Eurysthenes

For other uses, see Eurysthenes (disambiguation).
Eurysthenes
Basileus (king) of Sparta
Reignc. 1104 – 1066 BC
PredecessorAristodemus?
SuccessorAgis I
ConsortLathria
HouseHeraclids
FatherAristodemus
MotherArgia

Eurysthenes (Greek: Εὐρυσθένης, "widely ruling"[1]) was king of Sparta and one of the Heracleidae in Greek mythology. He was a son of Aristodemus and Argia, daughter of Autesion. He had a twin brother, Procles. Together they received the land of Lacedaemon after Cresphontes, Temenus and Aristodemus defeated Tisamenus, the last Achaean king of the Peloponnesus. Eurysthenes married Lathria, daughter of Thersander, King of Kleonae, sister of his sister-in-law Anaxandra, and was the father of his successor, Agis I, founder of the Agiad dynasty of the Kings of Sparta.[2]

The title of archēgetēs, "founding magistrate," was explicitly denied to Eurysthenes and Procles by the later 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.[3]

  1. ^ Müller 1830, Section I.5.16.
  2. ^ Clough, Arthur Hugh (1867). "Eurysthenes". In William Smith (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. p. 113. Archived from the original on 2011-09-12.
  3. ^ Malkin, Irad (2003). Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 110–111.