Areus II ( grc, Ἀρεύς Β΄) was Agiad
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 ...
from 262 to 254 BC. He never reigned as he was still a child when he died. He was succeeded by his cousin
Leonidas II, who had served as regent.
Life
Areus was the son of
Acrotatus () and
Chilonis, who belonged to the Agiad dynasty, one of the two royal families at Sparta (the other being the
Eurypontids). He was named after his grandfather
Areus I (). His father died early in his reign at the Battle of
Megalopolis
A megalopolis () or a supercity, also called a megaregion, is a group of metropolitan areas which are perceived as a continuous urban area through common systems of transport, economy, resources, ecology, and so on. They are integrated enoug ...
in 262, towards the end of the
Chremonidean War
The Chremonidean War (267–261 BC) was fought by a coalition of some Greek city-states and Ptolemaic Egypt against Antigonid Macedonian domination. It ended in a Macedonian victory which confirmed Antigonid control over the city-states of Gr ...
, during which Areus I had likewise fallen in battle three years earlier. Areus II was still a minor at the time, and his cousin
Leonidas
Leonidas I (; grc-gre, Λεωνίδας; died 19 September 480 BC) was a List of kings of Sparta#Heraclids, king of the Greek city-state of Sparta, and the 17th of the List of kings of Sparta#Agiad dynasty, Agiad line, a dynasty which claimed d ...
was appointed regent. Leonidas was the son of
Cleonymus, who had also been regent to his nephew Areus I in 309. However, Areus II never reigned as he died still a child in 254, and Leonidas succeeded him ().
Areus II was honoured by a
proxeny
Proxeny or ( grc-gre, προξενία) in ancient Greece was an arrangement whereby a citizen (chosen by the city) hosted foreign ambassadors at his own expense, in return for honorary titles from the state. The citizen was called (; plural: o ...
decree by the city of
Delphi in 255/254. This decree shows the transformation of the Spartan kingship in the third century, as the honours received by the infant king are similar to those of the
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
monarchs of the period, whereas Spartan kings usually had a limited role in the
Spartan constitution. The decree also mentions Chilonis, Areus' mother, in the manner of the
Ptolemaic dynasty of
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
, which was allied with Sparta at the time and whose court Areus I had tried to emulate.
[Walthall, "Becoming Kings", p. 139 (note 36).]
References
Bibliography
* D. Alexander Walthall, "Becoming Kings: Spartan ''Basileia'' in the Hellenistic Period", in
Nino Luraghi
Nino Luraghi (born 30 November 1964) is an Italian historian of ancient Greece, who holds the Wykeham Professorship of Ancient History at Oxford University.
Life
Luraghi is the son of Raimondo Luraghi (1921–2012), an Italian resistance fight ...
(editor), ''The Splendors and Miseries of Ruling Alone, Encounters with Monarchy from Archaic Greece to the Hellenistic Mediterranean'', Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2013.
254 BC deaths
3rd-century BC monarchs in Europe
3rd-century BC Spartans
Agiad kings of Sparta
Year of birth unknown
Monarchs who died as children
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