What body could judge the king of Sparta. Royal power in Sparta
The role of kings
One of the influential political institutions of Sparta was the institution of royal power. Sparta was ruled by two kings belonging to two dynasties - Agiad and Eurypontides. The origin of these dynasties dates back to ancient times, back to the time of the final settlement of the Dorians in Laconia in the 10th century. BC e. In the V-IV centuries. BC e. these dynasties represented the two most noble and wealthy families among the Spartan aristocracy. The Spartan kings were not the bearers of the supreme sole power, and the Spartan political system was not a monarchy. Each king enjoyed the same power. Unlike the monarchs, the Spartan kings were subject to the will of the apella, the decisions of the gerusia, of which they were members as ordinary members, but they were subjected to especially strict and daily control by the collegium of ephors. Nevertheless, the Spartan kings had quite a lot of power, and their role in public affairs cannot be underestimated. The prerogatives of the kings were the supreme military command and the leadership of a religious cult, and these state functions in Spartan society were of particular importance. During military campaigns outside of Sparta, the power of the king as commander-in-chief was completely unlimited. The tsars were members of the Gerussia and, as such, took a real part in the decision of all state affairs. In addition, even in peacetime, the units of the Spartan army (pestilence, suckers, enomotii) retained their structure and, of course, they were dominated, if not legally, then in fact, by the authority of their commander in chief.
Tree on the ruins of ancient Sparta. Photo: sean_yusko
When the king was retinue, which constantly supported his political authority. Two Pythia accompanied the king, were present at his public meals, and it was them that the king sent to Delphi to the famous Delphic oracle. The growth of the authority of the kings was also facilitated by the performance of priestly functions, those signs of honor that they were entitled to by law: the kings were the largest landowners and, according to Xenophon, “in the cities of the perieks, the king is allowed to take a sufficient amount of land for himself.” At public meals, the king was given a place of honor, a double portion, they received on certain days as an honorary offering the best animal and a fixed amount of barley flour and wine, they appointed proxens, married brides - heirs who had lost relatives. The high authority of royal power was also manifested in the provision of special honors to the deceased king. “As for honors,” Xenophon wrote in the 4th century. BC e., - rendered to the king after death, then from the laws of Lycurgus it is clear that the Lacedaemonian kings were honored not as ordinary people but as heroes. With such a position of kings in the state, there was always a real danger of strengthening royal power, up to its transformation into a real monarchy. That is why the kings were given so much attention.
“The supreme power in the meetings should belong to the god-like kings, whose heart is dear to the wonderful city of Sparta; after them - the elders-geronts and, finally, the people, who should only answer them "yes" or "no" (Plutarch. Lycurgus, ch. 7).
In the 7th century BC e., during the second Messenian war, the army and weapons were reformed. By this time, apparently, the creation of a phalanx of hoplites (foot soldiers in full military armament) dates back.
Since the creation of the “community of equals”, a new ethics of the Spartan community has arisen, the spokesman of which was the poet Tirteus. The duty of every citizen is to fight for the glory of the Spartan polis, and if necessary, he must die for the glory of the city, men and fathers of Sparta; the dead in battle awaits unfading glory among his descendants.
In the early period, the kings were closely connected with the people, they were the religious and military heads of the community. The origin of the two kings is usually explained by the result of the Sinoikisma of the Dorian and Achaean communities: one royal family was Dorian, the other Achaean. royal power was hereditary and passed down from father to son. The kings were commanders and priests. As the high priests of the Spartan community, they made sacrifices to the gods on behalf of the policy both in peacetime and in time of war.
The houses of the kings were located near the pond so that they would have an abundance of water. When the kings appeared in the gerousia, the elders had to greet them standing. Any case considered in the Gerousia had to begin with an appeal to the kings.
The most important function of kings was their military powers. During the campaigns, the kings enjoyed unlimited power, having the right of life and death over any warrior. During the campaign, none of the officials had the right to interfere with the orders of the kings or disobey them. All decisions were made jointly by the kings and only in this case were they binding.
After the end of the war, the power of the kings was limited to their priestly functions. In addition, they retained from the old days the judicial power in matters of family law: they ruled on matters of inheritance and adoption. In the early period of the history of Sparta, these religious and legal functions of the king were even more important, since they consisted in controlling the continuation of the family. The marriage of an heir daughter and adoption into a family where there were no direct descendants had to do with the inheritance of the clairs and their preservation within the same genus. The daughter-heiress was originally married only to her relatives, just as adoption usually took place from among the relatives. There were no testamentary inheritances in Sparta. Thus, the judicial functions of the king were dictated by the interests of preserving family property and the families of the Spartans.
The death of the king was a great event in the life of Sparta. The city market at this time was closed for 10 days, the public life of the city froze. The body of the king, placed in a coffin, was poured with honey to protect it from decomposition. The coffin was accompanied by a procession of citizens, representatives from all the settlements of the perieks and many helots. At the same time, the helots were obliged to detect grief - to moan, scratch their faces, tear their hair, etc.
The kings of Sparta were large landowners. Apart from land plots allocated to them on the lands of the perieks, they also owned the most fertile plots allocated from state lands. In addition, according to Herodotus, on every new moon and on the seventh day of each month, the kings were supplied “from the people” with an adult sacrificial animal, a medimne of flour and a Laconian quarter of wine, i.e. the maintenance of the royal house in to a large extent rested on the natural supplies of the Spartan community. At the sacrifice, the kings received a double portion of refreshments; they also owned the skins of sacrificial animals (Herodotus, VI, 57). As commanders, they were entitled to part of the spoils of war, while the rest of the booty became the property of the entire state community.
Judging by the message of Herodotus, after the death of the king, the new king forgave one of the Spartans his debt to the king or the Spartiate community, that is, the debt to the private royal household or state (Herodotus, VI, 59). Thus, here the king also acted as the leader of the entire community, on its behalf.
In addition to the kings, who were the chairmen of the Gerousia, the council of elders included 28 people from Spartan noble families no younger than 60 years old. These geronts were elected for life at the people's assembly of the Spartans. Initially, the gerousia was the supreme court of the community and the custodian of oral law, at the same time it was also the supreme council of the state. Its decisions concerned both external and domestic policy Sparta. Later, the civil court passed to the ephors, and the court for criminal cases and state crimes was preserved behind the gerousia.
Army
Spartan society was a militarized society, and therefore the role of the military element in public administration was high. The Spartan apella, as the supreme body, was an assembly of Spartan warriors to a greater extent than the popular assembly of Athens or any other Greek policy.
The Spartan army had a well thought out organizational structure, including a large command corps, which enjoys a certain political influence in society. One of the highest military positions was the position of navarch, commander of the Spartan fleet. The post of navarch was not permanent. Aristotle calls the navarchy "almost a second royal power", and considers the navarchs as commanders and politicians to be real rivals of the Spartan kings. It should be noted that, like the kings, the Spartan navarchs were under the constant control of the ephors. For example, the noble Spartiate Lysander, according to Plutarch, “the most powerful of the Greeks, a kind of ruler of all Greece”, who controlled the fate of a huge fleet, an impressive army, many cities, strictly followed all the instructions of the ephors, on their orders dutifully returned to Sparta, where with with great difficulty was able to justify his actions.
In structure ground forces a permanent staff of various military commanders was envisaged. According to Xenophon, who served in the Spartan army and knew his orders well, the command staff in Sparta was quite numerous. It included the commanders of the units into which the Spartan army was divided: the polemarchs commanding the mora (from 500 to 900 people), the lohags commanding the loch (from 150 to 200 people), the pentecosters commanding the pentecostia (from 50 to 60 people), and the enomotarchs, enomotie commanders (from 25 to 30 people). The polemarchs made up the closest retinue of the king and his military council, they were constantly near the king and even ate with him, were present at the sacrifices. The royal retinue also included selected soldiers who performed the functions of modern adjutants, fortunetellers, doctors, and flutists. Here were the Pythians, as well as the commanders of the allied detachments, mercenary units, and the chiefs of the convoys. In managing the army, special officials helped the kings: various military crimes were analyzed by judges - Hellanodics, special treasurers helped manage finances, lafiropolises were engaged in the sale of military booty. The royal person was guarded by a detachment of 300 "horsemen" - young Spartans (in fact, they were foot soldiers, the name is conditional), its three commanders - hippagreta - were part of the king's inner circle. There is little information in the sources about who appointed the numerous military commanders in the Spartan army and how such a well-functioning system operated in peacetime. It can be assumed that they were elected in the appellation (in the assembly of the same warriors - Spartans), but at the suggestion of the kings. The length of time in office, apparently, depended on the will of the king as commander of the army. Special place among the Spartan commanders, harmosts were appointed as heads of the garrisons of Laconica or on the nearest islands of strategic importance, for example, on the island of Cythera. In general, the Spartan state system as an oligarchic system was a combination of civil and military authorities, in which the power of the Spartan oligarchy was balanced by the authority of military commanders headed by the kings, with whom the Spartan Gerusia and the ephorate were forced to reckon.
1.2 Royal power in ancient Sparta
As you know, in the system of city-states of the classical period in the history of ancient Hellas, two policies - Athens and Sparta - occupied a leading position. Both of these states, each in its own way, made a huge contribution to the formation and development of ancient civilization. For a long time, however, Athens attracted much closer attention of scientists than Sparta: until a certain point, the Greek policy was studied mainly on the basis of Athenian material, which was dictated both by the presence of a rich ancient tradition and the political situation - in Athens, Western democracies saw the prototype open society.
In turn, the pressure of the political and ideological attitudes of the new time strongly influenced the image of Sparta in the works of Western antiquities. At the same time, the topic of the Spartan policy turned out to be extremely relevant and topical for several generations of researchers.
You can figure out how the Spartan state form developed if you take into account the legends about the time that preceded the period under study, which are preserved by researchers. We learn, therefore, “that upon the arrival of the Dorians, the whole country was divided into six urban districts, the capitals of which were Sparta, Amikla, Faris, three inland areas near Eurotas, then Egint near the Arcadian border, Lasa of the Giphean Sea; the sixth was probably the sea harbor of Bey. As in Messenia, the Dorians dispersed into various areas ruled by kings”; they mingled with the former inhabitants; new settlers, such as minii, moved from villages to cities.
Due to the fact that already in antiquity the historical Sparta and its mythologized model were intertwined in a complex and intricate combination, it seems to us a rather difficult task to single out the historical grain in the legend of the initial reform. To solve it, it is necessary, first of all, to evaluate the ancient tradition of the initial reform that has come down to us. Most ancient authors associate the most ancient legislation of Sparta with the name of Lycurgus. But the very name of Lycurgus as a Spartan legislator was first mentioned only by Herodotus, that is, relatively late - not earlier than the middle of the 5th century. According to Herodotus, the laws of Lycurgus were mainly political in nature.
As the main government body, but subordinate to the apella, the gerousia, or council of elders, headed by the kings, is named. Plutarch characterizes gerousia as the first and most important of all the many innovations of Lycurgus. Judging by how much attention Plutarch paid to the discussion of the number of gerontes, he himself had no doubt that the number 30 for gerontes was established by Lycurgus. All attempts by modern scholars to give a suitable explanation for the number of Lycurgus geronts, based on a generic or territorial principle, are purely hypothetical. So, G. Busolt thinks that the numerical composition of the Spartan gerousia was modeled on the model of the council in Delphi, consisting of 30 members. It is not known what the Gerousia was before Lycurgus. But with the introduction of the Lycurgus Gerousia, Sparta turned into a policy with an aristocratic form of government. Plutarch, describes in detail the procedure for election to geront. The goals of the reform of the state system were as follows: to limit the two kings (according to Spartan legends, the two kingdoms were founded by the twins Eurystheus and Proclus), change the composition of the council (gerousia) and give some rights to the popular assembly.
The two kings retained the supreme command during the war and their role in the departure religious cults, but with regard to current policy, they were ordinary members of the council. In the past, probably, the council consisted of the heads of 27 phratries. Now their number has increased to 30, including the kings. Councilors were elected with the approval of the people's assembly, and only "equals" aged 60 and over were eligible to be elected, and they held this position for life. “The council had the exclusive right to make proposals to the people's assembly and dissolve it. All "equals" participated in the people's assembly; it was henceforth to be assembled at the appointed time in the appointed place.” Its electoral powers have been clearly defined, and decisions on proposals made by the council are final.
In the popular assembly, all Spartans were equal before the state, regardless of their nobility and wealth, and according to the new state structure, "their voice was decisive in the cardinal issues of electing officials and ratifying bills," no matter how great the power of Gerousia. Citizens could only vote "yes" or "no". It can be assumed that the popular assembly had the right to expel kings and return them back to the throne.
In the Big Retra it appears that the archagetes also entered the Gerousia. In his commentary on the text of Retra, Plutarch explains that kings are meant by archagetes. It is possible that this was the original title of the Spartan kings, which reflected the idea of kings as leaders at the head of the army. "L. Jeffrey, followed by J. Huxley, suggested that in this context the word arhaget is not an uncontested synonym for the word "kings". The word "arhaget" is of a wider range. He can be understood as a "founder", whether it be the founder of a new state or a new cult." We can assume the following: the Spartan kings were called archagetes as members and chairmen of the Gerousia. This title clearly articulated their position in the Gerousia under Lycurgus - first among equals and nothing more. “It is possible that a new quality of the Spartan kings was fixed, who, having become members of the Gerousia under Lycurgus, were thus placed under the control of the community.”
Having two or more kings is not uncommon in early Greece. So, Homer often mentions similar situations: in the kingdom of the feacs, for example, there were twelve more kings besides Alcinous, and in Ithaca Odysseus was not the only king, but one of many. Consequently, the autocracy in the Homeric period could well coexist with the regime of many powers. Between the Homeric and Spartan kings, undoubtedly, a deep family connection can be traced. Both those and others are not autocratic monarchs like Hellenistic kings. Rather, they are representatives of the leading aristocratic clans, who carry out collegial leadership of the community. In this context, it becomes more understandable how the presence in Sparta of two royal families, and their place within the Spartan policy. One way or another, the main features of the state structure in Sparta remain clear. Two kings ruled there at the same time, belonging to the families of Agiad and Eurypontides. Both dynasties considered themselves descendants of Hercules; “and indeed, let this take us into the realm of myths and legends, the origin of this monarchy was very ancient - even if it took its historical form known to us no earlier than 650-600 years. BC e." The powers of both hereditary kings were primarily of a military nature; besides, they looked after each other (this introduced a certain balance) and, as a rule - although not always - made concessions to others political forces Sparta. There is a special role of kings in the division of power, “including in the field of application of oral law, their undoubted influence on the foreign policy of Sparta, the comparison of the two kings with the “divine twins” Tyndarides (guardians of the city) and the religious halo that surrounded the kings as high priests Zeus”, non-distribution to representatives of the royal families agoge, the presence of “royal privileges”, the tributary obligations of the perieks to the kings, the allocation of a tenth of any military booty suggests that they were perceived by ancient society not just as “the first among the secondary”. The Spartan kings also had an exceptional position in the ideological sphere. Their power through kinship with Hercules and the Olympic gods had a divine basis. "In addition, through the Pythians direct communication with the Delphic oracle, they were the guardians of divine truth." Personal interests and establishing contacts abroad could be carried out by the kings through the proxens appointed by them personally. Most likely, such royal commissioners were sometimes completely dependent on the king himself and were, “if it is permissible to say so, among his“ clients ”.
E. Curtius draws attention to how stiffly and alienated from the very beginning these two “twin kings” behaved towards each other, how this sharp contrast was transmitted continuously through all generations, “how each of these houses remained on its own, not related to another either by marriage or common inheritance, as each had its own history, annals, dwellings and tombs. In his opinion, these were two completely different generations, mutually recognizing each other's rights and establishing by agreement the joint use of the royal supreme power. If one of the representatives of the royal family, who should rule, was a child, then a guardian was appointed for him. In Pausanias, we find references to this tradition: “Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus, was not a king; being the guardian of Pleistarchus, the son of Leonidas, who remained (after the death of his father) still a child, Pausanias led the Lacedaemonians at Plataea and then the fleet during the campaign against the Hellespont. What these clans had in common was that their power arose not from among the Dorians, but was rooted in the Mycenaean era. In addition, "the dual kingdom also served as a guarantee that, as a result of the competition between the two lines, the tyrannical excess of royal prerogatives became impossible." There is no doubt that the kings themselves ruled the court. In confirmation of this, the words of Pausanias about Tsar Polydor can serve: “while performing judgment, he kept justice not without a sense of indulgence towards people.” The death of a king was a special event in Ancient Sparta. Mourning was declared throughout Laconica. “Representatives of all groups of society (Spartiates, perieks and helots), several people from each family, arrive at the funeral procession. After the funeral, the courts and the market, which are the main public places in Sparta, are closed for 10 days. After the death of the king, the heir who ascended the throne forgave all debts to the royal house or community.
All the institutions listed in the Retre are not the invention of Lycurgus. They existed, no doubt, before him.
The first serious modification after Lycurgus, the Spartan constitution underwent, apparently, in 30-20 years. 8th century According to Plutarch, the authors of the amendment to the Great Retra were the Spartan kings Theopompus and Polydorus. “The meaning of such an amendment was that the elders and kings were not supposed to ratify the “crooked” decision of the people, but to close the meeting and dissolve the people.”
The innovation consisted in depriving the people of the right to a free and unrestricted discussion of the proposals made by the Gerousia. Now only the Gerousia had the right to decide whether to continue the discussion in the appellation or stop it and dissolve the meeting. The essence of this amendment, therefore, lies in the fact that the Gerusia, together with the kings who headed it, was again placed over the popular assembly, for it now had the right to impose a veto on any decision of the appella that was objectionable to it. It is this view of the meaning of this amendment that is generally recognized and rarely disputed.
Of particular importance were the relations of politicians with the largest sanctuary of Hellas - the oracle of Apollo in Delphi, the center of traditional wisdom, which played the role of the spiritual leader of Hellas in archaic and classical times. The kings sought divine sanction at Delphi. So here, as in the case of Lycurgus, there is an appeal to Apollo. Of particular interest are Delphi's relationships with Spartan political leaders "both because of the specifics of the political life of Lacedaemon, and because it is Sparta of all Greek policies that is most closely associated with Delphi in the ancient tradition." We see a number of Spartan rulers who often cynically tried to put the authority of the sanctuary at the service of their interests in political intrigues, not even shunning direct bribery. given problem O.V. Kulishova dedicates her monograph, where she gives examples of the influence of Delphi on the legislation of the largest policies in Greece. "The first and perhaps one of the most notable among the rulers associated with this trend was King Cleomenes I." In this regard, let us point out the special connections between the Pythian sanctuary of Apollo and the Spartan basileia, the most important aspect of which was its sacral character. The role of the Spartan kings in worship was extremely significant in the context of their other most important function - military command. The war, being an integral part of the political and interstate relations of the polis world of the Greeks, was associated with the traditional complex of religious ideas and sacred actions, in a number of which the so-called military mantle, which was mainly under the jurisdiction of Apollo and Delphi, played an almost paramount role. "The very origin of the dual royal power, according to legend, originated from Delphi." We also note the position of special envoys to Delphi - the Pythians (each of the kings had to choose two Pythia for himself), who, together with the kings, had a meal and also, together with them, performed the duties of preserving the oracles. Important role The oracle also appears in a curious custom that persisted in Sparta at least until the 3rd century BC. BC, when the ephors every eight years on one of the nights watched if a sign would appear, indicating that one of the Spartan kings had angered the gods. The kings in the face of the local gods were the representatives of the whole state; “thanks to them alone, the connection of the new order of things with the past time became possible without violating sacred traditions.” The army was always accompanied by a whole herd of sacred animals intended for divinatory sacrifices and ready to be used to determine the will of the gods at any time: on the border of the state, before the battle.
Among scientists there is also no consensus on the time of the appearance of the ephorate in Sparta. Three have been discussed in science possible options the appearance of the ephorate: before Lycurgus, with Lycurgus or after Lycurgus. Thus, the opinion has been repeatedly expressed that the ephorate is an ancient Dorian institution, just like the apella, kings and the council of elders, and Lycurgus did not create an ephorate, but transformed it, setting the number of ephors according to the number of ob, i.e. guided by the new territorial principle. N. Hammond believes that Lycurgus nevertheless created an ephorate: “Lycurgus also founded an ephorate, consisting of five ephors, who were annually elected with the approval of the popular assembly from among the “equals”. Initially, the ephors did not have a leading position in the state. They only supervised the work of the social system: they inspected physical state boys, judged in cases of disobedience and led processions at Gymnopedias (national sports and music festival).
The tradition of the post-Lycurgic origin of the ephorate seems to us the most reliable, if only because it is set out in sufficient detail by Aristotle. Aristotle considered the reform of Theopompus a very important stage in the development of the Spartan policy. King Theopompus, according to him, deliberately went to belittle his power, ceding some of his functions to ordinary citizens in the name of preserving royal power as such: “By weakening the significance of royal power, he thereby contributed to the extension of its existence, so that in a certain but, on the contrary, exalted her.” The compromise concluded between the kings and society contributed to the preservation of civil peace in Sparta and to the stability of its state system. Both royal power and the council of elders were relegated to the background by the ephors. They arrogated to themselves the right to negotiate with the community, became the successors of the legislative business, as far as this could be discussed in Sparta; they decided all public affairs. “In a word, the ancient titles and positions, which originated from heroic times, grew pale more and more, while ephoria reached more and more unlimited power.”
Initially, a college of five ephors was supposed to perform the judicial functions of the Spartan kings in their absence. “In classical times, this position was elective. It is difficult to say when such a qualitative shift towards the creation of a regular elective magistracy took place. To a large extent, this could be facilitated by the full employment of the kings in the military sphere during protracted military conflicts.
In the middle of the VI century. the last, third stage of the reform of Spartan society falls, as a result of which the so-called. classic model of the Spartan polis.
A possible initiator of the changes that took place at that time was Ephor Chilo. Despite the fact that our information about him is extremely scarce, nevertheless, this is the only character with whom the Spartan reforms of the late archaic period can be associated. We do not know what exactly the reform of the ephorate consisted of, which tradition associates with the name of the ephor Chilon. "Probably, Chilo was the initiator of the law that transferred the presidency of the people's assembly and the Gerousia from the kings to the ephors." This was the last step in reforming the ephorate, which completely freed this magistracy from all other power structures. In any case, by the beginning of the classical period, the ephorate already had full executive and controlling power in the state, becoming, in essence, the government of Sparta, a formal agreement was concluded in which the condition for maintaining royal power was the unconditional subordination of the kings to the community in the person of its main representatives - the ephors. . Actually, these powers endowed the ephors with the power to oversee everyday life Spartan citizens, and "at the same time limit the influence of the Council of Elders - Gerousia"
As has been repeatedly stated in scientific literature the opinion that the establishment of the ephorate marked the establishment of a new state order and at the same time meant the victory of the community over the sovereign royal power. The transformed ephorate thus becomes the guarantor of the equality of all citizens before the law.
The ephors, as already mentioned, had the function of controlling the kings. It must be said that he even had the right to judge kings. An example of this is the repeated trial of King Pausanias. Pausanias, the author of the Description of Hellas, tells the following about the trial of the Spartan king: “When he [Pausanias] returned from Athens after such a fruitless battle, his enemies called him to court. In court over the Lacedaemonian king sit the so-called gerontes, twenty-eight people, the entire college of ephors, and with them the king from another royal house. Fourteen gerontes, as well as Agis, a king from another royal house, admitted that Pausanias was guilty; yet the rest of the judges acquitted him.” Pausanias was acquitted by a majority of 4 votes, which belonged to the ephors. At the trial, the entire college of ephors unanimously voted for Pausanias and thus decided the case in his favor. The ephors had the unconditional right to interfere in the personal life of the king. An example is the case of Tsar Anaxandrid, whose wife could not give birth to an heir. In this case, the ephors insisted that the king marry another: "when the ephors began to insist that he send her back (to her parents)". The ephors monitored hereditary rights in the state and also had the right to remove rulers from power if they believed that he should not occupy this position: “they removed him from the kingship and gave power to Cleomenes on the basis of the laws of seniority.”
Under the ephor Chilon, a whole series of laws will be issued, with the help of which the ephors will finally cope with the arbitrariness of the kings and put their activities as commanders in chief under their control. The prohibition to constantly wage war with the same enemy could mean the following: "the ephors received the right to cancel repeated military expeditions of the kings, which, in their opinion, could harm Sparta." Perhaps this limitation of the military power of the kings was introduced after several unsuccessful campaigns of the Spartan army against Argos. But, most likely, the reason for this innovation was more global in nature and was associated with the emergence of a new direction in Spartan foreign policy: Sparta by the middle of the 6th century. abandoned unrestrained military expansion and forced enslavement of neighboring peoples and switched to a more flexible and promising policy - the organization of interpolis associations. "In such a situation, the military department, headed by the kings, demanded the closest attention from the civil authorities in order to prevent unwanted military conflicts in time."
It is necessary to say about the institute of navarchs, which had quite a lot of powers. Navarch was the commander of the allied fleet, led by Sparta. “Of the four Spartan admirals known to us, who commanded the allied fleet between 480 and 477, i.e. during the period of the Greco-Persian wars, one was king (Leotichid in 479), the other was a close relative of the king (Pausanias in 478) and two were ordinary Spartans who did not belong to the royal family. the powers of the commanders of the fleet were approximately the same as the powers of the kings who were at the head of the Spartan army. The Navarchs were directly subordinate to the ephors, not to the kings. Between the navarchy and the royal power, apparently, there was no principled subordination at all. The powers of the navarchs in the navy were about the same as the powers of the kings in the army. To a certain extent, the navarchs enjoyed even greater freedom than the kings, whose activities were under the constant guardianship of society in the person of the ephors. The custom of sending ephors to the active army dates back to the era of the Greco-Persian wars. The number of ephors was not specified, but most often the king was accompanied by only one ephor. By the end of the Peloponnesian War, "as can be seen from the messages of Xenophon, each Spartan king, except for advisers, was already accompanied by two ephors instead of one." The decision to increase the presence of ephors in the army from one to two looks like another preventive measure aimed at preventing corruption in the army.
The Spartan kings represented the source and beginning of the new state of the Lacedaemonians, which united the Spartans, the Periokes, the Laconian Helots, and later the Messenians. At the solemn burial of the Spartan kings, men and women were required to attend, representing all segments of the population of Lacedaemon - Spartans, perieks and helots, and official ten-day mourning was observed throughout the country. The kings, on behalf of the Lacedaemonian state, declared war, commanded the army, which included Spartans, perieks and helots, and made sacrifices on the borders of Laconia before leading the army abroad. They were high priests Zeus of Lacedaemon and Zeus Urania, made all the sacrifices on behalf of the community and appointed envoys of the state to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Their names were the first to appear on the documents of the Lacedaemon state, they presided over all state celebrations and ceremonies, they were accompanied by a cavalry detachment of bodyguards. Thus, the functions of the Spartan kings were similar to those of the British crown.
Leonidas is one of the most famous Spartan, and indeed the ancient Greek kings. His fame is well deserved. Thanks to the feat accomplished in the Battle of Thermopylae, the name of this commander and statesman survived the centuries and is still a symbol of the highest patriotism, courage and sacrifice.
early years
Leonidas' father was Anaxandrid II, spartan king from the Agiad family, who ruled in 560-520 BC. According to the historian Herodotus, King Anaxandridus was married to his brother's daughter, who remained childless for a long time. So that the royal family would not be interrupted, the ephors advised the king to let go of his wife and take another. Anaxandride, who loved his wife, replied that he could not offend his wife, who had not been guilty of anything before him. Then the ephors allowed the king to keep his first wife, but at the same time take a second wife, who could bear him children. So the king began to live simultaneously in two families.
A year later, the second wife brought him a son, Cleomenes. Soon after this, the first wife of Anaxandris, previously considered barren, also became pregnant and gave birth to three sons one after another: Doria, and then the twins Leonidas and Cleombrotus. The second wife of the king did not give birth again.
When Anaxandrid died in 520 B.C. e., before the Spartans was the question of succession to the throne. Cleomenes was the eldest son of the king, but Doria, on the advice of one of his friends, declared that he was born from the first, as it were, more legal marriage, and therefore had more rights to power. The Spartans were divided into two camps, but in the end, the supporters of Cleomenes won. In anger, Doria left Sparta and sailed west. In 515 B.C. e. he attempted to establish a colony, first on the northern coast of Africa, and then in the west of Sicily, but the Carthaginians who ruled here each time expelled him. In battle with them in 510 BC. e. Doria died.
Meanwhile, Cleomenes enlisted the support of his younger brothers. He married his daughter Gorgo to Leonid, which speaks, if not of friendship, then at least of some kind of trust between them. Cleomenes was one of the most warlike and ambitious Spartan kings. He defeated Sparta's longtime rival Argos, subjugated the Arcadian Tegea, and then united the city-states dependent on Sparta into the Peloponnesian Union under its hegemony.
Panorama of modern Sparta. Mount Taygetos is visible in the background, separating Laconia from neighboring Messenia. In the foreground are the ruins of a Roman theater. The photo was taken from the hill on which the acropolis of Sparta was located.
At the same time, unlike most Spartans, Cleomenes was distinguished by extreme unscrupulousness in achieving his goals. So, in 491 BC. e. he managed to remove the second king Demarat from power, accusing him of allegedly being illegitimate. Demarat fled to the Persians, but this incident caused a big scandal in Sparta, during which some details of Cleomenes' intrigues were revealed. Fearing the judgment of the ephors that threatened him, Cleomenes left the city and settled in Arcadia. Here he began to incite the Spartan allies to revolt. In fear of him, the ephors agreed to forget what had happened. In 487 B.C. e. Cleomenes returned to Sparta, where he suddenly fell into madness and committed suicide.
Since Cleomenes had no sons of his own, Leonidas succeeded him. For modern historians, this has given rise to assumptions about the involvement of Leonid in the dark details of the death of his predecessor. However, it should be recognized that we do not have direct evidence of malicious intent. And the high reputation that Leonid enjoyed during his lifetime, and especially after his death, does not allow unfounded accusations to be made against him.
Persian threat
Leonidas was king for 7 years, but he remained known primarily for his role in the battle of Thermopylae. To move on to the presentation of the history of Xerxes' campaign against Greece, a few words should be said about his background. The Greeks had long-standing relations with the Persian state of the Achaemenids. The Ionian city-states of the western coast of Asia Minor were subjects of King Darius and paid tribute to him. In 499 BC. e. they revolted, in which Athens and Eretria came to the aid of the Ionians. The Spartan king Cleomenes, who was also visited by the ambassadors of the Ionians, showed caution in this matter.
Having suppressed the uprising, the Persians decided to punish the Greeks who helped the rebels. In 492 BC. e. the royal relative Mardonius crossed over to Thrace with a large Persian army. A number of Greek communities: Thebes, Argos, Aegina - agreed to give the king "land and water" in recognition of his power over themselves. The Spartans not only refused to do this, but also killed the royal ambassadors, throwing them into the abyss and offering to find earth and water at the bottom.
Greek ambassador to the Persian king Darius. Painting of an antique vase, 5th century BC. e.
In 490 BC. e. a large Persian fleet arrived on the coast of Greece. The Persians destroyed Eretria on Euboea, sold its inhabitants into slavery, and then went to Attica. The Athenians turned to Sparta for help, but while they hesitated to set off on a campaign, they themselves managed to defeat the uninvited guests in the Battle of Marathon. The remnants of the Persian army boarded ships and sailed back to Asia. Late for the battle, the Spartans could only examine the bodies of the barbarians and pay their respects to the Athenians. Persian king was very saddened by what happened, but his plans for revenge were prevented by an uprising that broke out in Egypt, and in 486 BC. e. Darius is dead. His successor Xerxes was forced to subdue the rebellious Egyptians and Babylonians during the years 486-483. Thus, the Greeks received a 10-year respite.
In 483 BC. e. Xerxes finally dealt with the rebels and finally began to prepare a big campaign against Greece. The army he assembled was huge and, according to Herodotus, numbered 1.7 million people. At sea, she was accompanied by a huge fleet of 1200 ships. According to modern researchers, figures from 80,000 to 200,000 warriors and from 400 to 600 ships look more realistic.
For two years these forces were gathering in Sardis. Finally, with the onset of the spring of 480 BC. e., the Persian army set out on a campaign. By order of Xerxes, two pontoon bridges, each 1300 m long, were built across the Dardanelles. On them, the Persian army for 7 days continuously carried out the crossing to the European coast of the strait.
At the news of the approach of the army of Xerxes, the Greek city-states were seized with horror. The Thessalians and the Thebans with the Boeotians hastened to express their obedience to the king. Even the most authoritative among the Greeks, the oracle of Apollo at Delphi predicted defeat for his troops.
Greek plans for the defense of the country
The resistance to the Persians was led by Athens and Sparta. In the autumn of 481 BC. e. in Corinth, a pan-Greek congress gathered, the participants of which united in the Hellenic League in order to work together to fight the Persians and those Greeks who voluntarily came out on their side. Sparta was chosen by a majority of votes as the hegemon of the union, as the most powerful state militarily.
When discussing defensive strategy among the allies, serious differences emerged. Sparta and the rest of the Peloponnesians proposed to fortify the narrow Isthmus of Corinth with a wall and defend themselves from the Persians here. This decision was ardently opposed by the Athenians and other allies, whose lands would have been inevitably ruined. After heated debate, the Greeks decided to take up defense in the Tempe Gorge and in the spring of 480 BC. e. 10,000 soldiers were sent there under the command of the Spartan Evenet and the Athenian Themistocles.
Here the disputes between the allies broke out again. The Spartans did not want to fight, having in the rear the Thessalians, among whom were strong pro-Persian sentiments. In addition, they pointed out, the Persians could penetrate into Thessaly by another, albeit difficult, route through Olympus, or even land from the sea south of the passage. After standing for some time in Tempe, the army returned back before the Persians had time to appear there.
Thermopylae, a modern view from the height of the aircraft. The sediments of Spercheus have greatly altered the coastline since antiquity; then the sea approached the very rocks, approximately to the line of the modern highway, leaving a passage, in the narrowest part not exceeding a few meters wide
The second line of defense was the Thermopylae Gorge on the border between northern and central Greece. In this place, the high mountains came very close to the sea, leaving only a narrow seven-kilometer passage stretching between the mountain spur of Kallidr and the southern marshy coast of the Malian Gulf. At the same time, the Greek navy was supposed to stand near Thermopylae, in the strait between the northern coast of Euboea and Cape Sepia, and thus cover the army from the sea. In early July, 200 Athenian ships, commanded by Themistocles, and 155 Peloponnesian ships, commanded by Eurybiades, arrived here.
But the forces sent by the Spartans to Thermopylae turned out to be much smaller than those expected here. The Spartans themselves sent only 300 soldiers, another 1000 were from among the perieks, the Arcadians sent a little more than 2120 soldiers, the Corinthians 400, the Phliunians 200, the Mycenaeans 80. In total, the detachment consisted of about 4000 hoplites. To give the matter more weight in the eyes of the Greeks, the Spartans placed King Leonidas at the head of their small detachment. The 300 Spartans who accompanied him most likely belonged to a select detachment of "horsemen" who made up the king's retinue on a campaign.
When Leonidas with his army passed through Boeotia, 700 Thespian soldiers voluntarily joined him; the Thebans, whose Persian way of thinking was well known, were forced to give him 400 of their warriors, in fact, as hostages of their loyalty. Locrians and the Phocians sent about 1,000 men. In total, in the army of Leonidas, when he set up his camp at Thermopylae, there were 7200 soldiers.
Head of a marble statue found in 1925 on the Acropolis of Sparta. The warrior is depicted in heroic nakedness; for greater expressiveness, the eyes of the statue were made of glass. Not without reason, the statue is considered an image of Leonid, in whose honor the Spartans erected a monumental complex on the acropolis.
Initially, it was assumed that Leonid's advance detachment was only the vanguard, which the main forces would soon follow. The Greeks occupied the passage and restored the wall that had once blocked it. However, the promised help never came. The Spartan authorities, in response to the requests of Leonid to send reinforcements, stated that this was hindered by the upcoming holiday of Karnei (celebrated in September for 9 days) and promised that after it they would immediately come to the rescue with all their forces. Until that moment, Leonid had to defend the passage alone.
Regarding the sincerity of these promises, the opinions of modern historians are divided. The Spartans in antiquity were known for their exceptional conservatism and respect for religious rites. Any inauspicious omen could cause a delay, and such cases repeatedly occurred later. On the other hand, among the Spartans themselves and their allies, as indicated earlier, there was no unanimity as to where and how to defend against the enemy. Therefore, the position of the Spartan authorities seemed to the Athenians only an attempt to play for time and an attempt to save their main forces to protect the Peloponnese.
Defense of Thermopylae
Meanwhile, Leonidas camped at Alpina and waited here for the arrival of Xerxes. One local resident, telling the Greeks about the large number of barbarians, added that "if the barbarians shoot their arrows, then an eclipse of the sun will occur from a cloud of arrows." In response, the Spartan Dienek joked light-heartedly:
"Our friend from Trachinus brought good news: if the Medes darken the sun, then it will be possible to fight in the shade."
When the Persians came, seeing their numbers, the Greeks lost heart. Some called for a retreat, but the Phocians opposed this, and even Leonidas himself with his Spartans remained determined to hold his post to the end.
While still in Thessaly, Xerxes heard that the Thermopylae passage was occupied by a small detachment of Greeks, but he did not think that they would remain there when he approached. Having set up camp at Trakhino, he sent a scout to see how many Greeks were and what they were doing. Returning, the scout told the king that he had seen an advanced post, where some soldiers had fun by running a race with each other, while others were combing their long hair. Xerxes found such an occupation ridiculous for men, but Demaratus, the exiled king of the Spartans, who accompanied him on this campaign, said the following:
“These people have come here to fight us for this pass, and they are preparing to fight. It is their custom that whenever they go to fight to the death, they adorn their heads. Know, king, if you defeat these people and those who remained in Sparta, then not a single people in the world will dare to raise a hand against you.
Thermopylae, modern view. In ancient times, the coastline ran where the highway passes today. The opening view was taken from Kolonos Hill, where the last scenes of the battle took place.
Before giving the order to march, Xerxes waited 4 days, and then sent into the passage the most combat-ready detachments of the Medes, Kissians and Saks after the Persians themselves with the order to take the Greeks alive and bring them to him. At the beginning of the battle, the Greeks were asked to lay down their arms, to which Leonidas, according to Plutarch, gave the legendary answer: “Come and take it” (ancient Greek Μολὼν λαβέ). The battle in the passage lasted a whole day, but the Medes did not manage to move a single step forward.
The next day, on the orders of Xerxes, detachments consisting of the Persians themselves were sent to attack. These were the so-called "immortals" - the color of the Persian army, led by their chief Gidarn. Leonidas placed the Spartans against them, who until that time had not taken part in the battle. The battle was repeated with the same result. The Spartans, standing in close ranks, fought off one attack after another. From time to time they pretended to take flight, and retreated back, where the passage was wider. As soon as the Persians rushed after them, the Spartans immediately turned back, overturned the densely crowded enemy or drove him into the swamp near the sea. This maneuver they repeated several times, and by the end of the day the Persians had lost more than 6,000 men, not one step closer to victory.
Battle of Thermopylae, reconstruction by P. Connolly
For Xerxes, this development of events was a complete surprise. He did not know what to do next, but then a traitor came to his aid. The Malian Ephialtes, who, hoping for a great reward, showed the Persians a path leading through the mountain around Thermopylae. Subsequently, Ephialtes, in fear of the Spartans, fled to Thessaly, and there he was killed by his old enemy for personal reasons. The Spartans still paid the last reward promised for the traitor's head.
Ephialtes promised to lead 20,000 of the best Persian warriors, led by Hydarnes, to the rear of the Greeks. The Persians walked all night and at dawn, being on the top of the mountain, they suddenly saw a small detachment of Greeks in front of them. These were the Phocians, sent by Leonid specifically to guard the path. The Phokians carried out their service carelessly and noticed the Persians only when the first arrows flew at them. As soon as they grabbed their weapons, they left their post and rushed to the top of the mountain. Hydarn did not pursue them and hastily began to descend.
Last Stand
On the evening before, the soothsayer Megistius predicted to the Greeks by the sacrifice that death awaits them on that day. At night, scouts appeared and informed Leonid that the Persians were going around the mountains through the mountains. The forces available to him were not enough to successfully repel an attack simultaneously from two sides. In order not to sacrifice people in vain, Leonid gave the order to retreat to all other units, except for the Spartans. He himself did not dare to retreat, because he considered it dishonorable to leave the post he had been appointed to defend.
Thus, King Leonidas made the only decision possible for a Spartan: to fight and die, following the law of his country and fulfilling his military duty. In addition to the Spartans, the Thespians voluntarily remained with him with their leader Dimophilus, as well as the Thebans, whom Leonidas forcibly kept with him. In total, about 1,200 Greeks remained at Thermopylae that day.
Reconstruction of Thermopylae. The location of the battlefield of the Greeks with the Persians and the Enopean path, along which the Hydarnes detachment went to the rear of the defenders of the passage, are indicated
Not counting on victory, but only on a glorious death, the Greeks went forward behind the wall and gave last Stand away from the previous positions:
“The Hellenes, led by Leonid, going to a mortal battle, now moved much further to the place where the passage widens. For in former days some of the Spartans defended the wall, while others fought the enemy in the very gorge, where they always retreated. Now the Hellenes rushed hand-to-hand, and in this battle the barbarians died by the thousands. Behind the ranks of the Persians stood the commanders of the detachments with whips in their hands, and with the blows of the whips they drove the soldiers forward and forward. Many enemies fell into the sea and died there, but many more were crushed by their own. Nobody paid any attention to the dead. The Hellenes knew, after all, about the certain death threatening them at the hands of the enemy who bypassed the mountain. That is why they showed the greatest military prowess and fought with the barbarians desperately and with insane courage.
In this battle, Leonidas fell, and a desperate struggle broke out over his body. After a heated fight, the Greeks finally managed to snatch the body of the king from the hands of the enemies. In doing so, they put their opponents to flight four times. The Persians also had huge losses, among the dead were Abrok and Hyperanthes, brothers of King Xerxes. Noticing the approach of Hydarn's forces from the rear, the Spartans, who no longer had a chance of salvation, retreated back into the pass and turned against the new enemy. The last surviving defenders of Thermopylae took up position on the hill. Most of the spears had already broken by that time, they continued to defend themselves with swords, and then with their hands and teeth, until the barbarians bombarded them with a hail of arrows. Thus ended the battle of Thermopylae.
In 1939, Spyridon Marinatos undertook archaeological excavations at Thermopylae. Spearheads and arrowheads, Greek and Persian, discovered on the hill of Konos, are exhibited today in the stand of the National Museum of Archeology in Athens
King Xerxes personally inspected the battlefield. Finding the body of Leonid, he ordered to cut off his head and crucify his body. Herodotus denounces this decision and writes that it was not customary for the Persians before to subject the bodies of enemies to this kind of abuse. The fallen Greeks were subsequently buried on the same hill where they took their last battle. On the grave, the Spartans installed a sculpture of a lion with the epitaph of Simonides of Ceos:
"Traveler, go erect to our citizens in Lacedaemon,
That, keeping their covenants, here we perished with bones.
Literature:
- Connolly P. Greece and Rome. Encyclopedia military history. - Moscow: Eksmo-Press, 2000. - 320 p.
- Pechatnova L. G. Spartan kings. - M.: Yauza, 2007. - 352 p.
- Pechatnova L. G. The history of Sparta (the period of archaic and classic). - St. Petersburg: Humanitarian Academy, 2001. - 510 p.
- Hammond N. History Ancient Greece. - M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2003. - 703 p.
- Fields N. Thermopylae 480 BC. Last stand of the 300. - Osprey Publishing, 2007. - 97 p.
In the southeast of the largest Greek peninsula - the Peloponnese - the powerful Sparta was once located. This state was located in the region of Laconia, in the picturesque valley of the Evros River. Its official name, which was most often mentioned in international treaties, is Lacedaemon. It was from this state that such concepts as "Spartan" and "Spartan" came. Everyone has also heard about the cruel custom that has developed in this ancient policy: to kill weak newborns in order to maintain the gene pool of their nation.
History of occurrence
Officially, Sparta, which was called Lacedaemon (the name of the nome, Laconia, also came from this word), arose in the eleventh century BC. After some time, the entire area on which this city-state was located was captured by the Dorian tribes. Those, having assimilated with the local Achaeans, became Spartakiates in the sense known today, and the former inhabitants were turned into slaves, called helots.
The most Doric of all the states that Ancient Greece once knew, Sparta, was located on the western bank of the Eurotas, on the site of the modern city of the same name. Its name can be translated as "scattered". It consisted of estates and estates that were scattered across Laconia. And the center was a low hill, which later became known as the acropolis. Initially, Sparta had no walls and remained true to this principle until the second century BC.
Government of Sparta
It was based on the principle of unity of all full-fledged citizens of the policy. For this, the state and law of Sparta strictly regulated the life and life of its subjects, restraining their property stratification. The foundations of such a social system were laid by the agreement of the legendary Lycurgus. According to him, the duties of the Spartans were only sports or military art, and crafts, agriculture and trade were the work of helots and perieks.
As a result, the system established by Lycurgus transformed the Spartan military democracy into an oligarchic-slave-owning republic, which at the same time still retained some signs of a tribal system. Here it was not allowed to land, which was divided into equal plots, considered the property of the community and not subject to sale. Helot slaves also, as historians suggest, belonged to the state, and not to wealthy citizens.
Sparta is one of the few states headed by two kings at the same time, who were called archagetes. Their power was hereditary. The powers that each king of Sparta possessed were limited not only to military power, but also to the organization of sacrifices, as well as participation in the council of elders.
The latter was called gerousia and consisted of two archagetes and twenty-eight gerontes. The elders were elected by the people's assembly for life only from the Spartan nobility who had reached sixty years of age. Gerusia in Sparta performed the functions of a certain government body. She prepared questions that needed to be discussed at public meetings, and also led foreign policy. In addition, the council of elders considered criminal cases, as well as state crimes directed, among other things, against the archagets.
Court
Judicial proceedings and the law of ancient Sparta were regulated by the board of ephors. This organ first appeared in the eighth century BC. It consisted of the five most worthy citizens of the state, who were elected by the people's assembly for only one year. At first, the powers of the ephors were limited only to litigation of property disputes. But already in the sixth century BC, their power and authority are growing. Gradually, they begin to displace gerusia. The ephors were given the right to convene a national assembly and gerousia, regulate foreign policy, and exercise internal control of Sparta and its legal proceedings. This organ was so important in social order states that his powers included the control of officials, including the archaguet.
People's Assembly
Sparta is an example of an aristocratic state. In order to suppress the forced population, whose representatives were called helots, the development of private property was artificially restrained in order to maintain equality among the Spartans themselves.
Apella, or popular assembly, in Sparta was distinguished by passivity. Only full-fledged male citizens who had reached the age of thirty had the right to participate in this body. At first, the people's assembly was convened by the archaget, but later its leadership also passed to the college of ephors. Apella could not discuss the issues put forward, she only rejected or accepted the decision she proposed. The members of the people's assembly voted in a very primitive way: by shouting or dividing the participants on different sides, after which the majority was determined by eye.
Population
The inhabitants of the Lacedaemonian state have always been class unequal. This situation was created social order Sparta, which provided for three estates: the elite, perieks - free residents from nearby cities who did not have the right to vote, as well as state slaves - helots.
The Spartans, who were in privileged conditions, were engaged exclusively in war. They were far from trade, crafts and Agriculture, all this was given as the right to be farmed out to the perieks. At the same time, the estates of the elite Spartans were processed by the helots, whom the latter rented from the state. During the heyday of the state, the nobility was five times less than the perieks, and ten times less than the helots.
All periods of existence of this one of the most ancient states can be divided into prehistoric, ancient, classical, Roman and Each of them left its mark not only in the formation ancient state Sparta. Greece borrowed a lot from this history in the process of its formation.
prehistoric era
Lelegs originally lived on the Laconian lands, but after the capture of the Peloponnese by the Dorians, this area, which has always been considered the most infertile and generally insignificant, as a result of deceit went to the two minor sons of the legendary king Aristodem - Eurysthenes and Proclus.
Soon Sparta became the main city of Lacedaemon, the system of which for a long time did not stand out among the rest of the Doric states. She waged constant external wars with neighboring Argive or Arcadian cities. The most significant rise occurred during the reign of Lycurgus, the ancient Spartan legislator, to whom ancient historians unanimously attribute the political structure that subsequently dominated Sparta for several centuries.
ancient era
After winning the wars lasting from 743 to 723 and from 685 to 668. BC, Sparta was able to finally defeat and capture Messenia. As a result, its ancient inhabitants were deprived of their lands and turned into helots. Six years later, Sparta, at the cost of incredible efforts, defeated the Arcadians, and in 660 BC. e. forced Tegea to recognize her hegemony. According to the contract, stored on a column placed near Alfea, she forced her to conclude a military alliance. It was from this time that Sparta in the eyes of the peoples began to be considered the first state of Greece.
The history of Sparta at this stage boils down to the fact that its inhabitants began to make attempts to overthrow the tyrants that appeared from the seventh millennium BC. e. in almost all Greek states. It was the Spartans who helped expel the Cypselides from Corinth, the Peisistrati from Athens, they contributed to the liberation of Sicyon and Phokis, as well as several islands in the Aegean Sea, thereby gaining grateful supporters in different states.
History of Sparta in the classical era
Having entered into an alliance with Tegea and Elis, the Spartans began to attract the rest of the cities of Laconia and neighboring regions to their side. As a result, the Peloponnesian Union was formed, in which Sparta assumed hegemony. These were wonderful times for her: she led the wars, was the center of meetings and all meetings of the Union, without encroaching on the independence of individual states that retained autonomy.
Sparta never tried to extend its own power to the Peloponnese, but the threat of danger prompted all other states, with the exception of Argos, during the Greco-Persian wars to come under its protection. Having eliminated the danger directly, the Spartans, realizing that they were unable to wage war with the Persians far from their own borders, did not object when Athens assumed further leadership in the war, limiting itself only to the peninsula.
Since that time, signs of rivalry between these two states began to appear, which subsequently resulted in the First, ending with the Thirty Years' Peace. The fighting not only broke the power of Athens and established the hegemony of Sparta, but also led to a gradual violation of its foundations - the legislation of Lycurgus.
As a result, in 397 BC, there was an uprising of Cinadon, which, however, was not crowned with success. However, after certain setbacks, especially the defeat at the battle of Knidos in 394 BC. e, Sparta ceded Asia Minor, but became a judge and mediator in Greek affairs, thus motivating its policy with the freedom of all states, and was able to secure primacy in alliance with Persia. And only Thebes did not obey the conditions set, thereby depriving Sparta of the advantages of such a shameful world for her.
Hellenistic and Roman era
Starting from these years, the state began to decline rather quickly. Impoverished and burdened with the debts of its citizens, Sparta, whose system was based on the legislation of Lycurgus, turned into an empty form of government. An alliance was made with the Phocians. And although the Spartans sent them help, they did not provide real support. In the absence of King Agis, with the help of money received from Darius, an attempt was made to get rid of the Macedonian yoke. But he, having failed in the battles of Megapolis, was killed. Gradually began to disappear and became a household spirit, which was so famous for Sparta.
Rise of an empire
Sparta is a state that for three centuries was the envy of all Ancient Greece. Between the eighth and fifth centuries BC, it was a cluster of hundreds of cities, often at war with each other. One of the key figures for the formation of Sparta as a powerful and strong state was Lycurgus. Before its appearance, it was not much different from the rest of the ancient Greek policies-states. But with the advent of Lycurgus, the situation changed, and priorities in development were given to the art of war. From that moment on, Lacedaemon began to transform. And it was during this period that he flourished.
From the eighth century B.C. e. Sparta began to lead conquest wars, conquering one by one their neighbors in the Peloponnese. After a series of successful military operations, Sparta moved on to establishing diplomatic ties with its most powerful opponents. Having concluded several treaties, Lacedaemon stood at the head of the union of the Peloponnesian states, which was considered one of the most powerful formations of Ancient Greece. The creation of this alliance by Sparta was to serve to repel the Persian invasion.
The state of Sparta has been a mystery to historians. The Greeks not only admired its citizens, but feared them. One type of bronze shields and scarlet cloaks worn by the warriors of Sparta put opponents to flight, forcing them to capitulate.
Not only the enemies, but the Greeks themselves did not really like it when an army, even a small one, was located next to them. Everything was explained very simply: the warriors of Sparta had a reputation for being invincible. The sight of their phalanxes caused even the worldly-wise to panic. And although only a small number of fighters participated in the battles in those days, nevertheless, they never lasted long.
The beginning of the decline of the empire
But at the beginning of the fifth century BC. e. a massive invasion, undertaken from the East, was the beginning of the decline of the power of Sparta. The huge Persian empire, always dreaming of expanding its territories, sent a large army to Greece. Two hundred thousand people stood at the borders of Hellas. But the Greeks, led by the Spartans, accepted the challenge.
King Leonidas
Being the son of Anaxandrides, this king belonged to the Agiad dynasty. After the death of his older brothers, Dorieus and Klemen the First, it was Leonidas who took over the reign. Sparta in 480 years before our era was at war with Persia. And the name of Leonid is associated with the immortal feat of the Spartans, when a battle took place in the Thermopylae Gorge, which has remained in history for centuries.
It happened in 480 BC. e., when the hordes of the Persian king Xerxes tried to capture the narrow passage connecting Central Greece with Thessaly. At the head of the troops, including the allied ones, was Tsar Leonid. Sparta at that time occupied a leading position among friendly states. But Xerxes, taking advantage of the betrayal of the dissatisfied, bypassed the Thermopylae Gorge and went into the rear of the Greeks.
Upon learning of this, Leonid, who fought on a par with his soldiers, disbanded the allied detachments, sending them home. And he himself, with a handful of warriors, whose number was only three hundred people, stood in the way of the twenty thousandth Persian army. The Thermopylae Gorge was strategic for the Greeks. In the event of a defeat, they would be cut off from Central Greece, and their fate would be sealed.
For four days, the Persians were unable to break the incomparably smaller enemy forces. The heroes of Sparta fought like lions. But the forces were unequal.
The fearless warriors of Sparta died one and all. Together with them, their king Leonid fought to the end, who did not want to abandon his comrades.
The name of Leonid has gone down in history forever. Chroniclers, including Herodotus, wrote: “Many kings have died and have long been forgotten. But Leonid is known and honored by everyone. His name will always be remembered by Sparta, Greece. And not because he was a king, but because he fulfilled his duty to his homeland to the end and died like a hero. Films have been made and books written about this episode in the life of the heroic Hellenes.
The feat of the Spartans
The Persian king Xerxes, who did not leave the dream of capturing Hellas, invaded Greece in 480 BC. At this time, the Hellenes held the Olympic Games. The Spartans were preparing to celebrate Carnei.
Both of these holidays obligated the Greeks to observe a sacred truce. This was one of the main reasons why only a small detachment opposed the Persians in the Thermopylae Gorge.
A detachment of three hundred Spartans, led by King Leonidas, headed towards the army of Xerxes with thousands of men. Warriors were selected on the basis of having children. On the way, a thousand Tegeans, Arcadians and Mantineans, as well as one hundred and twenty from Orchomenus, joined the militias of Leonidas. Four hundred soldiers were sent from Corinth, three hundred from Phlius and Mycenae.
When this small army approached the Thermopylae pass and saw the number of Persians, many soldiers were frightened and began to talk about retreat. Part of the allies proposed to withdraw to the peninsula in order to guard Isthm. Others, however, were outraged by the decision. Leonid, ordered the army to remain in place, sent messengers to all the cities asking for help, since they had too few soldiers to successfully repel the attack of the Persians.
For four whole days, King Xerxes, hoping that the Greeks would take flight, did not start hostilities. But seeing that this was not happening, he sent the Cassians and Medes against them with orders to take Leonidas alive and bring him to him. They quickly attacked the Hellenes. Every onslaught of the Medes ended huge losses but others took their place. It was then that it became clear to both the Spartans and the Persians that Xerxes had many people, but there were few warriors among them. The fight lasted all day.
Having received a decisive rebuff, the Medes were forced to retreat. But they were replaced by the Persians, led by Gidarn. Xerxes called them the "immortal" detachment and hoped that they would easily finish off the Spartans. But in hand-to-hand combat, they did not succeed, just like the Medes, to achieve great success.
The Persians had to fight in tight quarters, and with shorter spears, while the Hellenes had longer ones, which in this fight gave a certain advantage.
At night, the Spartans again attacked the Persian camp. They managed to kill many enemies, but their main goal there was a defeat in the general turmoil of Xerxes himself. And only when dawn broke, the Persians saw the small number of the detachment of King Leonidas. They threw spears at the Spartans and finished off with arrows.
The road to Central Greece was open to the Persians. Xerxes personally inspected the battlefield. Finding the deceased Spartan king, he ordered him to cut off his head and put it on a stake.
There is a legend that King Leonidas, going to Thermopylae, clearly understood that he would die, therefore, when his wife asked him what the orders would be, he ordered him to find a good husband and give birth to sons. In this was life position Spartans who are ready to die for their Motherland on the battlefield in order to receive a crown of glory.
Beginning of the Peloponnesian War
After some time, the Greek policies that were at war with each other united and were able to repulse Xerxes. But, despite the joint victory over the Persians, the alliance between Sparta and Athens did not last long. In 431 BC. e. The Peloponnesian War broke out. And only a few decades later, the Spartan state was able to win.
But not everyone in ancient Greece liked the supremacy of Lacedaemon. Therefore, half a century later, new fighting. This time, Thebes became his rivals, who, together with their allies, managed to inflict a serious defeat on Sparta. As a result, the power of the state was lost.
Conclusion
This is what ancient Sparta was like. She was one of the main contenders for primacy and supremacy in the ancient Greek picture of the world. Some milestones in Spartan history are sung in the works of the great Homer. A special place among them is occupied by the outstanding Iliad.
And now from this glorious policy now there are only the ruins of some of its buildings and unfading glory. Legends about the heroism of its warriors, as well as a small town of the same name in the south of the Peloponnese peninsula, have reached contemporaries.
The history of Sparta should begin with the Dorian migration. Of course, it is impossible to reconstruct in detail the process of resettlement of the Dorians in the Peloponnese. AT modern science sometimes even the very possibility of such a resettlement is disputed, but more often the disputes are about its nature. Contrary to the ancient tradition, for which the resettlement of the Dorians is undoubtedly a military campaign, a theory is put forward according to which the Dorians appeared on the territory of the Peloponnese a century after the death of the Mycenaean civilization and occupied long-empty lands. In this theory there is no moment of conquest at all. There was only a "slow seepage" of individual Dorian tribes to new lands. This theory is based solely on archeological data. The fact is that the Mycenaean palaces perish in the end of the 13th - n.XII centuries. BC, and the oldest early geometric pottery of the Dorians dates back to the 11th century. BC.
There is another, according to which the Dorians are either mercenaries in the service of the Mycenaean rulers, or the lower strata of the Mycenaean society, who seized power as a result of a violent coup.
These examples illustrate the danger of denying the ancient literary tradition and absolutization of archeological data. Of course, it is absolutely impossible to reconstruct the early history of Sparta in detail, with names and exact dates.
In the classical period in Greece there were two leading policies - Athens and Sparta. Both of these states, each in its own way, made a huge contribution to the formation and development of ancient civilization. In our study, we will focus on the consideration of the institution of royal power in Sparta, and the status of kings.
1. Prerequisites for the creation of Lacedaemon
Leleg lived in the Laconian region, who was its first king. Leleg had two sons, Miletus and the younger Polikaon. After the death of Miletus, his son Evros assumed power. Since he had no male offspring, he left the kingdom to Lacedaemon, whose mother was Taygeta, from whose name the mountain got its name, and Zeus himself was his father.
Lacedaemon was married to Sparta, daughter of Eurotas. As soon as he received power, then, first of all, he gave his name to the whole country and the whole population, and then he built a city and named it after his wife; and to this day this city is called Sparta. Amycles, son of Lacedaemon, desiring in turn to leave some memory behind him, founded in Laconica small town. Of the two sons he had, Hyakinthus, the youngest and very handsome, died before his father; the tomb of Hyakinthos is in Amikla, under the statue of Apollo. Upon the death of Amikl, power passed to the eldest of his sons, Argal, and then, after the death of Argal, to Kinorta. Kinorta had a son, Ebal. Ebal married Gorgofon, the daughter of Perseus, from Argos, and had a son Tyndareus by her. Hippocoon entered into a dispute with him over the kingdom and demanded power under the pretext of seniority. Joining with Icarius and those who rebelled with him, he was much stronger than Tyndareus and forced, as the Lacedaemonians say, Tyndareus to flee Pellana in fear. The Messenians, however, have such a tradition regarding him that Tyndareus fled to Messenia and came to Aphareus, and Athareus, the son of Perier, was the brother of Tyndareus by his mother - that he, according to them, settled in Messenia, in Falam, and that when he lived Here, all his children were born to him. Later, Tyndareus returned to Laconia with the assistance of Hercules and regained power again. Tyndareus was succeeded by his sons; then Menelaus, son of Atreus, son-in-law of Tyndareus, reigned here, and after him Orestes, husband of Hermione, daughter of Menelaus. When the Heraclides returned to the reign of Tisamen, the son of Orestes, the cities of Messene and Argos fell to the share of the first - Temen.
In Lacedaemon, twins were born to Aristodem, and two royal families were formed. Aristodemus himself, in Delphi, before the Dorians invaded the Peloponnese.
The sons of Aristodemus were named Proclus and Eurysthenes; being twins, they were nonetheless worst enemies each other. But no matter how far their mutual hatred went, however, it did not prevent them from jointly helping Theru, the son of Authesion, their guardian and brother of their mother Argaea, to arrange and take possession of the colony. Thera sent the same colony to the island, which was then called Callista (Most Beautiful), hoping that the descendants of Membliar would voluntarily cede royal power to him.
2. Agids dynasty
Eurysthenes - the legendary king of Laconica from the Heraclid family, who ruled in the 11th century. before Christmas. He was the ancestor of the royal family of the Agids. When the boys grew up, the Lacedaemonians proclaimed them both kings. The brothers divided Laconia into six parts and founded cities. The Heraclids made Sparta their capital, they sent kings to the rest of them, allowing them, due to the sparse population of the country, to receive all foreigners who wanted to. Neighboring tribes were subordinate to the Spartans, but had equal rights, both in terms of citizenship rights and in terms of holding public office. They were called helots
Eurysthenes, the eldest son of Aristodemus, had a son, Agis; from him the family of Eurysthenes is called the Agids.
In the reign of Ehesstratus, the son of Agis, in Sparta the Lacedaemonians forced to move out all the adults capable of bearing arms of the inhabitants of Kynurea, accusing them of the fact that they, although related to the Argos, allowed the robbers from Cynuria to devastate Argolis, and they themselves openly raided this land.
A few years later, Labot, son of Ehestratus, took over Sparta. As a child, Lycurgus was the guardian of Labota, who issued laws. In this war, nothing worthy of mention was done on either side; Doris, the son of Labotus, and Agesilaus, the son of Doris, who then reigned from this house, both died after a short reign.
Agesilaus I - the legendary king of Lakoniki (IX century BC) from the Agids clan. Under Agesilaus, the laws of Lycurgus were adopted.
Agesilaus had a son, Archelaus. Archelaus - king of the Lacedaemonians from the Agids clan, who ruled in the 9th century. before Christmas. Under Archelaus, the Lacedaemonians subjugated one of the neighboring cities, Aegina, by force of arms, and enslaved its inhabitants, suspecting that the Aeginians sympathized with the Arcadians.
The son of Archelaus was Telecles: under him, the Lacedaemonians took three district cities, defeating them in the war, namely Amikles, Pharis and Geranthres, which then belonged to the Achaeans.
After the death of Telekla, Alkamen, the son of Telekla, assumed power; under him, the Lacedaemonians sent to Crete one of the noblest people of Sparta, Charmides, son of Euthius, in order to stop civil strife among the Cretans and convince them to leave those small cities that were located relatively far from the sea or were weak in one way or another, and instead of them, build common cities in places convenient for maritime communications. Under him, they destroyed the seaside city of Gelos - the Achaeans owned it - and defeated the Argos in battle, who helped the inhabitants of Gelos (helots).
After the death of Alcamenes, Alcamenes' son, Polydorus, assumed royal power. He ruled in the 8th century. before Christmas. Under him, the Lacedaemonians were sent to found two colonies: one - in Italy, in Croton, the other - in the region of the Locrians, those that are at Cape Zephyria.
Under him, the First Messenian War began. At this time, Theopompus, the son of Nicander, a king from another royal family, was chiefly in command of the Lacedaemonians. When the war with Messenia was brought to an end, Polydorus was killed by Polemarchus. Polydorus was very popular in Sparta and was especially loved by the people, as he did not allow himself in relation to anyone, neither violent acts nor rude treatment, and, when executing judgment, observed justice and showed indulgence towards people.
During the reign of Eurycrates, son of Polydorus, the Messenians endured their position patiently, remaining subjects of the Lacedaemonians; and from the side of the people of Argos there was no new action against them.
But under Anaxander, son of Eurycrates, the Messenians rebelled against the Lacedaemonians. For some time they fought against the Lacedaemonians, but then, being defeated, they, by agreement, withdrew from the Peloponnese; the same part of their population that remained in this land became the slaves of the Lacedaemonians, except for those who occupied their seaside cities.
The son of Anaxander was Eurycrates, and Eurycrates - this was the second king with this name - had a son Leo. Leo ruled in the first half. 6th century before Christmas. During their reign, the Lacedaemonians suffered many defeats in the war with the Tegeates. But under Anaxandrides, the son of Leo, they were victorious over the Tegeats in the war.
Anaxandrides, the son of Leontes, was one of all the Lacedaemonians who had two wives at the same time and lived in two houses at the same time. When Anaxandrides died, the Lacedaemonians, although Doria was superior to Cleomenes in mind and military affairs, in their own opinion, nevertheless, against their will, removed him from the kingship and gave power to Cleomenes on the basis of laws of seniority. Then Doria - he did not want, remaining in Lacedaemon, to obey Cleomenes - was sent to found a new colony.
Cleomenes I - king of the Lacedaemonians from the Agids clan, who ruled in 520-491. BC Cleomenes, was somewhat weak-minded and had a penchant for insanity.
As soon as Cleomenes took the throne, he immediately invaded Argolis, gathering an army, both from the Lacedaemonians and from the allies. When the Argives marched against him with weapons in their hands, Cleomenes defeated them in battle. Cleomenes also twice went on a campaign to Athens: the first time to free the Athenians from the tyranny of the children of Peisistratus, thereby acquiring great glory among all the Hellenes both for himself and the Lacedaemonians, and the second for the sake of the Athenian Isagoras, in order to help him seize tyranny over Athens. But he was wrong in his hopes. The Athenians fought for their freedom for a long time and Cleomenes devastated their country, he also ruined the area, the so-called Orgada, dedicated to the Eleusinian goddesses.
He arrived in Aegina and ordered the arrest of influential Aeginetans, who took the side of the Persians and persuaded their fellow citizens to give Darius, the son of Hystaspes, "land and water" (as a sign of submission). While Cleomenes was in Aegina, Demaratus, a king from another royal family, began to accuse him before an assembly of the Lacedaemonians.
When Cleomenes returned from Aegina, he took measures to deprive Demarates of royal dignity, and for this he bribed the Delphic prophetess so that she would give the Lacedaemonians such an answer as he himself suggested to her and prompted Leotychides, a man of royal line and from the same at home with Demarat, to enter into a dispute with him because of power. Leotychides referred to those words that once, through imprudence, his father Ariston threw in relation to the newly born Demaratus, saying that this was not his son. Then the Lacedaemonians, as they used to do, transferred the whole matter and the dispute about Demarates to Delphi, asking for a prophetic word from God. And the prophetess gave them in the form of an answer a saying that corresponded to the plans of Cleomenes. Thus, Demaratus was removed from the kingdom because of Cleomenes's hatred of him, and not by justice.
Subsequently, Cleomenes, in a fit of madness, caused his own death: seizing the sword, he began to inflict wounds on himself and died, chopping and mutilating his entire body. Since Cleomenes had no male descendants, the power passed to Leonidas, the (third) son of Anaxandrides, the brother of Dorieus.
Leonidas I - Spartan king from the Agids clan, who ruled in 491-480. BC During the first ten years of his reign, Leonidas did nothing remarkable, but on the other hand immortalized himself forever with the last battle of Thermopylae in his life.
At this time, Xerxes led his hordes to Hellas, Leonidas, along with three hundred Lacedaemonians, met him at Thermopylae. There were many wars among the Greeks and the barbarians among themselves, but it is easy to enumerate those to whom the valor of one man gave the greatest glory; so, Achilles glorified the war near Ilion, and Miltiades - the Battle of Marathon. The feat of the duty performed by Leonid surpassed all the feats of this time. That same Xerxes, who of all the kings that were among the Medes, and later on the Persians, set himself the most ambitious plans and accomplished brilliant deeds. Leonidas, with a handful of people whom he brought with him to Thermopylae, stood on the path so firmly that Xerxes would never have seen Hellas at all and would not have burned the cities of the Athenians if the Trachinian had not led along an impassable path that goes through Mount Etu, Hydarne with army and would not give him the opportunity to surround the Hellenes. Only after Leonid died in this way, the barbarians were able to penetrate into Hellas.
Plistarchus - Spartan king from the Agids clan, who ruled in 480-458. BC Son of Leonidas I. As a child, Plistarch's guardian was his cousin Pausanias. After the death of Plistarchus, the son of Pausanias Plistoanakt became king.
Pleistoanax had a son, Pausanias. Pausanias - king of the Lacedaemonians from the Agids clan, who ruled in 409-395. BC + 385 BC
Pausanias appeared in Attica, as an enemy of Thrasybulus and the Athenians, in order to firmly strengthen the tyranny of those to whom Lysander had entrusted power. And in the battle he defeated the Athenians who occupied Piraeus, but after the battle he decided to immediately take home the army, not wanting to bring on Sparta the most shameful of reproaches by his support of the tyranny of godless people.
When he returned from Athens after such a fruitless battle, his enemies called him to judgment. In court over the Lacedaemonian king sit the so-called gerontes, twenty-eight in number, the entire college of ephors, and with them the king from another royal family. Fourteen gerontes, as well as Agis, a king from another royal house, admitted that Pausanias was guilty; yet the rest of the judges acquitted him.
A short time later, when the Lacedaemonians were gathering an army against Thebes, Lysander, having arrived in Phocis, called the Phocians to a nationwide militia; without waiting for time, he immediately moved to Boeotia and attacked the fortified place of Galiart, whose population did not want to fall away from the Thebes. But already earlier some of the Thebans and Athenians secretly entered this city, and when they went out and lined up under the walls of the city, then (in the battle that took place) Lysander fell among the other Lacedaemonians.
Pausanias was late to this battle, gathering an army among the Tegeates and other Arcadians; when he arrived in Boeotia and learned about the defeat of those who were with Lysander, and about the death of Lysander himself, he nevertheless led an army to Thebes and intended to start a battle. Then the Thebans came up against him and it became known that Thrasybulus was not far away, who, leading the Athenians, was waiting for the Lacedaemonians to begin the battle, and intended, when they had already begun, to strike them in the rear himself. Pausanias was afraid that he would have to fight on two fronts, falling between two enemy troops, so he concluded a truce with the Thebans and took with him the corpses of those who fell under the walls of Galiart. The Lacedaemonians did not like this. When this time, too, the citizens accused him of slowness in coming to Boeotia, he did not wait for a summons to court, but he was accepted as a prayer for the protection of the tegeata in their temple of Athena-Aleia.
After the flight of Pausanias, his sons, Agesipol and Cleombrotus, remained quite young and Aristodemus, who was their closest relative, took custody of them. And the victory of the Lacedaemonians at Corinth was won when he commanded them.
When Agesipol grew up and became king, the first of the Peloponnesians with whom he went to war were the Argos. When he led an army from the region of the Tegeates to Argolis, he met a herald whom the Argos sent to Agesipolis in order to renew the truce, according to them, established from ancient times between the various peoples of the Dorian tribe in relation to each other, but the king did not want to conclude a truce with herald and, moving forward with the army, devastated the country. Then the god shook the earth, but even here Agesipol did not think of withdrawing his army back, despite the fact that the Lacedaemonians, more than all the Hellenes (as well as the Athenians), are afraid of any divine signs. He had already begun to camp under the walls of Argos, but the god did not stop shaking the earth, and some of the warriors of Agesipolis were struck by lightning, while others were deafened by thunder. Only then, against his will, he interrupted the campaign and retreated from Argolis.
But he immediately went on a campaign against the Olynthians. After he had won a battle, had taken by storm many other cities in Halkidiki, and hoped to capture Olynthus itself, he suddenly fell ill and died of the disease.
After the death of Agesipolis, who died childless, power passed to Cleombrotus, and under his command the Lacedaemonians fought the Boeotians at Leuctra. Cleombrotus, himself a brave warrior, fell at the very beginning of the battle. Usually, with great defeats, the will of fate is primarily expressed in the fact that it takes away the leader, just as at the beginning of the battle of Delia, it took away Hippocrates, the son of Arifron, who commanded them from the Athenians, and later in Thessaly (another Athenian commander) Leosthenes. The eldest son of Cleombrotus Agesipol did nothing glorious, worthy of memory; after his death, power passed to his younger brother. He had two sons - Akrotat, and after him Cleonymus; death befell Acrotatus before Cleomenes himself (his father).
When Cleomenes later died, Cleonymus, son of Cleomenes, and Ares, son of Akrotates, entered into a dispute over royal power. Then the gerontes decided that, by virtue of hereditary rights, royal power should belong to Ares, the son of Akrotat, and not to Cleonymus. Cleonymus, removed from the royal power, was filled with great anger, and the ephors could not soften his soul and reconcile with Sparta, neither by gifts, nor by the fact that they put him at the head of the army. In the end, he dared to commit a lot of criminal and treacherous things in relation to his homeland, and even invited Pyrrhus, the son of Aeacides, to his native country.
When Ares, the son of Akrotatus, reigned in Sparta, Antigonus, the son of Demetrius, set off on a campaign against Athens and with foot troops and a fleet. Patroclus arrived from Egypt to help the Athenians, along with his army and fleet, and the Lacedaemonians also acted as a nationwide militia, entrusting the main command to King Ares. But Antigonus surrounded Athens with such a tight ring that there was no way for the forces allied with the Athenians to enter the city. Then Patroclus, sending envoys, began to induce the Lacedaemonians and Ares to start a battle against Antigonus, saying that if they started, then he would attack the Macedonians from the rear; before this attack occurs, it is somehow inconvenient for them, the Egyptians and sailors, to attack the infantry. And indeed, the Lacedaemonians strove, despite the danger, to help the Athenians, both because of their disposition towards them, and out of a thirst for military glory, dreaming of some memorable feat for later times. But Ares withdrew his army on the pretext that he had run out of food. He believed that it was necessary to preserve the courage of warriors for their own interests, and not squander it so imprudently for strangers. With the Athenians, who for a very long time had shown strong resistance, Antigonus made peace on the condition that he bring a garrison to them and place it on (the hill) Museya. In the course of time, Antigonus himself voluntarily withdrew (from Athens) this garrison. Arey had a son, Akrotat, and he had a son, Arey, who died of an illness when he was still an eight-year-old boy.
Since only Leonidas, the son of Cleonymus, already a very old man, remained the representative of the male generation from the house of Eurysthenes, the Lacedaemonians transferred power to him. The most powerful opponent of Leonidas was Lysander, a descendant of Lysander, the son of Aristocrites. He attracted to his side Cleombrotus, married to the daughter of Leonidas; conspiring with him, he began to build on Leonidas, among many other accusations, that he, as a child, had sworn an oath to his father Cleonymus to contribute to the death of Sparta. Thus, indeed, Leonidas was deprived of royal dignity and Cleombrotus received this honor instead. If Leonidas had succumbed to a feeling of anger and, like Demaratus, the son of Ariston, retired to the Macedonian king or to Egypt, then even if the Spartans, (repentantly), changed their mind, it would not have been of any use to him. He, having been expelled by the citizens after being condemned from the country, went to Arcadia, and a few years later the Lacedaemonians called him back from there and again elected king.
Cleomenes (about 262-219 BC) was the eldest son of King Leonidas, who killed the noble Agis. After the execution of Agis, King Leonidas forcibly married his widow Agiatis to Cleomenes in order to take possession of her property. Cleomenes received a good education. His mentor and friend was the famous scientist Sphere Borisfensky, who had a great influence on the Spartan youth. Spher taught that the king is only the first citizen, only a servant of the people and therefore is obliged to devote himself entirely to their good. With all the ardor of youth, Cleomenes accepted these democratic ideas and watched with indignation everything that happened in Sparta after the death of Agis. Cleomenes understood that the reforms would be successful only if it was possible to destroy the main support of the rich - the council of elders (gerousia) and the ephorate. And for this it was necessary to create an army not from mercenaries, but from citizens who were vitally interested in redistributing the land and property of the rich. The revival of the military power of Sparta was also connected with this.
After the death of Cleomenes, the movement of the poor in Sparta continued. Other popular leaders appeared, calling themselves tyrants, who continued the work of Cleomenes. The struggle went on with varying success until a new force, Rome, intervened in the affairs of Greece. Having subjugated Sparta and other Greek states, the Roman conquerors established their rule there for a long time.
From the family of Eurysthenes, from the so-called Agids, Cleomenes, the son of Leonidas, was the last king in Sparta.
3. Eurypontid dynasty
Proclus is the legendary king of Laconica. ruled in the 11th century. to R.X. Son of Aristodemus. The ancestor of the royal family of the Eurypontides. Proclus named his son Soon. Eurypont, the son of Soon, so glorified himself that this family from him received the name Eurypontides, and before him they were called Proclides.
Eurypont's son was Prytanides. Under Prytanides, enmity began between the Lacedaemonians and the Argives, but even before this feud they waged war with the Cynurians. During the following generations, during the reigns of Eunomus, son of Prytanides, and Polydectes, son of Eunomos, Sparta lived in peace.
But Harilus, the son of Polydectes, first devastated the land of Argos and then, a few years later, under his command, the Spartans invaded the region of Tegea, when the Lacedaemonians hoped to defeat Tegea and subjugate it to their power, separating the Tegean plain from Argolis; in this they relied on an ambiguous divination.
After Harill's death, Harill's son, Nicander, assumed power. In the reign of Nicander, the Messenians murdered Telecles, a king from another royal family, in the temple of Artemis-Limnada (Virgin of the Waters). Nicander also invaded Argolis with a large army and caused much devastation in the country. The inhabitants of Asina, who took part in this campaign with the Lacedaemonians, soon experienced retribution from the Argives, who subjected their homeland to the final devastation, and they themselves were expelled.
When Theopompus, son of Nikiandra, was still reigning in Sparta, a dispute arose between the Lacedaemonians and the Argives over the so-called Plain of Thyreatides. Theopompus himself did not take part in this matter due to old age, but even more because of grief, since fate kidnapped Archidamus, the son of Theopompus, while his father was still alive. But Archidamus did not die childless; he left behind his son Zeuxidamus. Then the son of Zeuxidamus, Anaksidas, took power.
Under him, the Messenians had to leave the Peloponnese, defeated for the second time in the war by the Spartans. The son of Anaxidamus was Archidamus, and the son of Archidamus was Agasicles; they were both destined to spend their whole lives in peace, and they did not fight any wars.
Ariston, the son of Agasicles, took for his wife the one who was the most ugly of the girls of Lacedaemon, but by the grace of Helen she became the most beautiful of all women. Just seven months after Ariston married her, her son Demarat was born. Ariston was sitting with the ephors in council when a slave came to him with the news that a son had been born to him; Ariston, said that according to the number of months he could not be his son. Subsequently, he himself repented of these words, but when Demaratus already reigned and had already glorified Sparta with his glorious exploits, among other things, having freed the Athenians from the Peisistratids together with Cleomenes, Ariston's unreasonable phrase and Cleomenes's hatred made him an ordinary citizen (depriving him of the throne). He retired to Persia to live with King Darius, and for a long time later, as they say, his descendants continued to live in Asia.
Having become king instead of Demaratus, Leotichid participated together with the Athenians and the Athenian leader Xanthippus, the son of Arifron, in the battle of Mycale, and after that he went to Thessaly against the Alevads. And although it was easy for him to conquer all of Thessaly, since he always remained the winner, yet he allowed himself to be bribed by the Alevadas. Attracted to court in Lacedaemon, he voluntarily, without waiting for the trial, fled to Tegea and appeared there as a prayer for protection in the temple of Athena-Aleia. The son of Leotychides, Zeuxidamus, died of illness while Leotychides was still alive, when he was not yet an exile.
After the departure of Leotichid to Tegea, Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, took power. This Archidamus did especially much harm to the country of the Athenians, annually invading Attica with an army, and with every invasion, he went through it all, betraying devastation with fire and sword. He also besieged and took the city of Plataea, which was always on the side of the Athenians. But in any case, he was not the instigator of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians; on the contrary, he made every possible effort to maintain a truce between them.
Sthenelaides, who generally enjoyed great influence in Lacedaemon and at that time was an ephor, turned out to be the main culprit of the war. This war shook Hellas to its very foundations, which was still strong and organized until then, and subsequently Philip, the son of Amyntas, already shattered and completely in decline, overthrew and subdued his power.
Dying, Archidamus left two sons. Agis was older in age and therefore received power before Agesilaus. Archidamus also had a daughter, named Cynisca, who indulged in Olympic competitions with the greatest passion and was the first of the women to keep horses for this purpose and the first of them won the Olympic Games. After Kiniski, other women, especially from Lacedaemon, achieved victories at Olympia, but none of them deserved such fame for their victories as she did. It seems to me that there are no other people in the world who, less than the Spartans, admired poetry and pursued praise expressed in the form of poetic works. And in fact, apart from an epigram written by an unknown person in honor of Cynisca, and another epigram by Simonides, who wrote it much earlier for Pausanias, in order to place it on a tripod, which Pausanias dedicated to Delphi, then nothing else was written by any poet about the Lacedaemonian kings in memory of them.
Even in the reign of Agis, the son of Archidamus, mutual squabbles began between the Lacedaemonians and the Eleans, but the Lacedaemonians were especially offended because the Eleans did not allow them to participate in the Olympic Games and to sacrifice in the temple of Olympian Zeus. And so the Lacedaemonians sent a messenger to the Eleans demanding that autonomy be restored to the Lepreates and to those of the surrounding cities who were their subjects. The Eleans answered them that as soon as they saw the free district cities of Sparta, they would not hesitate to grant freedom also to their own; after such an answer, the Lacedaemonians, led by King Agis, invaded Elis. Their army had already reached Olympia and was already standing in front of the river Alpheus, but at that time God shook the earth, and the army had to go back. The next year, Agis devastated the country and captured a lot of booty. The Elean Xenius, a personal friend of Agis and a representative (“proxen”) of the Lacedaemonians among the Eleians, rebelled against the power of the people, standing at the head of wealthy citizens. But before Agis arrived with an army to support them, Thrasideus, who was then at the head of the Elean people, defeated Xenius and his supporters in battle and drove them out of the city. Then Agis had to withdraw the army back; however, he left the Spartan Lysistratus with part of the military forces, which, together with the fugitives from the Eleans and the Lepreates, were to devastate the Elean region. In the third year of the war, the Lacedaemonians, together with Agis, were preparing to invade Elis again, but the Eleans and their leader Thrasidas, driven to the extreme by devastation, agreed to give up power over the surrounding cities, tear down the walls of their city and admit the Lacedaemonians to Olympia as to participate in the sacrifice to the Olympian - Zeus, and for holding the Olympic Games with them.
Agis also invaded Attica more than once at the head of the army; it was he who fortified Deceleia by garrisoning it, creating a constant threat to the Athenians; when the Athenian fleet was defeated at Aegospotami, Lysander, the son of Aristocrites, and Agis violated that oath in the name of the gods, which the Lacedaemonians publicly gave to the Athenians, and on their own behalf, without the consent of the entire Spartan people, they made a proposal at a meeting of the allies “to cut off from the Athenians and branches and roots. Such were the especially remarkable military exploits of Agis.
The reckless statement of Ariston regarding his son Demaratus was repeated by Agis in relation to Leotychides; and some evil spirit inspired him to say in the presence of the ephors that he considered Leotychides not his son. But subsequently Agis was also seized with remorse, and when he, sick, was carried home from Arcadia and when he arrived in Gerea, then, in front of a large gathering of witnesses, he declared that he considered Leotychis to be his son and with tears begged them to convey these words of his to the Lacedaemonians.
After the death of Agis, Agesilaus began to remove Leotichides from the kingdom, bringing to memory the words of the Lacedaemonians that had once been said by Agis about Leotichid. Then the Arcadians from Gerea also arrived and testified in favor of Leotychides all that they had heard from the lips of the dying Agis.
Leotychides said that the prophecy refers to Agesilaus, since Agesilaus was lame in one leg, but Agesilaus turned him to Leotychides as the illegitimate son of Agis. The Lacedaemonians could, of course, in this case apply for a settlement of the dispute to Delphi, but they did not do this, the reason for which was Lysander, the son of Aristocrites, who made every effort to ensure that Agesilaus was king.
Thus, Agesilaus, the son of Archidamus, became king. Under him, the Lacedaemonians decided to cross over to Asia in order to fight Artaxerxes, the son of Darius: they were informed by the people in power, and especially by Lysander, that during the war with the Athenians, not Artaxerxes, but Cyrus, gave them money for the fleet. Agesilaus, having received an order to transport the army to Asia and become the head of the land army, sent messengers throughout the Peloponnese, except for Argos, and to all the other Hellenes on the other side of the Isthma, inviting them to become allies. Although the Corinthians really wanted to take part in this campaign to Asia, but since the temple of Zeus, called Olympian, suddenly burned down, they, considering this a bad omen, remained at home against their will. The Athenians put forward the pretext that after the Peloponnesian war and pestilence their state had not yet restored its former prosperity, but mainly they remained calm because they learned through messengers that Conon, the son of Timothy, had gone to the court of the Persian king. Aristomenides, maternal grandfather of Agesilaus, was sent to Thebes as an ambassador; he was favored in Thebes and was one of those judges who voted for the fact that, after the capture of Plataea, the survivors of the Plataeans were executed. But the Thebans gave the same negative answer as the Athenians, saying that they would not come to the rescue.
When the Spartan and allied troops gathered and the fleet was ready to sail, Agesilaus went to Aulis to sacrifice to Artemis, because Agamemnon, having propitiated the goddess, moved from there on a campaign against Troy. Agesilaus believed that he was the king of a more prosperous and powerful state than King Agamemnon, and that, like Agamemnon, he was the leader of all Hellas; he flattered himself with the thought that it would be more glorious feat than to destroy the dominion of Priam. When he was already offering a sacrifice, the Thebans came here with weapons in their hands; they threw off the already burning thighs of sacrificial animals from the altar, and he (they) drove him out of the temple. Agesilaus was very offended that he was not allowed to finish the sacrifice; nevertheless, he crossed into Asia and marched on Sardis.
Lydia then constituted the most important part of lower (Minor) Asia and (its capital) Sardis was distinguished by its wealth and splendor among all cities; they were the residence of the satrap of the Maritime region, just as Susa was the residence of the Persian king himself. The battle with Tissaphernes, satrap of the Ionian regions, took place on the plain of Germas, and Agesilaus defeated both the Persian cavalry and infantry, gathered then in greater numbers than ever, with the exception of the campaign of Xerxes and even earlier Darius, when the first led an army against the Scythians, and the other - to Athens. The Lacedaemonians, admiring the energy and brilliance of Agesilaus's manner of action, willingly made him the head of the fleet, but he put Peisander at the head of the trier, and Agesilaus was married to Peisander's sister, - he himself vigorously continued the war on land.
When Artaxerxes found out about these battles, in which Agesilaus remained the winner, and that he continues to move forward, sweeping away everything in his path, he sentenced Tissaphernes to death, although Tissaphernes had previously rendered him great services, and sent Tiphraustus, a very intelligent man, as the satrap of the Primorye region. and besides, he did not like the Lacedaemonians very much. When he arrived at Sardis, he immediately devised a means to force the Lacedaemonians to withdraw their army from Asia. He sent the Rhodian Timocrates to Hellas with a large sum of money, instructing him to start a war against the Lacedaemonians in Hellas. They were bribed, from the Argos Cylon and Sodam, in Thebes - Androklid, Ismenius and Amphifemis: the Athenians took part in this - Cephalus and Epicrates, as well as those of the Corinthians who sympathized with the Argos - Polyantus and Timolaus. The Locrians from Amfissa opened the hostilities. The Locrians had a disputed land on the border with the Phocians; when the harvest time came, the Locrians, at the instigation of the Thebes, supporters of Ismenia, squeezed the bread and stole the booty. Then the Phocians broke into Locris with all their people and devastated the country. In turn, the Locrians called on their Theban allies and sacked Phocis.
The Phocians went with a complaint against the Thebans to Lacedaemon and indicated that they had endured from them. The Lacedaemonians decided to start a war against the Thebans, putting forward other complaints against them, and mainly the insult that they inflicted on Agesilaus in Aulis during the sacrifice. Having learned in advance about such a decision of the Lacedaemonians, the Athenians sent an embassy to Sparta with a proposal not to raise weapons against Thebes, but to resolve by court the accusations that are presented here, but the Lacedaemonians angrily sent back this embassy
Starting with the campaign of the Lacedaemonians against Boeotia, this so-called Corinthian war began to expand more and more. Due to this necessity, Agesilaus had to withdraw his army from Asia. When he crossed from Abydos with a fleet to Sest and, having passed Thrace, arrived in Thessaly, here the Thessalians, trying to please the Thebans, wanted to delay Agesilaus in his further movement; besides, they have long had some kind of friendly disposition towards the Athenian state.
Having defeated their cavalry, Agesilaus passed through all of Thessaly and again, passing through Boeotia, he defeated the Thebans and the entire army of their allies at the Crown. When, (having been defeated), the Boeotians took to flight, some of the soldiers fled to the temple of Athena, called Itonia. Although Agesilaus was wounded in this battle, despite this, he did not violate the rights of those who prayed for protection.
A little later, those who had been expelled from Corinth for their disposition to the Spartans staged the Isthmian games. Frightened by the presence of Agesilaus, the rest of the inhabitants of Corinth then remained calm. But Agesilaus did not have time to withdraw with the army from under Corinth and head to Sparta, as the Corinthians, together with the Argos, began to celebrate the Isthmian games. Agesilaus again returned to Corinth with an army; since the feast of Hyakinthius was approaching, he sent the Amikleians home to celebrate the established festivities in honor of Apollo and Hyakinthos. The Athenians under the command of Iphicrates attacked this part of the army on the way and killed them.
Agesilaus also went to Aetolia to help the Aetolians, who were heavily pressed by the Acarnanians, and forced the Acarnanians to stop the war, although they were already ready to capture Calydon and other Aetolian cities.
He later sailed to Egypt to help the Egyptians when they fell away from the Persian king. And in Egypt, Agesilaus performed many feats worthy of memory. He was already an old man and during this campaign he suffered an inevitable fate for all (death). When his corpse was brought to Sparta, the Lacedaemonians buried him, giving him more honors than any other king.
In the reign of Archidamus, son of Agesilaus, the Phocians captured the sanctuary at Delphi. This caused them to go to war with the Thebans; to help the Phocians in this war, first of all, an army recruited by the Phocians independently from the funds they received from (captured) treasures came; in addition, the Lacedaemonians and Athenians openly came to their aid, on behalf of their states; the latter remembered some ancient favor rendered to them by the Phocians; for their part, the Lacedaemonians also pretended to be their friendship for the Phocians, but in fact they were rather motivated by hatred, it seems to me, towards the Thebans. Theopompus, the son of Damasistratus, says that Archidamus himself participated in the division of these treasures and that Archidamus' wife, Deinich, receiving gifts from persons influential among the Phocians, thanks to them, persuaded Archidamus to such an alliance. To accept gifts from sacred treasures and to protect people who robbed the most famous of the temples of divine broadcasting, I do not consider it a laudable thing, but this is what serves to the honor of Archidamus: when the Phocians decided to kill all the adult inhabitants of Delphi, to sell children and wives into slavery, and the city itself destroyed to the ground, then the Delphians owe it only to the intervention of Archidamus that they escaped the terrible fate that threatened them from the Phocians.
Subsequently, Archidamus crossed over to Italy to help the Tarentines in their war with the neighboring barbarians. There he was killed by barbarians, and that his body was not honored with burial "in the royal tomb", this was the fault of Apollo's anger.
The eldest son of Archidamus, Agis, was destined to die in the battle against the Macedonians and Antipater, while his younger son, Eudamides, reigned among the Lacedaemonians and under him they enjoyed peace.
Then Agis IV reigned - a king from the Eurypontides clan, who ruled in Laconica in 244-241. BC Son of Eudamides II. From childhood, he was brought up in luxury by his mother Agesistrata and grandmother Archidamia, the wealthiest women in Lacedaemon. But before he was 20 years old, he declared war on pleasure, tore off his jewelry, resolutely rejected any kind of extravagance, was proud of his shabby cloak, dreamed of Laconian dinners, baths and, in general, of the Spartan lifestyle, and said that he did not what would royal power be if it were not for the hope of reviving ancient laws and customs with its help.
To this end, he began to test the mood of the Spartans. The youth, contrary to the expectations of Agis, quickly responded to his words and enthusiastically devoted themselves to valor, for the sake of freedom changing their whole way of life, like clothes. But the elderly, who were much more deeply affected by the corruption of wealth, scolded Agis. The dissatisfaction of wealthy people with the reign of Agis grew.
smart and high spiritual qualities Agis not only surpassed the second king Leonidas, but was one of the most prominent people of his time. Soon he became a favorite of the common people of Sparta.
The first attempt at reform ended unsuccessfully, firstly, because it was impossible to return the Spartan state, which was in a state of deep decline, to the Lycurgus order; secondly, because the noble ruler Agis was deprived of the traits of a fighter and a leader. He did not have an unshakable will and fortitude, not receding before the need to use force against the rich. A ruler of a different warehouse was needed. Such a man soon appeared in Sparta. It was King Cleomenes.
CONCLUSION
Sparta (Lacedaemon) is an ancient Greek polis in Lakonika (Peloponnese), which turned after the conquest in the VIII-VI centuries. BC e. southern part of the Peloponnese large state. According to legend, the state system in Sparta was established by Lycurgus (IX-VIII centuries). The Spartans owned equal plots of state land with helots attached to them, they themselves were mainly engaged in military affairs. Craft and trade were in the hands of the perieks. Sparta is a classic example of a polis with an oligarchic state system; state affairs were decided by the gerousia, then by the college of ephors. Since ancient times, Sparta was simultaneously ruled by two royal dynasties, which often competed and were at enmity with each other. The kings who traced their family back to Hercules himself enjoyed universal honor and respect. However, their power was severely limited by law. AT war time they performed the functions of military leaders who commanded the Spartan army, in peacetime they were engaged in judicial and religious affairs. Both kings were members of the council of elders (together with them it numbered thirty people) and took part in its meetings, at which almost all the main issues of state administration were decided.
The rivalry between Athens and Sparta led to the Peloponnesian War of 431-404; having won it, Sparta asserted its hegemony over Greece. After the defeat in the war with Thebes in 371 under Leuctra and in 362 under Mantinea, Sparta turned into a minor state. In 146, Sparta was subjugated by Rome, in 27 BC. e. entered the Roman province of Achaia.
Modern Sparta is a city in Greece, in the south of the Peloponnese peninsula, the administrative center of the Laconia nome in the valley of the river. Evrotas, founded in 1834. Near it are the ruins of the ancient city of Sparta (the remains of the acropolis with the temple of Athena, VI century BC, sanctuaries, VII-V centuries BC, theater, I-II centuries BC). n e.
Period of government Ruler
Until 1103 BC kings of Laconica
Heraclides
1103 - 1101 BC Aristodemus
Agiades
1101 - 1059 BC Eurysthenes
1059 - 1058 BC Agis I
1058 - 1023 BC Echestrat
1023 - 986 BC labot
986 - 957 BC doriss
957 - 913 BC Agesilaus I
913 - 853 BC Archelaus
853 - 813 BC Telekl
813 - 776 BC Alkamen
776 - late 8th c. BC. Polydor
late 8th c. - 685 BC Eurycrates
c.685 - 668 BC Anaxander
668 - 590 BC Eurycratides
590 - 560 BC Leontes
560 - 520 BC Anaxandride
520 - 490 BC Cleomenes I
490 - 480 BC Leonid I
480 - 470 BC Pausanias (regent)
480 - 459 BC plistarch
459 - 445 BC Plistoanact I
445 - 426 BC Pausanias I
426 - 409 BC Plistoanact I
409 - 395 BC Pausanias I
395 - 380 BC Agesipolis I
380 - 371 BC Cleombrotus I
371 - 370 BC Agesipolis II
370 - 309 BC Cleomenes II
309 - 265 BC Arey I
265 - 262 BC Acrotat
262 - 254 BC Arey II
254 - 243 BC Leonid II
243 - 241 BC Cleombrotus II
241 - 235 BC Leonid II
235 - 227 BC Cleomenes III
227 - 221 BC Euclid
219 - 215 BC Agesipolis III
euryponides
1101 - mid-11th century BC. Proclus
2nd half of the 11th century BC. soi
10th c. BC. Eurypont
10th c. BC. Prytanid
10th c. BC. Evnom
9th c. BC. polydect
9th c. BC. Lycurgus I
9th c. BC. Harilai
late 9th c. - 770 BC Nikandr
c.770 - 720 BC Theopompus
720 - early 7th c. BC. Zeuxidamus
1st half of the 7th c. BC. Anaxides
2nd half of the 7th c. BC. Archidam I
late 7th c. - 550 BC Agasicle
550 - 515 BC Ariston
515 - 491 BC Demarat
491 - 469 BC Leontykhides I
469 - 427 BC Archides II
427 - 399 BC Agis II
399 BC Leontychides II
399 - 360 BC Agiselay II
360 - 338 BC Archides III
338 - 331 BC Agis III
331 - 305 BC Eudamides I
305 - 275 BC Archides IV
275 - 244 BC Eudamides II
244 - 241 BC Agis IV
241 - 228 BC Eudamides III
228 - 227 BC Archides IV
In 221 - 219 BC republic
219 - 212 BC Lycurgus II
212 - 200 BC Pelops
211 - 207 BC Mahanid (tyrant)
207 - 192 BC Nabis (tyrant)
192 BC Laconic
In 192 - 146 BC republic
From 146 BC conquered by the Roman Republic