Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/811

Rh CLEOMENES. appear to have had considerable effect on Cleomenes. He demanded three days to consider; then en- quired "how far was Susa from the sea." Arista- goras forgot his diplomacy and said, "three months' journey." His Spartan listener was thoroughly alarmed, and ordered him to depart before sunset. Aristagoras however in suppliant's attire hurried to meet him at home, and made him offers, begin- ning with tt'n, and mounting at last to fifty talents. It chanced that Cleomenes had his daughter Gorgo, a child eight or nine years old, standing by ; and at this point she broke in, and said " Father, go away, or he will do you harm." And Cleomenes on this recovered his resolution, and left the room. (Herod, vi. 49 — 51.) This daughter Gorgo, his only child, was afterwards the wife of his half- brother Leonidas : and she, it is said, first found the key to the message which, by scraping the wax from a wooden writing-tablet, graving the wood, and then covering it with wax again, Demaratus conveyed to Sparta from the Persian court in an- nouncement of the intended invasion. (Herod, vii. ^239.) In 491 the heralds of Dareius came demanding earth and water from the Greeks; and Athens denounced to Sparta the submission of the Aegine- tans. Cleomenes went off in consequence to Ae- pina, and tried to seize certain parties as hostages. Meantime Demaratus, with whom he had probably been on bad terms ever since the retreat from Eleusis, sent private encouragements to the Aegi- netans to resist him, and took further advantage of his absence to intrigue against him at home. Cleo- menes returned unsuccessful, and now leagued him- self with Leotychides, and effected his colleague's deposition. [Demaratus.] (Herod, vi. 49 — 66.) He then took Leotychides with hira back to Aegi- na, seized his hostages, and placed them in the hands of the Athenians. But on his return to Sparta, he found it detected that he had tampered with the priestess at Delphi to obtain the oracle which deposed Demaratus, and, in apprehension of the consequences, he went out of the way into Thessaly. Shortly after, however, he ventured into Arcadia, and his machinations there to excite the Araidians against his country were sufficient to frighten the Spartans into offering him leave to re- turn with impunity. He did not however long sur- vive his recall. He was seized with raving madness, and dashed his staff in every one's face whom he met ; and at last when confined as a maniac in a sort of stocks, he prevailed on the Helot who watched hira to give hira a knife, and died by slashing (KaTaxo.Sfvwv) his whole body over with it. (Herod, vi. 73—75.) His madness and death, says Herodotus, were ascribed by the Spartans to the habit he acquired from some Scythian visitors at Sparta of excessive drinking. Others found a reason in his acts of sacrilege at Delphi or Eleusis, where he laid waste a piece of sacred land (the Oryas)^ or again at Argos, the case of which was as follows. Cleo- menes invaded Argolis, conveying his forces by sea to the neighbourhood of Tir}-ns ; defeated by a simple stratagem the whole Argive forces, and pursued a large number of fugitives into the wood of the hero Argus. Some of them he drew from their refuge on false pretences, the rest he burnt among the sacred trees. He however made no attempt on the city, but after sacrificing to the Ai-give Juno, and whipping her priestess for op- CLEOMENES. 793 posing his will, returned home and excused him- self, and indeed was acquitted after investigation, on the ground that the oracle predicting that he should capture Argos had been fulfilled by the destruction of the grove of Argus. Such is the strange account given by Herodotus (vi. 76-84) of the great battle of the Seventh (^«' rp 'E§S<J/u7?), the greatest exploit of Cleomenes, which deprived Argos of 6000 citizens (Herod, vii. 148), and left her in a state of debility from which, notwithstanding the enlargement of her franchise, she did not re- cover till the middle of the Peloponnesian war. To this however we may add in explanation the story given by later writers of the defence of Ar- gos by its women, headed bv the poet-heroine Te- lesilla. (Paus. ii. 20. $ 7 ; Plut. Mor. p. 245 ; Poly- aen. viii. 33 ; Suidas.s.v.TeAeo-tAAo.) [Telksilla.] Herodotus appears ignorant of it, though he gives an oracle seeming to refer to it. It is perfectly probable that Cleomenes thus received some check, and we must remember the Spartan incapacity for sieges. The date again is doubtful. Pausanias, (iii. 4. $$ 1-5), who follows Herodotus in his account of Cleomenes, says, it was at the beginning of his reign ; Clinton, however, whom Thirl wall follows, fixes it, on the groimd of Herod, vii. 148-9, to- wards the end of his reign, about 510 B. c. The life of Cleomenes, as graphically given by- Herodotus is very^ curious ; we may perhaps, without much imputation on the father of history, suspect that his love for personal story has here a little coloured his narrative. Possibly he may have some- what mistaken his character ; certainly the freedom of action allowed to a king whom the Spartans were at first half inclined to put aside for the younger brother Dorieus, and who was always accounted half-mad {vTroixapy6TH)os seems at variance with the received views of their kingly office. Yet it is possible that a wild character of this kind might find favour in Spartan eyes. (Comp. Mliller, Dor. i. 8. § 6 ; Clinton, B. c. 510, and p. 425, note x.) The occupation of the acropolis of Athens is men- tioned by Aristophanes. (Lvsistr. 272.) [A. H. C] CLEO'MENES II., the 25th king of Sparta of the Agid line, was the son of Cleombrotus I. and the brother of Agesipolis II., whom he suc- ceeded in B. c. 370. He died in b. c. 309, after a reign of sixty years and ten months ; but during this long period we have no information about him of any importance. He had two sons, Acrotatus and Cleonymus. Acrotatus died during the life ot Cleomenes, upon whose death Areus, the son of Acrotatus, succeeded to the throne. [Arkus I. ; Cleonymus.] (Diod. xx. 29 ; Plut. Jgis, 3 ; Paus. i. 13. § 3, iii. 6. $ 1 ; Manso, Spaiia, iii. 1, p. 164, 2. pp. 247, 248": Diod. xv. 60, contradicts himself about the time that Cleomenes reigned, and is evidently wrong ; see Clinton, Fast. ii. pp. 213,214.) [P- S.] CLEO'MENES III., the 31st king of Sparta of the Agid line, was the son of Leonidas II. After the death of Agis IV., B. c. 240, Leonidas married his widow Agiatis to Cleomenes, who was under age, in order, as it seems, to bring into his family the inheritjince of the Proclidiie. Agiatis, though at first violently opposed to the match, con- ceived a great affection for her husband, and she used to explain to him the principles and designs of Agis, about which he was eager for information. Cleomenes was endowed, according to Plutarch, with a noble spirit ; in moderation and simplicity