Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
History
Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I.
Pausanias, active approximately 150-175
Greece -- Antiquities; Greece -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
Of the family of Eurysthenes then, called the Agiadæ, Cleomenes the son
of Leonidas was the last king at Sparta: but as to the other branch
this is what I have heard. Procles the son of Aristodemus had a son
called Sous, whose son Eurypon attained such glory that the family were
called Eurypontidæ from him, though till his time they were called
Proclidæ. And Eurypon had a son Prytanis, and it was in his days that
animosity broke out between the Lacedæmonians and Argives, and even
earlier than this quarrel they fought with the Cynurians, but during
the succeeding generations, when Eunomus the son of Prytanis and
Polydectes the son of Eunomus were kings, Sparta continued at peace.
But Charillus the son of Polydectes ravaged the Argive territory, and
made a raid into Argolis, and under his leadership the Spartans went
out to Tegea, when the Lacedæmonians hoped to take Tegea and slice the
district off from Arcadia, following a beguiling oracle. And after the
death of Charillus Nicander his son succeeded to the kingdom, and it
was in his reign that the Messenians killed Teleclus the king of the
other family in the temple of Artemis Limnas. And Nicander invaded
Argolis with an army, and ravaged most of the country. And the Asinæans
having taken part with the Lacedæmonians in this expedition, not
long afterwards paid the penalty to the Argives in the destruction of
their country and their own exile. And Theopompus the son of Nicander,
who was king after his father, I shall make mention of when I come
to the history of Messenia. During his reign came on the contest for
Thyrea between the Lacedæmonians and Argives. Theopompus himself took
no part in this, partly from old age, but still more from sorrow at
the death of his son Archidamus. Not that Archidamus died childless,
for he left a son Zeuxidamus, who was succeeded in the kingdom by his
son Anaxidamus. It was in his reign that the Messenians evacuated
the Peloponnese, having been a second time conquered in war by the
Spartans. And Anaxidamus had a son Archidamus, and he had a son
Agesicles: and both of them had the good fortune to spend all their
life in peace and without wars. And Aristo the son of Agesicles having
married a girl who they say was the most shameless of all the girls in
Lacedæmon, but in appearance the most beautiful girl next to Helen,
had by her a son Demaratus seven months after marriage. And as he was
sitting with the ephors in council a servant came and told him of the
birth of his son. And Aristo, forgetting the lines in the Iliad[31]
about the birth of Eurystheus, or perhaps not knowing them, said it
couldn’t be his child from the time. He was sorry afterwards for these
words which he had spoken. And when Demaratus was king and in other
respects in good repute at Sparta, and had cooperated with Cleomenes in
freeing the Athenians from the Pisistratidæ, this thoughtless word of
Aristo, and the hatred of Cleomenes deprived him of the kingdom. And he
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