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Agiad
The Agiad dynasty (, ''Agiádai'') was one of the two royal families of the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. They ruled jointly along with the Eurypontid dynasty, possibly from the 8th century BC onwards, being the senior of the two houses. The hypothetical founder of the dynasty was Agis I, possibly the first king of Sparta at the end of the 10th century BC, who subsequently gave his name to the dynasty. The two lines, who maintained an enduring rivalry, were, according to tradition, respectively descended from the twins Eurysthenes and Procles, both descendants of Heracles. The most famous member of the Agiad dynasty was Leonidas I, known for his heroic death at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. The last Agiad king was Agesipolis III, deposed by the Eurypontid Lycurgus in 215 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 Prokle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Kings Of Sparta
For most of its history, the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city-state of Sparta in the Peloponnese was ruled by kings. Sparta was unusual among the Greek Polis, city-states in that it maintained its kingship past the archaic Greece, Archaic age. It was even more unusual in that it had diarchy, two kings simultaneously, who were called the ''archagetai'', coming from two separate dynasty, lines. According to tradition, the two lines, the Agiad dynasty, 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 th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonidas I
Leonidas I (; , ''Leōnídas''; born ; died 11 August 480 BC) was king of the Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. He was the son of king Anaxandridas II and the 17th king of the Agiad dynasty, a Spartan royal house which claimed descent from the mythical demigod Heracles. Leonidas I ascended to the throne in , succeeding his half-brother king Cleomenes I. He ruled jointly along with king Leotychidas until his death in 480 BC, when he was succeeded by his son, Pleistarchus. At the Second Greco-Persian War, Leonidas led the allied Greek forces in a last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), attempting to defend the pass from the invading Persian army, and was killed early during the third and last day of the battle. Leonidas entered myth as a hero and the leader of the 300 Spartans who died in battle at Thermopylae. While the Greeks lost this battle, they were able to expel the Persian invaders in the following year. Life According to Herodotus, Leonidas' mot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agis I
Agis I (Greek: ) was a king of Sparta and eponym of the Agiad dynasty. He was possibly the first historical king of Sparta, reigning at the end of the tenth century BC, during the emergence of the Dorians in Laconia. He is said by most ancient authors to have conquered the region and enslaved the helots. Life Agis was the eponymous founder of the Agiad dynasty, one of the two royal families in Sparta (the other being the Eurypontids). The Greek historian Herodotus makes him the son of Lathria and Eurysthenes, who was the elder of the twin sons of Aristodemus—the first Heraclid king of Sparta as great-great-grandson of Herakles. However, Eurysthenes was certainly invented in order to extend the length of Spartan rule to the fall of the Mycenean civilisation—some time after 1200—while there was in fact a gap of more than two centuries before the arrival of the Dorians in Laconia. For the same reason, early Spartan kings were given a reign of 40 years on average, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eurysthenes
Eurysthenes (, "widely ruling") was king of Sparta and one of the Heracleidae in Greek mythology. He was a son of Aristodemus and Argia, daughter of Autesion. He had a twin brother, Procles. Together they received the land of Lacedaemon after Cresphontes, Temenus and Aristodemus defeated Tisamenus, the last Achaean king of the Peloponnesus. Eurysthenes married Lathria, daughter of Thersander, King of Kleonae, sister of his sister-in-law Anaxandra, and was the father of his successor, Agis I, founder of the Agiad dynasty of the Kings of Sparta. The title of ''archēgetēs'', "founding magistrate," was explicitly denied to Eurysthenes and Procles by the later Spartan government on the grounds that they were not founders of a state, but were maintained in their offices by parties of foreigners. Instead the honor was granted to their son and grandson, for which reason the two lines were called the Agiads and the Eurypontids. Legend of the double kingship The story of the double k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agesipolis III
Agesipolis III (; died 183 BC) was the 32nd and last of the kings of the Agiad dynasty in ancient Sparta. Agesipolis was the son of another Agesipolis and grandson of Cleombrotus II and Chilonis, daughter of Leonidas II and Cratesiclea. After the death of Cleomenes III he was elected king while still a minor, and placed under the dubious guardianship of an uncle named Cleomenes. Agesipolis was, however, soon deposed by his colleague Lycurgus. In 195 BC, he was at the head of the Lacedaemonian exiles, who joined Titus Quinctius Flamininus in his attack upon Nabis, the tyrant of Lacedaemon (see War against Nabis). Agesipolis was a member of an embassy sent about 183 to Rome by the Lacedaemonian exiles, and, with his companions, was intercepted by pirates and killed.Polybius Polybius (; , ; ) was a Greek historian of the middle Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , a universal history documenting the rise of Rome in the Mediterranean in the third and second centuri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archelaus Of Sparta
Archelaus (, ''Ἀrkhélaos''; reigned from c. 790 to c. 760 BC) was the 7th Agiad dynasty king of Sparta. He was a son of Agesilaus I. Together with Charilaus, he conquered Elis. During his reign he also conquered the city of Aegys and sold the inhabitants into slavery. He was succeeded as king by his son, Teleclus Teleclus or Teleklos (Greek: Τήλεκλος) was the 8th Agiad dynasty king of Sparta during the eighth century BC. He was the son of King Archelaus and grandson of King Agesilaus I. Pausanias reports that Teleclus' reign saw the conquest of .... References 8th-century BC monarchs 8th-century BC Spartans Agiad kings of Sparta {{AncientGreece-royal-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charilaus
Charilaus (), also spelled Charilaos, Charillos, or Charillus, was a king of Sparta in the middle of the 8th century BC. He was probably the first historical king of the Eurypontid dynasty. Life and reign Sparta was a diarchy, with two kings of equal powers from distinct dynasties. However, in its earliest history, Sparta was likely ruled by only one king, from the Agiad dynasty. In the 8th century, a synoecism occurred on the site of Sparta, where four villages merged to create the polis of Sparta. At this occasion, two of the villages ( Limnai and Kynosoura) probably requested to also have a king from their territory sharing power with the Agiad one, who was based in the other two villages ( Pitana and Mesoa). In later times, the Spartans crafted a mythical story making the second dynasty—the Eurypontids—as old as the Agiads, notably by inventing several kings to make the two dynasties symmetrical. Modern scholars consider instead that Charilaus was the first historica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soos (king Of Sparta)
Soos () was a fictional king of Sparta, created in the 4th century BC in order to harmonise the list of the two Spartan dynasties. Various deeds were also attached to his reign, dated by ancient authors to the 11th century BC. Life Soos is supposed to be the son of Procles, the alleged founder of the Eurypontid dynasty, one of the two royal family in Sparta (the other being the Agiads). However, modern historians consider that he was invented during the 4th century BC. Soos is absent from the lists of kings given by Herodotus, who wrote in the 5th century. He makes his first appearance in Plato's dialogue '' Cratylus'', but he is only described there as a nobleman, not a king. A bit later, the historian Ephorus implicitly recognized him as king by referring to Lycurgus as the sixth Eurypontid in line from Procles, which is only possible if Soos is counted as king. The main reason for his addition was the need to synchronize the reigns of the Eurypontid Theopompus and the Agiad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heracleidae
The Heracleidae (; ) or Heraclids were the numerous descendants of Heracles, especially applied in a narrower sense to the descendants of Hyllus, the eldest of his four sons by Deianira (Hyllus was also sometimes thought of as Heracles' son by Melite). Other Heracleidae included Macaria, Lamos, Manto, Bianor, Tlepolemus, and Telephus. These Heraclids were a group of Dorian kings who conquered the Peloponnesian kingdoms of Mycenae, Sparta and Argos; according to the literary tradition in Greek mythology, they claimed a right to rule through their ancestor. Since Karl Otfried Müller's ''Die Dorier'' (1830, English translation 1839), I. ch. 3, their rise to dominance has been associated with a " Dorian invasion". Though details of genealogy differ from one ancient author to another, the cultural significance of the mythic theme, that the descendants of Heracles, exiled after his death, returned some generations later to reclaim land that their ancestors had held in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitane (Laconia)
Pitane (), or Pitana (Πιτάνα), was a settlement that existed before the Dorian conquest. It was united with three other such settlements ( Mesoa, Limnae, and Cynosura) by a common sacrifice to Artemis, and eventually coalesced into ancient Sparta. Pitane is called a polis by Euripides, and is also mentioned as a place by Pindar. Herodotus, who had been there, calls it a deme. He also mentions a λόχος Πιτανάτης ("company of Pitane"); and Caracalla, in imitation of antiquity, composed a λόχος Πιτανάτης of Spartans. Thucydides claims that the "λόχος Πιτανάτης" cited by Herodotus never actually existed, and cites the story as an example of baseless hearsay propagated by "other Hellenes." It appears from the passage of Pindar quoted above, that Pitane was at the ford of the Eurotas, and consequently in the northern part of the city. It was the favourite and fashionable place of residence at Sparta, like Collytus at ancient Athens and Cra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lycurgus (lawgiver)
Lycurgus (; ) was the legendary lawgiver of Sparta, credited with the formation of its (), involving political, economic, and social reforms to produce a military-oriented Spartan society in accordance with the Delphic oracle. The Spartans in the historical period honoured him as a god. As a historical figure, almost nothing is known for certain about him, including when he lived and what he did in life. The stories of him place him at multiple times. Nor is it clear when the political reforms attributed to him, called the Great Rhetra, occurred. Ancient dates range from – putting aside the implausibly early Xenophonic 11th century BC – the early ninth century () to as late as early eighth century (). There remains no consensus as to when he lived; some modern scholars deny that he existed at all. The reforms at various times attributed to him touch all aspects of Spartan society. They included the creation of the Spartan constitution (in most traditions a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sparta
Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas river in Laconia, in southeastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars, in rivalry with the rising naval power of Classical Athens, Athens. Sparta was the principal enemy of History of Athens, Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it emerged victorious after the Battle of Aegospotami. The decisive Battle of Leuctra against Thebes, Greece, Thebes in 371 BC ended the Spartan hegemony, although the city-state maintained its Independence, political independence until its forced integration into the Achaean League in 192 BC. The city nevertheless recovered m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
