Agesilāus
（
Ἀγησίλαος). The name of several kings of Sparta.
1.
Agesilaüs who reigned about B.C. 886, and was contemporary with the legislation of
Lycurgus.
2.
Son of Archidamus II., and succeeded his half-brother II. in B.C. 398, excluding, on the
ground of spurious birth, and by the interest of Lysander, his nephew Leotychides. From B.C.
396 to 394 he carried on the war in Asia Minor with great success, but, in the midst of his
conquests, was summoned home to defend his country against Thebes, Corinth, and Argos, which
had been induced by Artaxerxes to take up arms against Sparta. In the year 394 he met and
defeated, at Coronea in Boeotia, the allied forces. During the next four years he regained
for his country much of its former supremacy, till at length the fatal battle of Leuctra,
B.C. 371, overthrew forever the power of Sparta, and gave the supremacy for a time to Thebes.
In 361 he crossed, with a body of Lacedaemonian mercenaries, into Egypt, where he died in the
winter of 361-360, after a life of above eighty years and a reign of thirty-eight. In person
Agesilaüs was small, mean-looking, and lame, on which last ground objection had been
made to his accession, an oracle, curiously fulfilled, having warned Sparta of evils awaiting
her under a “lame sovereignty.” In his reign, indeed, her fall took
place, but not through him, for he was one of the best citizens and generals that Sparta ever
had.
