Agesilaus II (Eurypontid; 84; r.401-360 BC); Sardis
When Agis died, his son Leotychidas (2) was disqualified on the charge that he was the son of Alcibiades. The lame Agesilaus was elected largely through the influence of Lysander, hoping to further his political designs. During the early years of Agesilaus’ reign a military officer Cinadon attempted a coup that aimed to break the power of the oligarchs and give rights to poorer Spartans, even to helots. The plot was betrayed to the ephors; Cinadon was tortured and executed.
In 396 BC when the news came from Asia that Tissaphernes was preparing a large fleet, the Spartans decided to renew the war against Persia. Agesilaus was given a staff of thirty Spartiates headed by Lysander, two thousand neodamodes, six thousand Peloponnesians, and supplies for six months in the field. Athens, Corinth and Thebes refused to take part, and the Thebans further offended Agesilaus by disrupting his parting sacrifices on the altar of Artemis at Aulis in Boeotia.
Agesilaus sailed from Gerastus, a port at the southern extremity of Euboea, and on his arrival at Ephesus gathered reinforcements (Ionians and mercenaries, including Xenophon and the Cyreans). When Agesilaus demanded of the Persians to give complete independence to the Greek cities in Asia, Tissaphernes negotiated a truce to give himself time to ask and receive troops from Artaxerxes. During this period Agesilaus became resentful of Lysander’s influence so he sent him to command the troops in the Hellespont, where he won over Spithridates, a Persian noble who had defected when Pharnabazus asked for Spithridates’ daughter as a concubine.
When Tissaphernes’ reinforcements arrived he told Agesilaus to leave Asia. Agesilaus gave orders to cross the Meander and march to Caria, but when Tissaphernes moved his troops to protect the province, Agesilaus turned northwards into Phrygia and mounted a campaign of plunder against little resistance. However, in a minor skirmish near Dascylium the beating of his cavalry by Persian horsemen persuaded him that to defeat the Persians on the flat plains of Asia he needed a greater mounted force, so he spent the winter of 396/5 BC gathering cavalry from the wealthier of his local allies.
In the spring he marched for Lydian city of Sardis, once again frustrating Tissaphernes who had positioned his army in the Meander Valley. In three days Agesilaus arrived unopposed at the Pactolus River. When the Persian cavalry eventually arrived, the newly formed Greek cavalry, assisted by peltasts and hoplites, soon put them to flight. Many Persians drowned in the river and their camp was taken.
Tissaphernes then took the field in full force. Outnumbered and unwilling to engage his more mobile enemy on open ground, Agesilaus retreated in column with the Persians harrying his rearguard. He sent his cavalry commander Xenocles ahead with fourteen hundred men to hide at a heavily forested site seen earlier. Next day as the Persians passed, Xenocles charged at the double and the Persians, in no formation to give battle, fled at once. Agesilaus dispatched his cavalry and light-armed troops in pursuit. About six hundred of the enemy were killed and the Persians retired to Sardis.
Artaxerxes, believing that he had been betrayed, sent Tithraustes to execute Tissaphernes and succeed him. Tithraustes at once offered to acknowledge the autonomy of the Greek towns on condition of their paying tribute. He induced Agesilaus to attack the satrapy of Pharnabazus instead of Caria by giving him money to pay his troops. On his march northwards Agesilaus received authority from home to command the naval as well as the military forces. He began collecting a fleet from allied cities, the command of which he gave to his brother-in-law, Peisander (d.394 BC).
About the beginning of autumn, Agesilaus pillaged Phrygia and took over the cities of the country either by force or voluntary surrender. Spithridates persuaded him to march into Paphlagonia and cause her to revolt from the Persians. Cotys, its king, joined Agesilaus and gave him considerable reinforcements. Spithridates eventually fell out with Agesilaus in an argument over the division of the spoils.
Meanwhile, Sparta had also been working to extend her authority in other directions. In 400 BC she seized the former Athenian naval post at Naupactus and handed it to the Locrians. The following year the Spartans moved further north and placed a Spartan governor at Heraclea Trachinia, the control of which since its foundation had alternated between Sparta and Boeotia. Sparta also (by 395 BC) had put a garrison into the Thessalian city of Pharsalus. This strengthening of Spartan presence in Central and Northern Greece must surely have made the Corinthians and Boeotians feel threatened. Sparta was on good terms with Dionysius in Sicily, and in 396 BC she entered into an alliance with Nepherites in Egypt.
Sparta’s monopolisation of the profits of the victory, her action of not liberating but taking over the Delian League, her war with Elis and her expanding influence all helped to alienate the central states of Greece against the Spartan state. Pharnabazus gave money to a Persian agent Timocrates of Rhodes to distribute among city states of Central Greece to promote opposition to Sparta. His encouragement prompted Thebes to provoke Sparta into the Corinthian War, so-named because the hostilities were for the most part waged in the territory of Corinth.
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