Cleomenes

Family: Lacedaemon · Role: king · First appears: Philopoemen

Cleomenes was the son of Leonidas, whom he succeeded as king, and the stepson of Megistonus. Archidamus forced Agiatis to marry him against her will, but once united with Cleomenes she became a kind and obliging wife, and he came to love her greatly. As a boy, Cleomenes studied philosophy under Sphaerus and was associated with Xenares, while he later listened closely to Agiatis’s accounts of Agis and his designs. His mother Cratesiclea promoted his ambition, and Therycion and Panteus were among his friends.

At Sparta, Cleomenes’s faction assassinated four ephors, sparing Agylaeus, who survived the attack. The next day, Cleomenes and Megistonus placed their wealth in a common stock, redistributed land, restored shares to the banished, expanded citizenship, freed slaves, and governed with Cleomenes as the sole effective ruler. “The land was divided, and everyone that he had banished, had a share assigned him.” He captured Argos by night, installed a garrison, and took its chief command; he also led Sparta to exert sovereign power over the Peloponnesus.

Cleomenes sent a herald to declare war on the Achaeans and became an enemy of Aratus, Aristomachus, and Antigonus. His forces defeated and slew Lydiadas, while at Sellasia Antigonus defeated him and destroyed Euclidas’s wing, forcing Cleomenes to abandon Sparta. In Alexandria, Ptolemy offered him respect, kindness, and hopes of ships and money to restore his kingdom, but after Cleomenes’s revolt, Ptolemy ordered his body displayed and his family, including Cratesiclea, killed.