Latest / The History of Greece: Philosophy, Empire, and Endless Reinvention — Fexingo History / Agesilaus II: The Last Spartan King Who Almost Won
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Athens in this show—its democracy, its empire, its dazzling cultural output. But after the Peloponnesian War, it was actually Sparta that stood on top of the Greek world. And the man who embodied that Spartan moment more than anyone was a king named Agesilaus the Second. Luna: Agesilaus—I know the name, but mostly from later episodes as the guy who fought Epaminondas. Lucas: That's right. But his career was long and remarkable. He became king of Sparta around 400 BCE, right after the Peloponnesian War ended, and he reigned for over forty years. He was small, lame in one leg—which actually caused a succession controversy, because there was an oracle warning Sparta against a 'lame kingship'—but he turned out to be one of the most energetic and ambitious leaders they ever had. Luna: Wait—there was an oracle about his lameness? Lucas: Yes, and it's a great story. When Agesilaus's half-brother King Agis died, the succession was disputed between Agesilaus and Agis's son Leotychidas. The son's legitimacy was questioned—rumor had it he was actually the son of Alcibiades, who'd had an affair with Agis's wife while in Sparta. So an oracle was trotted out warning against a 'lame king,' and Leotychidas's faction used it against Agesilaus. But Agesilaus's ally, the great naval commander Lysander, brilliantly reinterpreted the oracle: he said it meant a king who was morally or politically 'lame,' not literally crippled. Agesilaus won the throne. Luna: That's clever. So Lysander basically made him king. Lucas: Exactly. And that sets up one of the key tensions of his early reign. Lysander had immense prestige from winning the Peloponnesian War, and he expected to be the power behind the throne. He persuaded Agesilaus to lead a campaign into Asia Minor against the Persians, aiming to liberate the Greek cities of Ionia. Agesilaus went in 396 BCE with a small army, and he was spectacularly successful at first. He raided deep into Persian territory, defeated the satrap Tissaphernes, and won over many Greek cities. Luna: But if you're here listening with us, you're someone who loves history—not the shallow stuff, but the real meat of it. And that's why this show exists: because we want to have these long, unspooling conversations without ads interrupting. We're listener-supported, which means every episode stays ad-free thanks to people who chip in at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. If the show's brought you into a deeper understanding of the ancient world, that's the place to keep it going. Lucas: Yeah, and it's listeners like you who make it possible for us to go deep on figures like Agesilaus. So, back to Asia Minor: Agesilaus's campaign was so effective that the Persian king Artaxerxes the Second decided to fight Sparta not on land, but by bankrolling Sparta's enemies in Greece. That's the origin of the Corinthian War—Persian gold bought a coalition of Athens, Thebes, Corinth, and Argos to fight Sparta while Agesilaus was away. Luna: So the Persians used the classic divide and conquer strategy. Lucas: Yes, and it worked. Agesilaus was recalled from Asia in 394 BCE. On his march back through Thrace and Macedonia, he won a victory at the battle of Coronea in Boeotia, but it was costly and indecisive. The war dragged on for years, and Sparta, despite its military edge, couldn't crush the coalition. Eventually, in 387 BCE, Sparta made peace with Persia—the so-called King's Peace, or Peace of Antalcidas, which essentially sold out the Greek cities of Ionia to Persia in exchange for Persian recognition of Spartan hegemony in Greece. It was a pragmatic but deeply cynical move. Luna: That must have sat poorly with Agesilaus, after all his talk of liberating the Greeks. Lucas: It probably did, but Agesilaus was a realist. He accepted the peace because it secured Spartan dominance. For the next fifteen years or so, Sparta was the undisputed power in Greece, and Agesilaus was its most influential figure. He was a master of diplomacy and military intimidation, but he also made enemies. His arrogance alienated many allies, including the Thebans, whom he humiliated by refusing to let them sign the peace treaty in the name of all Boeotia. That kind of resentment built up. Luna: And that leads directly to the Theban resurgence under Epaminondas. Lucas: Exactly. Agesilaus's Sparta was rigid and brittle. When Thebes challenged Spartan hegemony, Agesilaus led three invasions of Boeotia in the 370s, but none destroyed Theban power. And then came Leuctra in 371 BCE. Agesilaus wasn't at the battle himself—he was sick, or perhaps strategically absent—but the Spartan army was crushed by Epaminondas's new tactics. That defeat broke Spartan power forever. Agesilaus spent his final years scrambling to hold Sparta together, even leading a mercenary campaign to Egypt to raise money for the Spartan state. He died on the way back in 360 BCE, at around 84 years old. Luna: He was still fighting in his eighties? Lucas: He was. Xenophon, who admired him greatly, wrote a whole encomium to Agesilaus, praising his piety, his frugality, his courage. But Plutarch's biography is more balanced—he notes that Agesilaus's devotion to Sparta's narrow interests ultimately weakened Greece as a whole. Agesilaus could have been a unifier, but he was too much the Spartan partisan. He represents both the strengths and the fatal limits of Spartan militarism. Luna: It's a tragic arc: from liberator of the Greeks to the man who sold them out to Persia and then watched his city collapse. Lucas: Yes, and it's a story that raises questions about leadership. Was Agesilaus a great king or a disastrous one? He kept Sparta dominant for decades, but his methods—the King's Peace, the humiliations of Thebes—sowed the seeds of Sparta's destruction. In the end, he was the last Spartan king who really mattered. After him, Sparta became a second-rate power, a tourist attraction for Roman generals. Luna: I guess sometimes the person who holds an empire together is also the one who makes its fall inevitable. Lucas: That's exactly the paradox. And it's why Agesilaus is such a fascinating figure—he's not a simple hero or villain, but a man who made choices that seemed right at the time, with consequences that rippled for generations.