Cleombrotus I

Cleombrotus I was the Spartan king killed at Leuctra, in the battle that ended Sparta's position as the first military power of Greece. He came to the throne of the Agiad house in 380 BC on the death of his brother Agesipolis, and spent most of his reign in the shadow of the other king, Agesilaus II, whose policy of coercing Thebes he carried out with visible reluctance. He led three expeditions into Boeotia and was criticised at home each time for achieving nothing, which is the background to what happened next: when he marched again in 371 BC he was under pressure to fight rather than manoeuvre. He met the Theban army under Epaminondas at Leuctra in July with a clear advantage in numbers, perhaps 10,000 to 6,000. Epaminondas did what nobody had done to a Spartan line before. Instead of distributing his strength evenly he massed his best troops fifty ranks deep on his own left, opposite the Spartan right where the king and the professional Spartiates always stood, held back the rest of his line, and attacked at an angle so that the decisive collision happened before the rest of the armies engaged. The Sacred Band went in on the flank. Cleombrotus was mortally wounded in the fighting around the body and about 400 of the 700 Spartiates present were killed. Sparta's manpower was too small to replace them. Within a year Epaminondas was in the Peloponnese freeing Messenia, the source of the helot labour that made the Spartan system possible, and Sparta never recovered its power.

• Lived: 420 BCE – 371 BCE
• Nationality: Spartan
• Roles: monarch, military_leader