Agesilaus II
Agesilaus II was lame, was made king by an argument about an oracle, and reigned for thirty-eight years over the rise and collapse of Spartan power. The Eurypontid succession of 398 was contested between him and his nephew, and turned on an oracle warning Sparta against a lame kingship. His supporters argued that the lameness meant a king of doubtful parentage rather than a limp, and he was chosen. He was the first Spartan king to campaign in Asia, taking an army into Persian territory in 396 and beating a satrapal force at Sardis; the Persians answered by paying Thebes, Corinth, Argos and Athens to make war on Sparta at home, and he was recalled to fight the Corinthian War, remarking that his own king had driven him out of Asia with thirty thousand archers - the figure stamped on a Persian coin. The peace that ended that war in 387 was dictated by the Persian king and enforced by Sparta, which delivered the Greek cities of Asia to Persia in exchange for a free hand in Greece. Agesilaus used it: garrisons in allied cities, oligarchies installed, Thebes occupied in peacetime by a Spartan officer acting without orders and not disavowed. It was the most complete Spartan hegemony ever achieved and it lasted fifteen years. Thebes threw the garrison out in 379, beat a Spartan army at Tegyra, and at Leuctra in 371 destroyed the Spartan phalanx and killed the other king. Sparta lost Messenia, which was the helot population its entire social system existed to hold down, and never recovered. Agesilaus spent his last years hiring himself out as a mercenary commander in Egypt to raise money for a state that had run out of citizens, and died on the Libyan coast at about eighty-four.
- Lived: 444 BCE – 360 BCE
- Nationality: Spartan
- Roles: head_of_state, monarch
