Plutarch's life of the lame Spartan king Agesilaus II, who rose past a birth defect and an unfavored line to rule Sparta, campaigned against Persia, and outlived his city's brief supremacy only to watch it collapse at Leuctra.
Agesilaus was the younger, unexpected son of King Archidamus, born with a lame leg that by ancient custom and oracle should have barred him from the Spartan throne. Plutarch traces his boyhood in the harsh Spartan discipline shared by all citizens' sons, his devoted friendship with Lysander, and the maneuvering-led by Lysander himself-that overturned an oracle and the claims of his nephew Leotychides to put Agesilaus on the throne after his brother Agis died. Once king, he skillfully built power by flattering the ephors and elders rather than fighting them, all while quietly expanding royal authority, and he was dispatched to Asia to lead a great campaign against the Persian king, styling himself a second Agamemnon.
The narrative follows his brilliant early operations against the satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, his uneasy break with the overbearing Lysander, and his recall to Greece to fight in the Corinthian War just as his Asian campaign was gathering real momentum-a recall Agesilaus obeyed with famous discipline, remarking that he was more grieved to leave Asia than glad he had conquered it. Back home he fought at Coronea, dominated Spartan domestic politics for decades, and pursued an anti-Theban policy that Plutarch presents as shortsighted: Agesilaus's personal hostility to Theban leaders helped provoke the war that produced Epaminondas and the Theban army that shattered Spartan invincibility at Leuctra. The Life closes with an aged, wound-scarred Agesilaus, past eighty, taking mercenary service under an Egyptian prince to earn money for his impoverished city, dying on the voyage home in Libya.
The Life matters historically as Plutarch's most sustained portrait of Sparta's fourth-century decline, paired with the Roman general Pompey in the Parallel Lives. It dramatizes the paradox of a ruler whose personal virtues-discipline, wit, loyalty to friends, indifference to luxury-coexisted with the political misjudgments that hastened his state's ruin, and it preserves anecdotes (the boy's kiss, the disguised nightingale, the trench at the walls of an Egyptian city) found nowhere else in surviving Greek historiography.
“This man said it was not permitted for a lame man to become king of Lacedaemon”
— Agesilaus
“I have already heard the bird itself.”
— Agesilaus
“There is no need for you to persuade him: for I think I would rather fight again that battle over the kiss than have”
— Agesilaus
“Since the enemy have themselves, with their own hands, prepared our security, having dug so great a trench”
— Agesilaus
“It being now winter, he kept close to the land with his ships, and putting in along Libya at a deserted place they call the Harbor of Menelaus, he died, having lived eighty-four years, and having reig”
— Agesilaus
He was the younger son of Archidamus by a second wife and was lame from birth. An oracle was cited warning Sparta against a 'lame reign,' and a rival, Leotychides, argued this barred Agesilaus from the throne. Lysander turned the argument around, and Agesilaus was chosen instead.
Lysander had been Agesilaus's admirer in youth and engineered his rise to kingship, expecting to rule through him. Once in power, Agesilaus deliberately curbed Lysander's influence, and the two men's friendship soured into rivalry, which Plutarch treats as a case study in the dangers of political ambition.
He led Spartan and allied forces into Asia Minor, defeating and outmaneuvering the satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus, winning over defectors like Spithridates, and building a strong cavalry force. His campaign was cut short when Sparta recalled him to fight in the Corinthian War in Greece.
Plutarch argues that Agesilaus's personal hostility toward Theban leaders and his harsh, humiliating peace terms helped drive Thebes to war and gave rise to Epaminondas's generalship. When the Theban army under Epaminondas invaded Laconia, it exposed Spartan territory to enemies for the first time in some six hundred years.
In his final years, past eighty and covered in old wounds, he took on a mercenary command for the Egyptian ruler Tachos and later his successor to raise money for impoverished Sparta. Returning home by ship, he died at a remote Libyan harbor called the Harbor of Menelaus, after reigning many years.
Plutarch depicts him as witty, self-deprecating about his lameness, deeply loyal to friends, disdainful of luxury and flattery (as with the actor Callippides and the nightingale-mimic), and skilled at winning political power through charm rather than open confrontation.
Agesilaus is paired with the Roman general Pompey, both men whose personal excellence and long public service ended in political and military reversal for the states or causes they served.
Notable stories include Agesilaus fleeing rather than accept a kiss from a beautiful youth then regretting it, his rejection of luxury when meeting Pharnabazus, his clever exploitation of a half-dug siege trench in Egypt, and his refusal to hear a man mimic a nightingale because he had already heard the real bird.
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