A Disputed Succession
Agesilaus argued that he should succeed to the throne, because Leotychidas was a bastard. His nephew argued that Agesilaus should not be crowned because he had been born lame, and there was an old Spartan prophecy that warned against a lame king. Agesilaus’ supporters deflected that with an argument that the prophecy wasn’t meant literally, but figuratively. The “lame” king, as they put it, was the bastard, not the physically lamed one. That was good enough for most Spartans, who crowned Agesilaus as king. In light of how things turned out, they probably regretted their failure to take the prophecy at face value and reject the literally lame king, rather than go for fancy explanations. Agesilaus’ biggest problem is that although he was a brave warrior, he sucked at diplomacy.
When he took the throne in 400 BC, Sparta was at the height of its power, and was Ancient Greece’s dominant power. For decades, Agesilaus fought a series of wars against rival Greek states. He won many battles, but failed to contain the steady rise of Thebes, which emerged as Sparta’s most dangerous foe. Eventually, in 371 BC, Thebes handed Sparta a massive defeat at the Battle of Leuctra. The Thebans followed that up with invasions of the Spartan heartland that reduced Sparta to a second rate power. Agesilaus was game to the end, however. Well into old age, he kept up the fight and tried to regain Sparta’s position as Greece’s dominant power. Sparta needed money, so in 360 BC, when he was already more than eighty years old, Agesilaus hired himself out as a mercenary to fight for Pharaoh Tachos of Egypt.
