Agesilaus II

Agesilaus became king of Sparta around 400 BC, stepping into command just as Sparta emerged victorious from the Peloponnesian War. For two decades he was the main actor in Spartan hegemony over Greece, brave in combat but fatally lacking the diplomatic instincts the moment demanded. As Thebes grew stronger, his inflexibility turned liability: the Theban victory at Leuctra in 371 BC broke Sparta's supremacy and reduced it to a secondary power for the remainder of his reign. He ruled until around 360 BC, his legacy preserved in starkly opposed accounts - his friend Xenophon wrote both a sweeping history and a panegyric biography to defend him, while the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia and later writers carried a far more hostile tradition. Plutarch's biography centuries later filled in what Xenophon had carefully left out.