Agesipolis III

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Agesipolis III
King of Sparta
Reign 219-215 BC
Died 183 BC
Predecessor Cleomenes III
Successor none
Dynasty Agiad
Father Agesipolis
For others with this name, see Agesipolis.

Agesipolis III (Gr. Ἀγησίλαος) was the the 31st and last of the kings of the Agiad dynasty in ancient Sparta.[1]

He was the son of another Agesipolis (not to be confused with the earlier Spartan monarchs with that name), and grandson of Cleombrotus II. After the death of Cleomenes III he was elected king while still a minor, and placed under the guardianship of an uncle named Cleomenes.[2] Agesipolis was however soon deposed by his col­league Lycurgus. We hear of him next in 195 BC, when he was at the head of the Lacedaemonian exiles, who joined Titus Quinctius Flamininus in his attack upon Nabis, the tyrant of Lacedaemon (see War against Nabis).[3] Agesipolis formed one of an embassy sent about 183 BC to Rome by the Lacedaemonian exiles, and, with his companions, was intercepted by pirates and killed.[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mason, Charles Peter (1867), “Agesipolis III”, in Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. 1, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pp. 71 
  2. ^ Polybius, iv. 35
  3. ^ Livy, xxxiv. 26
  4. ^ Polybius, xxiv. 11
Preceded by
Cleomenes III
Agiad King of Sparta
219–215 BC
Succeeded by
n/a (last of the Agiad line)

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).

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