Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / The Spartan King Who Fought for Democracy Agesilaus II
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Athens — its democracy, its empire, its cultural brilliance. But Sparta had its own fascinating figures, and one of the most complex was a king named Agesilaus II. He reigned from around 400 to 360 BC, and he was arguably the most influential Spartan of his generation. Luna: Wait — didn't we already cover Spartan kings? I remember something about Leonidas at Thermopylae. Lucas: Right, Leonidas is the famous one from the Persian Wars. But Agesilaus came later, after Sparta had already defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War. He led Sparta during its brief heyday as the undisputed power in Greece — and then he was also there when it all started to unravel. His life story is almost like a case study in Spartan strengths and weaknesses. Lucas: He wasn't even supposed to be king. He was the younger brother of King Agis II, and he had a noticeable limp — which in Sparta, where physical perfection was everything, could have disqualified him. But when Agis died, there was a succession dispute, and Agesilaus was backed by the powerful general Lysander. Luna: Lysander — that's the guy who won the Peloponnesian War for Sparta, right? Lucas: Exactly. Lysander was the naval commander who captured Athens in 404 BC. He saw in Agesilaus a potential ally — someone he could control. But that backfired spectacularly. Once Agesilaus became king, he quickly asserted his independence and sidelined Lysander. Xenophon, the historian who actually knew Agesilaus personally, wrote a biography of him, and he portrays the king as shrewd and ambitious. Luna: So what did Agesilaus actually do that was so significant? Lucas: Well, early in his reign, he launched a campaign in Asia Minor against the Persians. This was around 396 BC. Sparta had been fighting the Persians off and on for decades, and Agesilaus wanted to liberate the Greek cities of Ionia. He was quite successful at first — he won several battles and even negotiated with the Persian satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus. But ultimately, the Persians used their favorite weapon: gold. Luna: They bribed other Greek states to attack Sparta from behind? Lucas: Exactly. The Persians funded a coalition of Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Argos — what we call the Corinthian War. Agesilaus had to rush back from Asia Minor to defend Sparta. That war dragged on for years, from 395 to 387 BC, and it really drained Spartan resources. Agesilaus played a central role, leading campaigns in Boeotia and the Corinthia. Lucas: One of the most telling moments came in 394 BC at the Battle of Coronea, where Agesilaus fought the Thebans and their allies. It was a brutal fight, and Xenophon records that Agesilaus was wounded. But he won — barely. After the battle, he famously refused to allow his troops to pillage the Theban dead, which was unusual for the time. He was trying to project an image of civilized warfare. Luna: But it didn't bring peace, did it? Lucas: No. The war dragged on until 387 BC, when the Persians — tired of the chaos — imposed a settlement called the King's Peace. It basically said: all Greek cities will be autonomous, except those in Asia, which belong to Persia. Sparta was the enforcer of this peace. That sounds good for Sparta, but it actually made them a tool of Persia. And it deeply angered states like Thebes, because it broke up their regional league. Luna: So Agesilaus was willing to sell out Greek autonomy for Spartan dominance? Lucas: That's the charge many historians level at him. He was a Spartan patriot first and a Greek second. For the next couple of decades, Agesilaus used the King's Peace to intervene wherever Sparta's interests were threatened. He supported oligarchies over democracies, and he crushed any state that tried to assert independence. But his most aggressive target was Thebes. Lucas: In 382 BC, a Spartan general named Phoebidas, on his way to a campaign, seized the Theban citadel, the Cadmea, in a sneak attack. Agesilaus publicly condemned the act — but he also refused to punish it, because it benefited Sparta. That kind of hypocrisy alienated many Greeks. The Thebans eventually expelled the Spartan garrison and started building a new power under leaders like Epaminondas and Pelopidas. Luna: And that leads to the Battle of Leuctra, which we covered in episode 73. Lucas: Right. In 371 BC, at Leuctra, the Thebans under Epaminondas shattered the Spartan army. Agesilaus was not present at the battle — he was at home, perhaps ill — but he had to deal with the aftermath. Sparta lost its reputation of invincibility. Messenian helots revolted, and Sparta lost control of Messenia, which was the agricultural heartland that supported its military system. Lucas: You know, that parallel between Athens and Sparta — both built their power on exploitation: Athens on tribute from allies, Sparta on helot labor. And both saw that foundation crack when they overreached. Luna: It's almost like empires tend to do that. Lucas: They do. And speaking of foundations, it's worth noting that we keep having these conversations because we love diving deep into history. And we deliberately don't run ads on these episodes. If you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to keep this ad-free. Luna: Yeah, we're not selling you anything — just history, straight up. So back to Agesilaus. What happened to him after Leuctra? Lucas: He kept fighting. Even in his old age — he was probably around 80 by then — he took a mercenary force to Egypt to help a rebel pharaoh fight the Persians. He died on the way back, in 360 BC, in a place called Cyrene in North Africa. His body was embalmed in wax and returned to Sparta for burial. It was an inglorious end for a man who had once seemed unstoppable. Luna: So he never really adapted to the new reality of Theban power. Lucas: No, and that's the tragedy of Agesilaus. He was a brilliant tactician and a charismatic leader, but he was also rigid. He believed in the old Spartan way — heavy infantry, short-range warfare, oligarchic allies — and he couldn't see that the world had changed. The rise of Thebes, the use of deeper phalanxes and cavalry, the willingness to break conventions — all of that left Sparta behind. Lucas: Xenophon, who admired Agesilaus deeply, wrote that he was 'a man of such virtue that he never once uttered a falsehood.' But even Xenophon had to admit that Agesilaus's policies often backfired. For example, his support for oligarchies created resentment wherever he went. The Thebans, the Corinthians, the Argives — they all remembered Spartan high-handedness. Luna: It's like he personified Sparta's greatest strengths and its fatal flaws. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why I think Agesilaus is worth studying. He shows us that individual leadership matters, but it's also constrained by the system you're born into. Agesilaus couldn't imagine a Sparta that wasn't dominant, and he couldn't imagine a Greek world where Sparta didn't call the shots. When that world collapsed, he had no backup plan. Lucas: One more detail: after Leuctra, when the Thebans invaded Laconia, Agesilaus organized the defense of Sparta itself. The city had no walls — Spartans famously said their walls were their men. But now those men were gone. So Agesilaus armed helots and even women to defend the city. It was a desperate measure, and it worked — barely. But it showed how far Sparta had fallen. Luna: So the king who once fought in Asia Minor ended his days scrambling to save his own city. Lucas: Exactly. And his story is a reminder that no empire lasts forever. Even the most successful leaders can't stop the tide of history. But they can leave us with lessons — and, in Agesilaus's case, a lot of questions about loyalty, ambition, and the price of power.