On this page
An heir to rival legacies
Cleomenes III succeeded his father Leonidas II in the Agiad kingship around 235 BCE. Leonidas had helped destroy the reform movement of Agis IV, yet Cleomenes eventually pursued a related program of renewal. His wife Agiatis was Agis' widow. Plutarch makes her account of her first husband's plans an important influence on the young king, but this intimate explanation belongs to a later biography and cannot be treated as a surviving record of their conversations.
Cleomenes also operated in a changing Peloponnese. The Achaean League, strongly associated with Aratus of Sicyon, sought to extend a federal political order. Sparta remained outside it and competed for influence among neighboring communities. Social reform and foreign policy became closely linked: a broader, better-resourced citizen body could support renewed military strength, while victories could give the king the prestige and armed following needed to overcome resistance at home.[1][2]
A coup presented as restoration
In 227 BCE Cleomenes moved against the ephors. Four were killed and one escaped, according to Plutarch. The king then justified the removal of the office as a recovery of an older constitutional order. This was a highly interested use of the past. Whether particular magistracies had developed after an original settlement did not make their violent abolition politically neutral. The king was concentrating power while claiming fidelity to ancestral institutions.
His measures included debt cancellation, land redistribution, and the admission of additional men to citizenship. He placed his brother Eucleidas in the second kingship, breaking the customary division between the Agiad and Eurypontid houses. Renewed training and common meals accompanied the reforms. These changes were substantial, but they did not establish universal equality among residents. The aim was to strengthen a reorganized citizen community, while royal authority and distinctions of status remained central.[1][3]
Expansion and Macedonian intervention
Cleomenes won a series of successes against the Achaeans and extended Spartan influence beyond Laconia. Plutarch presents his energy and restraint sympathetically, while other ancient accounts place greater emphasis on coercion and opportunism. Cities that changed sides had their own local conflicts and strategic calculations. Their decisions should not automatically be read as endorsements of a single social revolution spreading outward from Sparta.
Aratus eventually turned to Antigonus Doson of Macedon for help, accepting a relationship that constrained Achaean independence. The resulting coalition possessed resources Cleomenes struggled to match. Egyptian support and emergency measures at home became increasingly important to the Spartan war effort. Plutarch reports that Cleomenes freed helots who could pay a specified sum and armed a force from among them. This illustrates how war could open limited routes out of subjection while also making freedom dependent on money and service.[1]
Sellasia, exile, and the fate of reform
At Sellasia in 222 BCE Cleomenes attempted to block the northern approach to Sparta. Antigonus' coalition defeated him, and Eucleidas died in the fighting. Cleomenes left for Egypt, where his prospects depended on the Ptolemaic court. After the death of his original patron Ptolemy III, relations deteriorated. In 219 he and his companions attempted an unsuccessful rising in Alexandria and died. Plutarch turns the final episode into a dramatic conclusion to a life of frustrated ambition.
Antigonus entered Sparta after the battle and reversed important elements of Cleomenes' political settlement. The exact survival or cancellation of individual social measures remains a matter of historical reconstruction. It is therefore safer to distinguish the defeat of the king and his constitutional arrangements from a claim that every consequence of reform vanished immediately. Cleomenes' career reveals a Sparta capable of major change, but also the dependence of that change on war, royal leadership, and the unstable balance among larger Hellenistic powers.[1][4]
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
References & further reading
- Ancient textPlutarch, Life of Cleomenes ↗
Bernadotte Perrin translation, public domain. A sympathetic later biography; compare its account of the war with Polybius.
- Ancient textPlutarch, Life of Agis ↗
Bernadotte Perrin translation, public domain. A later narrative of reform, social conflict, and the king's execution.
- Modern scholarshipThomas W. Africa, Stoics, Cynics, and the Spartan Revolution ↗
Scholarly discussion of the reform movement and its ideological setting. The linked extract summarizes the contrast between Agis and Cleomenes.
- Modern scholarshipThe Spartan Polity after the Defeat of Cleomenes III ↗
Scholarly discussion of the reforms and their subsequent fate; the linked publication extract frames the constitutional problem.