Eurysthenes (, "widely ruling") was king of

Sparta Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas rive ...

and one of the

Heracleidae The Heracleidae (; ) or Heraclids were the numerous descendants of Heracles, especially applied in a narrower sense to the descendants of Hyllus, the eldest of his four sons by Deianira (Hyllus was also sometimes thought of as Heracles' son ...

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

. He was a son of

Aristodemus In Greek mythology, Aristodemus (Ancient Greek: Ἀριστόδημος) was one of the Heracleidae, son of Aristomachus and brother of Cresphontes and Temenus. He was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final atta ...

and Argia, daughter of Autesion. He had a twin brother,

Procles In Greek legends, Procles (, "the renowned") was one of the Heracleidae, a great-great-great-grandson of Heracles, and a son of Aristodemus and Argia. His twin was Eurysthenes. Together they received the land of Lacedaemon after Cresphontes, ...

. Together they received the land of

Lacedaemon Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the valley of Evrotas river in Laconia, in southeastern Pe ...

after

Cresphontes In Greek mythology, Cresphontes (; ) was a son of Aristomachus, husband of Merope, father of Aepytus and brother of Temenus and Aristodemus. He was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final attack on Mycenae in t ...

Temenus In Greek mythology, Temenus (, ''Tḗmenos'') was a son of Aristomachus and brother of Cresphontes and Aristodemus. Temenus was a great-great-grandson of Heracles and helped lead the fifth and final attack on Mycenae in the Peloponnese. He ...

and

defeated Tisamenus, the last Achaean king of the

Peloponnesus The Peloponnese ( ), Peloponnesus ( ; , ) or Morea (; ) is a peninsula and geographic regions of Greece, geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans. It is connected to the central part of the country by the ...

. Eurysthenes married Lathria, daughter of Thersander, King of Kleonae, sister of his sister-in-law Anaxandra, and was the father of his successor,

Agis I Agis I (Greek: ) was a king of Sparta and eponym of the Agiad dynasty. He was possibly the first historical king of Sparta, reigning at the end of the tenth century BC, during the emergence of the Dorians in Laconia. He is said by most ancient au ...

, founder of the

Agiad dynasty The Agiad dynasty (, ''Agiádai'') was one of the two royal families of the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. They ruled jointly along with the Eurypontid dynasty, possibly from the 8th century BC onwards, being the senior of the two houses. ...

of the Kings of Sparta. The title of ''archēgetēs'', "founding magistrate," was explicitly denied to Eurysthenes and Procles by the later Spartan government on the grounds that they were not founders of a state, but were maintained in their offices by parties of foreigners. Instead the honor was granted to their son and grandson, for which reason the two lines were called the Agiads and the Eurypontids.

Legend of the double kingship

The story of the double kingship of Sparta begins with the invasion of the Peloponnesus by the

Dorians The Dorians (; , , singular , ) were one of the four major ethnic groups into which the Greeks, Hellenes (or Greeks) of Classical Greece divided themselves (along with the Aeolians, Achaeans (tribe), Achaeans, and Ionians). They are almost alw ...

, and the

Aetolia Aetolia () is a mountainous region of Greece on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, forming the eastern part of the modern regional unit of Aetolia-Acarnania. Geography The Achelous River separates Aetolia from Acarnania to the west; on ...

n allies, under three Heraclid commanders,

and

, the three sons of Aristomachus. Karl Otfried Müller collected and evaluated the various fragments of the story from classical authors. According to Müller, the state of Elis in Arcadia, allies of the Aetolians, provided a guide ( Oxylus) for passage through Arcadia after crossing the

Gulf of Corinth The Gulf of Corinth or the Corinthian Gulf (, ) is a deep inlet of the Ionian Sea, separating the Peloponnese from western mainland Greece. It is bounded in the east by the Isthmus of Corinth which includes the shipping-designed Corinth Canal and ...

from

Naupactus Nafpaktos () or Naupactus, is a town and a former Communities and Municipalities of Greece, municipality in Nafpaktia, Aetolia-Acarnania, West Greece, situated on a bay on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, west of the mouth of the river Mor ...

. Arcadia gave them a central point from which to attack anywhere else in the Peloponnesus. Their presence was contested by a united Peloponnesian Achaean army (except for Arcadia) under Tisamenus, an Atreid. The Achaeans lost. They were commanded to evacuate to Athens, but many did not; furthermore, much of the region remained unconquered. Nevertheless, the three commanders divided that which they did not yet possess, Peloponnesus. Following the signs of the gods, Aristodemus received Sparta. There is a question as to whether he ever was actually in possession there. One tradition says that he was and was therefore the first king of Sparta. A second asserts that he died before taking possession and that the Dorians brought his infant twin sons to Sparta as kings under a regent. Aristodemus was assassinated at Delphi by the Atreids. He had not even had time to designate a successor. The mother did not know which was the elder. The oracle at Delphi resolved the problem by suggesting that they both be made kings, which is the origin of the dual monarchy. Theras, Argeia's brother, was made regent. There was still a necessity of designating the elder. They chose the one the mother fed and cleaned first, Eurysthenes.

Dates of the reigns of the first ten kings of the Agiad line

The untimely death of Aristodemus with other events has served as some basis for dating the reigns of the first ten kings of Sparta in the line known by state definition as the Agiad. The Return of the Heracleidae, which is the closest event to a

Dorian Invasion The Dorian invasion (or Dorian migration) is an ancient Greek myth and discredited archaeological hypothesis describing the movement of the Dorian people into the Peloponnese region of Greece. According to the myth, the Dorians migrated from c ...

available in legend, must coincide with the entry of Aristodemus and his brethren into Arcadia, which, based on the chronology of

Eratosthenes Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; ; – ) was an Ancient Greek polymath: a Greek mathematics, mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theory, music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of A ...

, happened 328 years before the generally accepted date of the first year of the first

Olympiad An olympiad (, ''Olympiás'') is a period of four years, particularly those associated with the Ancient Olympic Games, ancient and Olympic Games, modern Olympic Games. Although the ancient Olympics were established during Archaic Greece, Greece ...

, 776 BC. Eratosthenes' date is therefore 1104 BC. This must be the year of Aristodemus' military activity in Arcadia, his fatherhood and his assassination. Eurysthenes was therefore born in 1104 BC, which was the first year of his reign, if the regency of Theras is discounted. Pausanias states that the end of the

First Messenian War The First Messenian War was a war between Messenia_(ancient_region), Messenia and Sparta. It began in 743 BC and ended in 724 BC, according to the dates given by Pausanias (geographer), Pausanias. The war continued the rivalry between the Achae ...

was the first year of the 14th Olympiad. The date must have been 724/723 BC if the first year of the first Olympiad was 776/775 BC. Kings

Polydorus In Greek mythology, Polydorus (; , i.e. "many-gift d) or Polydoros referred to several different people. *Polydorus, son of Phineus and Cleopatra, and brother of Polydector (Polydectus). These two sons by his first wife were blinded by Phineus be ...

of the Agiads and Theopompus of the Eurypontids were reigning at that time, roughly in mid-reign. The end of the war must be 379 years from the return of the Heraclids. According to

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

, also a classical scholar, the ten kings reigned an average of 38 years each, which can be used as an estimator of the dates. Eurysthenes would have ruled in 1104–1066 BC, with an unknown margin of error, as much of the data is relatively uncertain.

References

Bibliography

* {{Kings of Sparta Heracleidae Mythological kings of Sparta Agiad kings of Sparta Year of birth unknown 11th-century BC monarchs 11th-century BC Greek people 12th-century BC monarchs 12th-century BC Greek people

Legend of the double kingship

Dates of the reigns of the first ten kings of the Agiad line

See also

References

Bibliography