empires joined forces for a final assault on Vandal North Africa, but this campaign was ...
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