Cleomenes I

Cleomenes I (; Greek Κλεομένης; died c. 490 BC) was Agiad King of Sparta from c. 524 to c. 490 BC. One of the most important Spartan kings, Cleomenes was instrumental in organising the Greek resistance against the Persian Empire of Darius, as well as shaping the geopolitical balance of Classical Greece. Herodotus' account Most of the life of Cleomenes is known through the Histories of Herodotus, an Athenian historian of the second half of the 5th century. He is one the most important characters of books 5 and 6, covering the decades before the Persian Wars. Herodotus' account however contains many mistakes, especially on the chronology of several major events, and is also very biased against Cleomenes. It seems that Herodotus got his information on Cleomenes from his opponents: the descendants of his half-brothers Leonidas and Cleombrotus, as well as those of Demaratus, the other Spartan king who was deposed by Cleomenes in 491. Herodotus for instance states that Cleomenes' reign was short; however he ruled for about 30 years. Demaratus conversely receives positive treatment in the Histories, even though he betrayed to the Persians during the First Invasion of Greece. Paul Cartledge writes that Cleomenes suffered from a damnatio memoriae from the Spartans, notably for having corrupted the Oracle of Delphi in 491. Family background and accession Cleomenes was the son of Anaxandridas II, who belonged to the Agiad dynasty, one of the two royal families of Sparta (the other being the Eurypontids). As his father did not have a son from his first wife (who was also his niece), the ephors forced him to marry another woman, without divorcing his first wife—an unprecedented occurrence of bigamy in Sparta. His new spouse likely came from the family of the ephor Chilon, an important reformer, who held office in during the mid-6th-century. Cleomenes was born from this second marriage, but then his father returned to his first wife and had three further sons with her: Dorieus, the future king Leonidas, and Cleombrotus—the latter two were possibly twins. The name Dorieus ("the Dorian") explicitly refers to the Dorian ethnicity of Sparta, and might be a rejection of the ephor Chilon's policy of establishing an amicable relationship with the ethnically different Achaia in the northern Peloponnese.