Thucydides
Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the deities, as outlined in his introduction to his work, he has been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as mediated by and constructed upon the emotions of fear and self-interest. His text is still studied at military colleges worldwide; the Melian dialogue is regarded as a seminal work of international relations theory, while his version of Pericles' Funeral Oration is studied by political theorists and students of the classics. More Thucydides developed an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plagues and civil war.
In spite of his stature as a historian, modern historians know little about Thucydides's life. The most reliable information comes from his own History of the Peloponnesian War, which expounds his nationality and native locality. Thucydides says that he fought in the war, contracted the plague, was exiled by the democracy, he may have been involved in quelling the Samian Revolt. Thucydides identifies himself as an Athenian, telling us that his father's name was Olorus and that he was from the Athenian deme of Halimous, he survived the Plague of Athens, which killed many other Athenians. He records that he owned gold mines at Scapte Hyle, a coastal area in Thrace, opposite the island of Thasos; because of his influence in the Thracian region, Thucydides wrote, he was sent as a strategos to Thasos in 424 BC. During the winter of 424–423 BC, the Spartan general Brasidas attacked Amphipolis, a half-day's sail west from Thasos on the Thracian coast, sparking the Battle of Amphipolis. Eucles, the Athenian commander at Amphipolis, sent to Thucydides for help.
Brasidas, aware the presence of Thucydides on Thasos and his influence with the people of Amphipolis, afraid of help arriving by sea, acted to offer moderate terms to the Amphipolitans for their surrender, which they accepted. Thus, when Thucydides arrived, Amphipolis was under Spartan control. Amphipolis was of considerable strategic importance, news of its fall caused great consternation in Athens, it was blamed on Thucydides, although he claimed that it was not his fault and that he had been unable to reach it in time. Because of his failure to save Amphipolis, he was exiled: I lived through the whole of it, being of an age to comprehend events, giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them, it was my fate to be an exile from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis. Using his status as an exile from Athens to travel among the Peloponnesian allies, he was able to view the war from the perspective of both sides. Thucydides claimed that he began writing his history as soon as the war broke out, because he thought it would be one of the greatest wars waged among the Greeks in terms of scale:Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.
This is all that Thucydides wrote about his own life, but a few other facts are available from reliable contemporary sources. Herodotus wrote that the name Olorus, Thucydides's father's name, was connected with Thrace and Thracian royalty. Thucydides was connected through family to the Athenian statesman and general Miltiades and his son Cimon, leaders of the old aristocracy supplanted by the Radical Democrats. Cimon's maternal grandfather's name was Olorus, making the connection quite likely. Another Thucydides lived before the historian and was linked with Thrace, making a family connection between them likely as well. Combining all the fragmentary evidence available, it seems that his family had owned a large estate in Thrace, one that contained gold mines, which allowed the family considerable and lasting affluence; the security and continued prosperity of the wealthy estate must have necessitated formal ties with local kings or chieftains, which explains the adoption of the distinctly Thracian royal name Óloros into the family.
Once exiled, Thucydides took permanent residence in the estate and, given his ample income from the gold mines, he was able to dedicate himself to full-time history writing and research, including many fact-finding trips. In essence, he was a well-connected gentleman of considerable resources who, after involuntarily retiring from the political and military spheres, decided to fund his own historical investigations; the remaining evidence for Thucydides' life comes from and rather less reliable ancient sources. According to Pausanias, someone named Oenobius had a law passed allowing Thucydides to return to Athens shortly after the city's surrender and the end of the war in 404 BC. Pausanias goes on to say that Thucydides was murdered on his way back to Athens, placing his tomb near the Melite gate. Many doubt this
First Peloponnesian War
The First Peloponnesian War was fought between Sparta as the leaders of the Peloponnesian League and Sparta's other allies, most notably Thebes, the Delian League led by Athens with support from Argos. This war consisted of a series such as the Second Sacred War. There were several causes for the war including the building of the Athenian long walls, Megara's defection and the envy and concern felt by Sparta at the growth of the Athenian Empire; the war began in 460 BC. At first the Athenians had the better of the fighting, winning the naval engagements using their superior fleet, they had the better of the fighting on land, until 457 BC when the Spartans and their allies defeated the Athenian army at Tanagra. The Athenians, however and scored a crushing victory over the Boeotians at the Battle of Oenophyta and followed this victory up by conquering all of Boeotia except for Thebes. Athens further consolidated their position by making Aegina a member of the Delian League and by ravaging the Peloponnese.
The Athenians were defeated in 454 BC by the Persians in Egypt which caused them to enter into a five years' truce with Sparta. However, the war flared up again in 448 BC with the start of the Second Sacred War. In 446 BC, Boeotia regained their independence; the First Peloponnesian War ended in an arrangement between Sparta and Athens, ratified by the Thirty Years' Peace. According to the provisions of this peace treaty, both sides maintained the main parts of their empires. Athens continued its domination of the sea. Megara returned to the Peloponnesian League and Aegina became a tribute-paying but autonomous member of the Delian League; the war between the two leagues restarted in 431 BC. It ended with a conclusive Spartan victory. Only twenty years before the First Peloponnesian War broke out and Spartans had fought alongside each other in the Greco-Persian Wars. In that war, Sparta held hegemony over what modern scholars call the Hellenic League and the overall command in the crucial victories of 480 and 479 BC.
Over the next several years, Spartan leadership bred resentment among the Greek naval powers that took the lead in carrying the war against Persian territories in Asia and the Aegean, after 478 BC the Spartans abandoned their leadership of this campaign. Sparta grew wary of Athens' strength after they had fought alongside each other to disperse the Persians from their lands; when Athens started to rebuild its walls and the strength of its naval power and its allies began to fear that Athens was becoming too powerful. Different policies made it difficult for Athens and Sparta to avoid going to war, since Athens wanted to expand its territory and Sparta wanted to dismantle the Athenian democratic regime. Athens, had been asserting itself on the international scene, was eager to take the lead in the Aegean; the Athenians had rebuilt their walls, against the express wishes of Sparta. In 479 BC and 478 BC Athens took a much more active role in the Aegean campaigning. In the winter of 479–478 BC they accepted the leadership of a new league, the Delian League, in a conference of Ionian and Aegean states at Delos.
The Athenians rebuilt their walls in secret at the urging of Themistocles, who convinced the Athenians that this was the best way to protect themselves. Themistocles delayed talks with Sparta for universal arms control by finding issues with Sparta's proposals, stating that it would leave Athens vulnerable to Sparta's superior hoplites and phalanx fighting formation. After the completion of the walls Themistocles declared Athens independent of Spartan hegemony, stating that Athens knew what was in its best interest and was now strong enough to defend itself. At this time, one of the first hints of animosity between Athens and Sparta emerged in an anecdote reported by Diodorus Siculus, who said that the Spartans in 475–474 BC considered reclaiming the hegemony of the campaign against Persia by force. Modern scholars, although uncertain of the dating and reliability of this story, have cited it as evidence of the existence at this early date, of a "war party" in Sparta. For some time, friendly relations prevailed between Athens and Sparta.
Themistocles, the Athenian of the period most associated with an anti-Spartan policy, was ostracised at some point in the late 470s BC, was forced to flee to Persia. In his place, the Athenian general and statesman Cimon advocated a policy of cooperation between the two states, acting as Athens' proxenos at Sparta. Still, hints of conflict emerged. Thucydides reports that in the mid 460s BC, Sparta decided to invade Attica during the Thasian rebellion, but was stopped by an earthquake which triggered a revolt among the helots, it was that helot revolt which would bring on the crisis that precipitated the war. Unable to quell the revolt themselves, the Spartans summoned all their allies to assist them, invoking the old Hellenic League ties. Athens responded to the call. However, something either in the behaviour or appearance of the Athenian force insulted the Spartans and they dismissed the Athenians, alone of all their allies; this action destroyed the political credibility of Cimon. The demonstration of Spartan hostility was unmistakable, when Athens responded, events spiralled into war.
Athens concluded several alliances in quick succe
Sparta
Sparta was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece. In antiquity the city-state was known as Lacedaemon, while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars. Between 431 and 404 BC, Sparta was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War, from which it emerged victorious, though at a great cost of lives lost. Sparta's defeat by Thebes in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC ended Sparta's prominent role in Greece. However, it maintained its political independence until the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC, it underwent a long period of decline in the Middle Ages, when many Spartans moved to live in Mystras. Modern Sparta is the capital of the Greek regional unit of Laconia and a center for the processing of goods such as citrus and olives.
Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution, which configured their entire society to maximize military proficiency at all costs, focused on military training and excellence. Its inhabitants were classified as Spartiates, mothakes and helots. Spartiates underwent the rigorous agoge training and education regimen, Spartan phalanges were considered to be among the best in battle. Spartan women enjoyed more rights and equality to men than elsewhere in the classical antiquity. Sparta was the subject of fascination in its own day, as well as in Western culture following the revival of classical learning; this love or admiration of Sparta is known as Laconophilia. At its peak around 500 BC the size of the city would have been some 20,000–35,000 citizens, plus numerous helots and perioikoi; the total of 40,000–50,000 made Sparta one of the largest Greek cities. The French classicist François Ollier in his 1933 book Le mirage spartiate warned that a major scholarly problem regarding Sparta is that all the surviving accounts were written by non-Spartans who presented an excessively idealized image of Sparta.
The earliest attested term referring to Lacedaemon is the Mycenaean Greek, ra-ke-da-mi-ni-jo, "Lacedaimonian", written in Linear B syllabic script, being the equivalent of the written in the Greek alphabet, latter Greek, Λακεδαιμόνιος, Lakedaimonios. The ancient Greeks used one of three words to refer to the home location of the Spartans; the first refers to the main cluster of settlements in the valley of the Eurotas River: Sparta. The second word was Lacedaemon. Herodotus seems to denote by it the Mycenaean Greek citadel at Therapne, in contrast to the lower town of Sparta, it could be used synonymously with Sparta, but it was not. It denoted the terrain. In Homer it is combined with epithets of the countryside: wide, lovely and most hollow and broken; the hollow suggests the Eurotas Valley. Sparta on the other hand is the country of a people epithet; the name of the population was used for the state of Lacedaemon: the Lacedaemonians. This epithet utilized the plural of the adjective Lacedaemonius.
If the ancients wished to refer to the country more directly, instead of Lacedaemon, they could use a back-formation from the adjective: Lacedaemonian country. As most words for "country" were feminine, the adjective was in the feminine: Lacedaemonia; the adjective came to be used alone. "Lacedaemonia" was not in general use during the classical period and before. It does occur in Greek as an equivalent of Laconia and Messenia during the Roman and early Byzantine periods in ethnographers and lexica glossing place names. For example, Hesychius of Alexandria's Lexicon defines Agiadae as a "place in Lacedaemonia" named after Agis; the actual transition may be captured by Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, an etymological dictionary. He relied on Orosius' Historiarum Adversum Paganos and Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicon as did Orosius; the latter defines Sparta to be Lacedaemonia Civitas but Isidore defines Lacedaemonia as founded by Lacedaemon, son of Semele, relying on Eusebius. There is a rare use the earliest of Lacedaemonia, in Diodorus Siculus, but with Χὠρα suppressed.
The immediate area around the town of Sparta, the plateau east of the Taygetos mountains, was referred as Laconice. This term was sometimes used to refer to all the regions under direct Spartan control, including Messenia. Lakedaimona was until 2006 the name of a province in the modern Greek prefecture of Laconia. Sparta is located in the south-eastern Peloponnese. Ancient Sparta was built on the banks of the Eurotas River, the main river of Laconia, which provided it with a source of fresh water; the valley of the Eurotas is a natural fo
Tyndareus
In Greek mythology, Tyndareus was a Spartan king. Tyndareus was the son of Gorgophone, he married the Aetolian princess, Leda by whom he became the father of Castor, Timandra and Philonoe, the stepfather of Helen of Troy and Pollux. Tyndareus had a brother named Hippocoon, who seized exiled Tyndareus, he was reinstated by Heracles, who killed his sons. Tyndareus' other brother was the father of Penelope. Tyndareus' wife Leda was seduced by Zeus, she laid two eggs. When Thyestes seized control in Mycenae, two exiled princes and Menelaus came to Sparta, where they were received as guests and lived for a number of years; the princes married Tyndareus' daughters and Helen respectively. According to Steischorus, while sacrificing to the gods Tyndareus forgot to honor Aphrodite and thus the goddess was angered and made his daughters twice and thrice wed and deserters of their husbands; as what Hesiod says: Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world, when it was time for her to marry, many Greek kings and princes came to seek her hand or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf.
Among the contenders were Odysseus, Ajax the Great, Diomedes and both Menelaus and Agamemnon. All but Odysseus brought rich gifts with them. Helen's favourite was Menelaus who, according to some sources, did not come in person but was represented by his brother Agamemnon, who chose to support his brother's case, himself married Helen's half-sister Clytemnestra instead. Tyndareus would accept none of the gifts, nor would he send any of the suitors away for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus promised to solve the problem in a satisfactory manner if Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. Tyndareus agreed and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with the chosen one; this stratagem succeeded and Helen and Menelaus were married. Tyndareus resigned in favour of his son-in-law and Menelaus became king; some years Paris, a Trojan prince came to Sparta to marry Helen, whom he had been promised by Aphrodite.
Helen left with him – either willingly because she had fallen in love with him, or because he kidnapped her, depending on the source – leaving behind Menelaus and Hermione, their nine-year-old daughter. Menelaus attempted to retrieve Helen by calling on all her former suitors to fulfil their oaths, leading to the Trojan War. According to Euripides's Orestes, Tyndareus was still alive at the time of Menelaus’ return, was trying to secure the death penalty for his grandson Orestes due to the latter's murder of his own mother, Tyndareus’ daughter, but according to other accounts he had died prior to the Trojan War. In some versions of the myth, Tyndareus was one of the dead men resurrected by Asclepius to live again
Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication; some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopedia, containing 40,000 entries, is now in the public domain, many of its articles have been used as a basis for articles in Wikipedia. However, the outdated nature of some of its content makes its use as a source for modern scholarship problematic; some articles have special value and interest to modern scholars as cultural artifacts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The 1911 eleventh edition was assembled with the management of American publisher Horace Everett Hooper. Hugh Chisholm, who had edited the previous edition, was appointed editor in chief, with Walter Alison Phillips as his principal assistant editor. Hooper bought the rights to the 25-volume 9th edition and persuaded the British newspaper The Times to issue its reprint, with eleven additional volumes as the tenth edition, published in 1902.
Hooper's association with The Times ceased in 1909, he negotiated with the Cambridge University Press to publish the 29-volume eleventh edition. Though it is perceived as a quintessentially British work, the eleventh edition had substantial American influences, not only in the increased amount of American and Canadian content, but in the efforts made to make it more popular. American marketing methods assisted sales; some 14% of the contributors were from North America, a New York office was established to coordinate their work. The initials of the encyclopedia's contributors appear at the end of selected articles or at the end of a section in the case of longer articles, such as that on China, a key is given in each volume to these initials; some articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time, such as Edmund Gosse, J. B. Bury, Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Muir, Peter Kropotkin, T. H. Huxley, James Hopwood Jeans and William Michael Rossetti. Among the lesser-known contributors were some who would become distinguished, such as Ernest Rutherford and Bertrand Russell.
Many articles were carried over from some with minimal updating. Some of the book-length articles were divided into smaller parts for easier reference, yet others much abridged; the best-known authors contributed only a single article or part of an article. Most of the work was done by British Museum scholars and other scholars; the 1911 edition was the first edition of the encyclopædia to include more than just a handful of female contributors, with 34 women contributing articles to the edition. The eleventh edition introduced a number of changes of the format of the Britannica, it was the first to be published complete, instead of the previous method of volumes being released as they were ready. The print type was subject to continual updating until publication, it was the first edition of Britannica to be issued with a comprehensive index volume in, added a categorical index, where like topics were listed. It was the first not to include long treatise-length articles. Though the overall length of the work was about the same as that of its predecessor, the number of articles had increased from 17,000 to 40,000.
It was the first edition of Britannica to include biographies of living people. Sixteen maps of the famous 9th edition of Stielers Handatlas were translated to English, converted to Imperial units, printed in Gotha, Germany by Justus Perthes and became part this edition. Editions only included Perthes' great maps as low quality reproductions. According to Coleman and Simmons, the content of the encyclopedia was distributed as follows: Hooper sold the rights to Sears Roebuck of Chicago in 1920, completing the Britannica's transition to becoming a American publication. In 1922, an additional three volumes, were published, covering the events of the intervening years, including World War I. These, together with a reprint of the eleventh edition, formed the twelfth edition of the work. A similar thirteenth edition, consisting of three volumes plus a reprint of the twelfth edition, was published in 1926, so the twelfth and thirteenth editions were related to the eleventh edition and shared much of the same content.
However, it became apparent that a more thorough update of the work was required. The fourteenth edition, published in 1929, was revised, with much text eliminated or abridged to make room for new topics; the eleventh edition was the basis of every version of the Encyclopædia Britannica until the new fifteenth edition was published in 1974, using modern information presentation. The eleventh edition's articles are still of value and interest to modern readers and scholars as a cultural artifact: the British Empire was at its maximum, imperialism was unchallenged, much of the world was still ruled by monarchs, the tragedy of the modern world wars was still in the future, they are an invaluable resource for topics omitted from modern encyclopedias for biography and the history of science and technology. As a literary text, the encyclopedia has value as an example of early 20th-century prose. For example, it employs literary devices, such as pathetic fallacy, which are not as common in modern reference texts.
In 1917, using the pseudonym of S. S. Van Dine, the US art critic and author Willard Huntington Wright published Misinforming a Nation, a 200+
Cynisca
Cynisca or Kyniska was a Greek princess of Sparta. In 396 BC, she became the first woman in history to win at the ancient Olympic Games. Cynisca was born around 440 BC in the ancient Greek city of Sparta and was the daughter of the Eurypontid king of Sparta, Archidamus II, Eupoleia, she was the sister of the king of Sparta, Agesilaus II. She is said to have been a tomboy, an expert equestrian and wealthy, the perfect qualifications for a successful trainer, she was exceedingly ambitious to succeed at the Olympic Games and the first woman to breed horses and win an Olympic victory, according to Pausanias. Her name means'female puppy' in Ancient Greek, she was named after her grandfather Zeuxidamus, called Cyniscos. It is possible that this name related to a specific kind of dog in Sparta, the female bloodhounds which were famous for their ability to find their quarries by their scent. While most women in the ancient Greek world were kept in seclusion and forbidden to learn any kind of skills in sports, riding or hunting, Spartan women by contrast were brought up from girlhood to excel at these things so as to produce strong children, by going through early training similar to that of their brothers.
The ancient Olympic Games were entirely male-only and women were forbidden to set foot in the main stadium at Olympia, where running events and combat sports were held. Women were allowed to enter only the equestrian events, not by running but by owning and training the horses. Cynisca employed men and entered her team at the Olympics, where it won in the four-horse chariot racing twice, in 396 BC and again in 392 BC; the irony is that she didn't see her victories. There have been some speculations over the motives of Agesilaus in directing his sister to join the equestrian competitions. One explanation is that he wanted to rekindle the warlike spirit in the Spartan society, which had given ground for the sake of a win in the Olympic Games. Another possible reason is that Agesilaus wanted to display Cynisca's abilities, or promote women generally. According to Xenophon, she was encouraged to breed horses and compete in the Games, by her brother Agesilaus II, in an attempt to discredit the sport.
He viewed success in chariot racing as a victory without merit, only a mark of wealth and lavish outlay due to the involvement of the horses' owner, while in the other events the decisive factor was a man's bravery and virtue. By having a woman win, he hoped to show the sport to be unmanly, but Cynisca's victories did not stop wealthy Spartans engaging in the sport. However, Cynisca was honored by having a bronze statue of a chariot and horses, a charioteer and a statue of herself in the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, by the side of the statue of Troilus, made by Apelleas, an inscription written declaring that she was the only female to win the wreath in the chariot events at the Olympic Games; the first person in the inscription indicates that Cynisca was willing to push herself forward and Xenophon says that this inscription was Agesilaus' idea. In addition to this, a hero-shrine of Cynisca was erected in Sparta at Plane-tree Grove, where religious ceremonies were held. Only Spartan kings were graced in this way and Cynisca was the first woman to receive this honor.
The inscription from Olympia reads: Cynisca's win in the Olympics had a great impact on the ancient Greek world as other women, not only Lacedaemonians won the chariot racing, including Euryleonis, Zeuxo and Hermione, Timareta and Cassia. However, none of them was more distinguished for their victories. Zoe Karelli, a modern Greek poet, wrote a poem for Cynisca's love for the horses and her Olympic win which made her name famous in Greek history; this Spartan princess is used until today as a symbolic figure of the social rise of woman. Euryleonis another celebrated Spartan woman who won the two horse chariot races in 368 BC; the No Woman Rule in Ancient Olympics Spartan Olympic Victors The Spartans on Channel 4 Pausanias, Description of Greece, online at PerseusBibliography Paul Cartledge, The Spartans: An Epic History, 2nd edition 2003. Stephen Hodkinson and Wealth in Classical Sparta, The Classical Press of Wales, 2000. ISBN 0-7156-3040-7 S. B. Pomeroy. Spartan Women. G. P. Schauss and S. R. Wenn.
Onward to the Olympics: Historical Perspectives on the Olympic Games
Eurysthenes
In Greek mythology, Eurysthenes was one of the Heracleidae, a great-great-great-grandson of Heracles, a son of Aristodemus and Argia. His twin was Procles. Together they received the land of Lacedaemon after Cresphontes and Aristodemus defeated Tisamenus, the last Achaean king of the Peloponnesus. Eurysthenes married Lathria, daughter of Thersander, King of Kleonoe, sister of his sister-in-law Anaxandra, was the father of his successor, Agis I, founder of the Agiad dynasty of the Kings of Sparta; the title of archēgetēs, "founding magistrate," was explicitly denied to Eurysthenes and Procles by the 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; the story of the double kingship of Sparta begins with the invasion of the Peloponnesus by the Dorians, the Aetolian allies, under three Heraclid commanders, Temenus and Aristodemus, 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 for passage through Arcadia after crossing the Gulf of Corinth from Naupactus. Arcadia gave them a central point from, their presence was contested by a united Peloponnesian Achaean army under an Atreid. The Achaeans lost, they were commanded to evacuate to Athens. 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 was in possession there. One tradition says that he 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 had time to designate a successor. The mother did not know, the elder; the oracle at Delphi resolved the problem by suggesting that they both be made kings, 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 cleaned first, Eurysthenes. 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, the closest event to a Dorian Invasion available in legend, must coincide with the entry of Aristodemus and his brethren into Arcadia, based on the chronology of Eratosthenes, happened 328 years before the accepted date of the first year of the first Olympiad, 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, the first year of his reign, if the regency of Theras is discounted. Pausanias states; the date must have been 724/723 BC if the first year of the first Olympiad was 776/775 BC. Kings Polydorus of the Agiads and Theopompus of the Eurypontids were reigning at that time in mid-reign.
The end of the war must be 379 years from the return of the Heraclids. According to Isaac Newton 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 uncertain. List of kings of Sparta Procles Müller, Karl Otfried; the history and antiquities of the Doric race. I. Translated by George Cornewall Lewis. London: J. Murray
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Tod, Marcus Niebuhr (1911). "Archidamus s.v. 2". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 367.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the 