Procles

Not to be confused with Proclus.
Procles
Basileus (king) of Sparta
Reignc. 1104 – 1062 BC
SuccessorSoos
ConsortAnaxandra
IssueSoos
Lyside (wife of Periander)
HouseHeraclids
FatherAristodemus
MotherArgia

In Greek legends, Procles (Greek: Προκλῆς, "the renowned"[1]) was one of the Heracleidae, a great-great-great-grandson of Heracles, and a son of Aristodemus and Argia. His twin was Eurysthenes. Together they received the land of Lacedaemon after Cresphontes, Temenus and Aristodemus defeated Tisamenus, the last Achaean king of the Peloponnesus. Procles married Anaxandra, daughter of Thersander, King of Kleonoe, sister of his sister-in-law Lathria, and was the father of Soos and the grandfather of Eurypon, founder of the Eurypontid 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. ^ Mason, Charles Peter (1867). "Procles". In William Smith (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 3. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. p. 532. Archived from the original on 2011-08-05.
  3. ^ Malkin, Irad (2003). Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 110–111.