| Sparta |
Zeus on his throne with his eagle. This article is part of the series: |
| Great Rhetra Laws of Lycurgus Politeia |
|---|
| List of Kings of Sparta Gerousia Ephorate Apella of the Damos Spartiates Perioeci Helots Agoge Syssitia |
|
Other Greek city-states • Law Portal |
Sparta was an important Greek city-state in the Peloponnesus. It was unusual among Greek city-states in that it maintained its kingship past the Archaic age. It was even more unusual in that it had two kings simultaneously, coming from two separate lines. According to tradition, the two lines, the Agiads and Eurypontids, were respectively descended from the twins Eurysthenes and Procles, the descendants of Heracles who supposedly conquered Sparta two generations after the Trojan War. The Agiad line was regarded as being senior to the Eurypontid line.[1] Although there are lists of the earlier purported Kings of Sparta, there is little evidence for the existence of any kings before the middle of the 6th century BC or so. Spartan kings received a recurring posthumous hero cult like that of the Dorian kings of Cyrene.[2]
Contents |
The ancient Greeks named males after their fathers, producing a patronymic by infixing -id-; for example, the sons of Atreus were the Atreids. In the case of royal houses the patronymic formed from the founder or an early siginificant figure became the name of the dynasty. A ruling family might in this way have a number of dynastic names; for example, Agis I named the Agiads, but he was a Heraclid, and so were his descendants.
In cases where the descent was not known or was scantily known the Greeks made a few standard assumptions based on their cultural ideology. A people was treated as a tribe, presumed to have descended from an ancestor bearing its name. He must have been a king, who founded a dynasty of his name. This mythologizing extended even to place names. They were presumed to have been named after kings and divinities. Kings often became divinities, in their religion.
The Lelegids were the descendants of Lelex (a back formation), ancestor of the Leleges, a Pelasgian tribe inhabiting the Eurotas valley before the Greeks, who, according to the mythological descent, amalgamated with the Greeks.
The Lacedaemonids contain Greeks from the age of legend, now treated as being the Bronze Age in Greece. In the language of mythologic descent, the kingship passed from the Leleges to the Greeks.
The Atreidai (Latin Atreidae) belong to the Late Bronze Age, or Mycenaean Period. In mythology these were the Perseids. As the name of Atreus is attested in Hittite documents, this dynasty may well be proto-historic.
The Heracleidae were the descendants of Heracles, who counted himself a Perseid through his mother, but had a questionable descent through his father, Zeus. Disallowed the Peloponnesus, he embarked on a life of wandering. His descendants viewed themselves as returning to claim the Perseid legacy.
Any Cadmid has to be of Theban descent. Apart from this one incident, the Cadmids played no role in Sparta.
The Spartan kings claimed descent from Heracles. They became ascendant in the Eurotas valley with the Dorians, who at least in legend entered it during an invasion called the return of the Heracleidae, driving out the Atreids and at least some of the Mycenaean population.
Following Cleomenes III's defeat in the Battle of Sellasia by Antigonus III Doson of Macedon and the Achaean League, the Spartan system began to break down. Sparta was a republic from 221 to 219 BC.
The Achaean League annexed Sparta in 192 BC.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||