A History of Ancient Greece in Fifty Lives by David Stuttard

Author:David Stuttard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames & Hudson

King Agesilaus II of Sparta

Agesilaus was born lame, but despite his disability, with the support of the general Lysander he became one of the two kings of Sparta in 400 when his rival Leotychidas, suspected of being the illegitimate son of Alcibiades, was disqualified. In 396, as Sparta sought to assert its pre-eminence in the wake of the Peloponnesian War, he attacked Persia, symbolically assembling his army at Aulis, from where the legendary Agamemnon set sail for Troy. Once in Asia, Agesilaus defeated the Persians at Sardis with the help of Xenophon’s mercenaries, but he was recalled to Greece to fight in the Corinthian War, where he won the battle of Coronea (394). His long-standing enmity towards Thebes, however, led ultimately to Sparta’s defeat at Leuctra (371), and the subsequent invasion of the Spartan homeland of Laconia (370/69). When Agesilaus died on campaign in north Africa in his eighties, commanding a force of mercenaries seeking to liberate Egypt from Persian rule, Xenophon (who had benefited from his friendship and patronage) wrote his eulogistic biography.

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