Cleomenes I

Cleomenes I (/kliːˈɒmɪniːz/; Greek Κλεομένης; died c. 490 BC) was Agiad King of Sparta between c. 524 to c. 490 BC. One of the most important Spartan kings, Cleomenes was instrumental in organising the Greek resistance against the Persian Empire of Darius, as well as shaping the geopolitical balance of Classical Greece.

Cleomenes I
King of Sparta
Reignc. 524 BC – c. 490 BC[1]
PredecessorAnaxandrides II
SuccessorLeonidas I
Diedc. 490 BC
IssueGorgo
DynastyAgiad
FatherAnaxandrides II

Historical significance

"Cleomenes," remarks historian J. B. Bury, "if he had not been a Spartan, might have been one of the greater figures in Grecian history." As it was, he stands as a shrewd policy maker whose policies were consistently rendered ineffective by the opposition of his co-King and the Spartan Ephorate. Nevertheless, he was the dominant figure in Spartan history throughout his adult lifetime.[2] During his reign, which started around 519 BC, he pursued an adventurous and at times unscrupulous foreign policy aimed at crushing Argos and extending Sparta's influence both inside and outside the Peloponnese. He was a brilliant tactician. During his reign, he intervened twice successfully in Athenian affairs but kept Sparta out of the Ionian Revolt.

Family background and accession

Cleomenes was the son of Anaxandridas II, who belonged to the Agiad dynasty, one of the two royal families of Sparta (the other being the Eurypontids). As his father did not have a son from his first wife (his own niece), the ephors forced him to remarry another woman, without divorcing his first wife—an unprecedented occurrence in Sparta.[3] The new wife likely came from the family of the ephor Chilon, an important reformer, whose office was perhaps in 556–555.[4][5] Paul Cartledge points that the ephors' concern about Anaxandridas' descent is the first indication of Sparta's manpower problems, which became dire in the later centuries.[6] Cleomenes was born from this new marriage, but then his father returned to his first wife and had three further sons from her: Dorieus, the future king Leonidas, and Cleombrotus—the latter two were perhaps twins. The name Dorieus ("the Dorian") explicitly refers to the Spartan ethnic identity, and might be a rejection of the ephor Chilon's policy of amicable relationship with the ethnically different Achaia in the northern Peloponnese.[7][8]

The second wife's family immediately contested the legitimacy of Dorieus even before his birth, as the ephors attended his birth in order to certify the authenticity of the pregnancy.[9][10] It shows that there were strong familial rivalries among Spartan royal circles; besides, at the same time, a cousin of Anaxandridas' second wife was also the bride of the future Eurypontid king Leotychidas.[11][12] In turn, when his father died, Cleomenes' succession was contested by Dorieus, because of his superior "manly virtue".[10] Perhaps this statement is related to a great performance during the agoge—the rigorous military training at Sparta—which Dorieus had to endure, while Cleomenes avoided it as heir-apparent (the only possible exemption).[13] Dorieus could have also contested Cleomenes' legitimacy on the ground that he was issued from the king's first wife, who was additionally of royal descent. As Cleomenes was the eldest son, his claim was nevertheless deemed stronger and he became king.[14] It prompted the departure of Dorieus to colonial ventures in Libya and Sicily, where he died in c.510.[15]

The date of Cleomenes' accession had been debated among modern scholars for a long time,[16][17][18] until historian David Harvey found that the Greek historian Diodoros of Sicily had confused the length of Cleomenes II's reign (370–309) with that of his earlier namesake. Putting aside Diodoros' error, Harvey states that as Cleomenes came to the throne "a few years earlier than the Plataia incident", he dates the start of his reign to 524–523 BC.[19][20]

Reign

Encounter at Plataia (519 BC)

The first known deed of Cleomenes as king is his dealing with the city of Plataia, located between Thebes and Athens. In 519, Herodotus tells that Cleomenes happened to be in the vicinity of Plataia, when the Plataians requested an alliance with Sparta, which he rejected, but instead he advised them to ally with Athens, because he wanted to stir a border conflict between Thebes and Athens, two of the most powerful poleis of central Greece.[21][22] The Plataians probably wished to avoid their forced incorporation into the Boiotian League, which was being built by Thebes at this time.[4] Their Spartan alliance request perhaps indicates that they wanted to become member of the Peloponnesian League, which was likewise being put in place at this time.[23] G. E. M. de Ste. Croix and Paul Cartledge call this move "a master-stroke" of diplomacy,[24][25] but other modern scholars do not believe it was Cleomenes' intention to create a rift between Thebes and Athens.[26]

Herodotus does not tell what Cleomenes was doing near Plataia. A number of theories have been advanced to explain it. Perhaps he was marching on Thebes to support an invasion from his ally Lattamyas of Thessaly, but as the Thebans had defeated the Thessalians at the Battle of Ceressus before he arrived, he took the opportunity to hurt them without engaging his forces.[27] Another possibility is that he was trying to convince either Megara or Thebes to join the Peloponnesian League, or he was arbitrating between Megara and Athens over the island of Salamis.[28]

The date of this event has long been challenged by some modern scholars, who have often suggested instead 509, as it would better fit with Cleomenes' latter involvements into Athenian politics, but the majority view remains in favour of 519.[29][30][31][32][33][34]

Foreign embassies (516–514 BC)

In 516, Cleomenes received an embassy from Maeandrius of Samos asking him for help to expel the tyrant Syloson, a puppet of the Persian Empire, which was at the time subjugating the city-states of the eastern Aegean sea.[35][36] Cleomenes however refused, with the support of the ephors; perhaps he did not want to commit the Peloponnesian League to long-distance wars, or he was not convinced by Maeandrius' intentions, as he probably coveted the tyranny in Samos.[37]

Two years later, Cleomenes likewise heard an embassy from the Scythians offering him an alliance against Persia.[38]

Interventions into Athenian politics (510–501 BC)

In 500s, Cleomenes meddled four times with Athenian politics, which ultimately led to the creation of democracy in Athens.[36] The powerful, but exiled, Alcmaeonid family of Athens bribed to Oracle of Apollo at Delphi to advise the Spartans to intervene in order to remove the Pisistratid dynasty, who had ruled the city as tyrants for 50 years.[39] The first Spartan expedition, headed by Anchimolus, took place in c.511, but was defeated by the tyrant Hippias, son of Pisistratus.[40] Sparta sent a bigger force in 510, Cleomenes commanded the army and went to Attica by land. He captured the sons of Hippias by chance and forced him to go into exile to the Persian Empire.[40] The war against Hippias is consistent with the policy of removing tyrants followed by Sparta during the 6th century. Moreover, the tyrants of Athens were known for their Persian sympathies (known as Medism), which Cleomenes started to vigorously fight throughout Greece at this point.[40][41] Hippias' departure opened the way to Cleisthenes of the Alcmaeonid family, who passed a series of democratic reforms in Athens.

Cleisthenes and the Athenian aristocrat Isagoras then fought each other for control of Athens. Cleomenes came with an armed force to support Isagoras, and they forced Cleisthenes and the Alcmaeonidae family to go into exile for a second time. Cleomenes also abolished the Boule, a council set up by Cleisthenes, and occupied the Acropolis. The citizens of Athens objected to this and forced him out of the city. Cleomenes was ashamed about what happened in the Acropolis, so he gathered an army the following year with the aim of setting up Isagoras as tyrant of Athens. This army invaded Attica. The Corinthians in his force refused to proceed once the army got to Eleusis, so he was forced to withdraw.[42] According to Pausanias, Cleomenes managed to get as far as Aegina. Pausanias claimed that Cleomenes arrested people who he thought had shown Persian sympathies while he was in Aegina.[43]

Sparta then proposed to her allies to mount an expedition to restore Hippias as tyrant of Athens. Given that Sparta had been instrumental in the overthrow of Hippias this change in policy was justified because Sparta had discovered that they had been tricked by the Alcmaeonidae into overthrowing Hippias because the Delphic oracle had been bribed into asking them to do so. According to W G Forrest, it was Cleomenes who argued for this change of position with Sparta's allies. However, the allies, led by Corinth, rejected the proposal in the first act of the Peloponnesian League.[44]

The Ionian Revolt and its Aftermath

In 499 BC, Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, came to Sparta to request help from King Cleomenes with the Ionian Revolt against Persia. Aristagoras nearly persuaded Cleomenes to help, promising an easy conquest of Persia and its riches, but Cleomenes sent him away when he learned about the long distance to the heart of Persia. Aristagoras attempted to bribe him by offering silver. Cleomenes declined, so Aristagoras began offering him more and more. According to Herodotus, once Aristagoras offered Cleomenes 50 talents of silver, Cleomenes's young daughter Gorgo warned him not to trust a man who threatened to corrupt him.[45]

Around 494 BC, Cleomenes invaded and defeated Argos at the Battle of Sepeia. During the battle, when the Spartan herald announced anything to the Lacedemonians, the Argives followed without protest. Cleomenes assumed that the Argives were doing whatever the herald of the Lacedemonians proclaimed, so he took advantage of this by telling the Lacedemonians to attack the Argives once the herald proclaimed that they would get breakfast. Cleomenes was correct that the Argives would get breakfast based on the herald's announcement, so his army massacred the unarmed enemy forces while they were eating. He killed the retreating force, Herodotus says 6000 people were killed, by burning them to death in a sacred grove of Argus.[46] But this number could be exaggerated for affect.

Cleomenes sent the majority of his army back to Sparta and took a thousand men to the temple of Hera to make a sacrifice. The priest forbade him, saying that strangers were not allowed to make sacrifices. Cleomenes ordered the Helots to scourge the priest and made the sacrifice anyway.[47]

Argos would remain a bitter enemy of Sparta for decades after this attack. It is not clear why the attack on Argos took place. It may have been the result of Sparta's concerns over Argos and the city's pro-Persian tendencies, or due to proximity of Argos to the Spartans and thus being a growing threat to the security of the Spartan state.

When the Persians invaded Greece after putting down the Ionian revolt in 493 BC, many city-states quickly submitted to them fearing a loss of trade. Among these states was Aegina, so in 491 BC, Cleomenes attempted to arrest the major collaborators there. The citizens of Aegina would not cooperate with him and the Eurypontid Spartan king, Demaratus attempted to undermine his efforts. Cleomenes overthrew Demaratus, after first bribing the oracle at Delphi to announce that this was the divine will, and replaced him with Leotychidas.

Exile and death

Around 490 BC Cleomenes was forced to flee Sparta when his plot against his co-king Demaratus was discovered, but the Spartans allowed him to return when he began gathering an army in the surrounding territories. However, according to Herodotus he was by this time considered to be insane. The Spartans, fearing what he was capable of put him in prison. By the command of his half-brothers, Leonidas I and Cleombrotus, Cleomenes was placed in chains. He died in prison in mysterious circumstances, with the Spartan authorities claiming his death was suicide due to insanity.

While in prison, Cleomenes was found dead with his death being ruled as suicide by self-mutilation. He apparently convinced the helot guarding him into giving him a knife, with which he slashed his shins, thighs and belly in an especially brutal suicide.[48] He was succeeded by the elder of his surviving half-brothers Leonidas I, who then married Cleomenes' daughter Gorgo.

Herodotus gives four different versions that circulated in Greece to explain Cleomenes' madness and suicide. The most common one was that of divine retribution for having bribed the oracle of Delphi. Alternatively, the Argives said it was for the massacre of the Argive soldiers refugeed in their sacred grove after the battle of Sepeia; the Athenians thought it was for his sacrilege of the groves of Eleusis; the Spartans told that the wine he drank unmixed with water—a taste he acquired from the Scythian ambassadors who visited him in 514—turned him insane. For Herodotus, Cleomenes paid for his removal of Demaratus.[49] The Athenians' and Argives' versions were coined to suit their own grief against Cleomenes, whereas the Spartan version was designed to absolve Sparta from any accusation of impiety.[50]

The suicide of Cleomenes has appeared suspect to modern scholars, who instead consider possible that he was murdered by his half-brother Leonidas, who was next in line.[51][52][53] Cleomenes' daughter, Gorgo, seems to have transmitted to Herodotus the Spartan "official version" of her father's death, to which she might have participated as she married Leonidas.[54]

Notes
  1. Grant, Michael (1987). Rise of the Greeks. p. 100. ISBN 978-0684185361.
  2. Bury, J. B.; Meiggs, Russell (1956). A history of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great, 3rd edition. London: Macmillan. pp. 259–260.
  3. Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, p. 264.
  4. Ste. Croix, "Herodotus and King Cleomenes", p. 422.
  5. Hodkinson, "Female property ownership", p. 10.
  6. Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, pp. 264, 265.
  7. Forrest, History of Sparta, pp. 76, 83.
  8. Cartledge, Agesilaos, p. 110.
  9. Hodkinson, "Female property ownership", pp. 10, 11.
  10. Griffith-Williams, "The Succession to the Spartan Kingship", p. 49.
  11. Forrest, History of Sparta, p. 83.
  12. Hodkinson, "Inheritance, Marriage and Demography: Perspectives upon the Success and Decline of Classical Sparta", in Powell (ed.), Classical Sparta, p. 90–92.
  13. Cartledge, Agesilaos, pp. 110, 111.
  14. Griffith-Williams, "The Succession to the Spartan Kingship", pp. 50, 51.
  15. Fischer-Hansen, Nielsen, Ampolo, in Hansen (ed.), Inventory, pp. 197.
  16. Carlier, "La vie politique", p. 68, "about 520".
  17. L. H. Jefery, "Greece before the Persian Invasion", in Boardman et al., Cambridge Ancient History, vol. IV, p. 356, "c. 521".
  18. Cawkwell, "Cleomenes", p. 510 (note 8), "c. 520".
  19. Diodorus, xix. 70, 71.
  20. Harvey, "The Length of the Reigns of Kleomenes", pp. 356, 357.
  21. Herodotus, vi. 108.
  22. Ste. Croix, "Herodotus and King Cleomenes", p. 423.
  23. Konecny et al., Plataiai, pp. 26, 27.
  24. Ste. Croix, "Herodotus and King Cleomenes", p. 423.
  25. Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, pp. 123, 124.
  26. Scott, Historical Commentary on Herodotus, p. 376.
  27. Buck, History of Boeotia, p. 114.
  28. Scott, Historical Commentary on Herodotus, pp. 375, 376.
  29. Forrest, History of Sparta, p. 85, tends towards 509.
  30. Buck, A History of Boeotia, pp. 113, 114, favours 519.
  31. Ste. Croix, "Herodotus and King Cleomenes", p. 422, supports the date of 519.
  32. Hornblower, Commentary on Thucydides, Volume I, pp. 464, 465, supports 519.
  33. Konecny et al., Plataiai, p. 26 (note 87), favour 509/508.
  34. Scott, Historical Commentary on Herodotus, p. 375, for 519.
  35. Herodotus, iii. 148.
  36. Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, p. 124.
  37. L. H. Jefery, "Greece before the Persian Invasion", in Boardman et al., Cambridge Ancient History, vol. IV, pp. 356, 357.
  38. Herodotus, vi. 84.
  39. Cawkwell, "Cleomenes", p. 516.
  40. Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, p. 126.
  41. Cawkwell, "Cleomenes", pp. 515, 516, does not think Hippias was medising.
  42. Smith, William (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. James Walton. p. 792.
  43. Pausanias, Description of Greece 3. 4. 2
  44. W G Forrest, A History of Sparta p89
  45. Herodotus, 5.51.
  46. Herodotus, 7.148; Pausanias, Description of Greece 3. 4. 1 Cartledge, p.129.
  47. Herodotus, The Histories, bk 6, 81
  48. Herodotus, 6.75.
  49. Herodotus, vi. 75–84.
  50. Hornblower & Pelling, Herodotus, Book VI, p. 189.
  51. Harvey, "Leonidas the Regicide?", pp. 256, 257.
  52. Carlier, "La vie politique", p. 69 (note 18), writes "It is tempting to doubt the reality of such an opportune 'suicide'."
  53. Ste. Croix, "Herodotus and King Cleomenes", pp. 436, 437, writes: "But my own belief, of course, is that the Spartans decoyed Cleomenes back to Sparta, and then simply murdered him."
  54. Harvey, "Leonidas the Regicide?", pp. 254, 255.

Bibliography

Ancient sources

Modern sources
  • John Boardman et al., The Cambridge Ancient History, volume IV, Persia Greece, and the Eastern Mediterranean, from c. 525 to 479 B.C., Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN 0521228042
  • Robert J. Buck, A History of Boeotia, University of Alberta Press, 1979 ISBN 9780888640512.
  • Pierre Carlier, "La vie politique à Sparte sous le règne de Cléomène Ier. Essai d’interprétation", Ktèma, 1977, n°2, pp. 65–84.
  • Paul Cartledge, Sparta and Lakonia, A Regional History 1300–362 BC, London, Routledge, 2002 (originally published in 1979). ISBN 0-415-26276-3
  • ——, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
  • George L. Cawkwell, "Cleomenes", Mnemosyne, XLVI, 4 (1993), pp. 506–527.
  • W. G. Forrest, History of Sparta, 950–192 B.C., New York/London, 1968.
  • Brenda Griffith-Williams, "The Succession to the Spartan Kingship, 520–400 BC", Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Vol. 54, No. 2 (2011), pp. 43–58.
  • Mogens Herman Hansen & Thomas Heine Nielsen (editors), An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 9780191518256
  • David Harvey, "Leonidas the Regicide, Speculations on the death of Kleomenes I", in Glen W. Bowersock, Walter Burkert, Michael C. J. Putnam (editors), Arktouros, Hellenic Studies presented to Bernard M. W. Knox on the occasion of his 65th birthday, Berlin/New York, de Gruyter, 1979,pp. 253–260. ISBN 3110077981
  • ——, "The Length of the Reigns of Kleomenes", Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 58, H. 3 (2009), pp. 356–357.
  • Stephen Hodkinson, "Female property ownership and status in Classical and Hellenistic Sparta", Centre for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, 2004.
  • Simon Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, Volume I, Books I-III, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991. ISBN 0198150997
  • —— (editor), Herodotus, Histories, Book V, Cambridge University Press, 2013. ISBN 9780521878715
  • —— & Christopher Pelling (editors), Herodotus, Histories, Book VI, Cambridge University Press, 2017. ISBN 9781107029347
  • Huxley, George L. (1962). Early Sparta. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Andreas Konecny, Vassilis Aravantinos, Ron Marchese, et al., Plataiai, Archäologie und Geschichte einer boiotischen Polis, Vienna, Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Sonderschriften Band 48, 2013. ISBN 9783900305659
  • Anton Powell (editor), Classical Sparta, Techniques Behind Her Success, London, Routledge, 1989. ISBN 0415003393
  • G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, "Herodotus and King Cleomenes I of Sparta", in Athenian Democratic Origins and other essays, edited by David Harvey and Robert Parker, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 421–440 (transcription of a lecture made in 1972). ISBN 0199285160
  • Lionel Scott, Historical commentary on Herodotus, Book 6, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2005. ISBN 9004145060
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