Cleomĕnes
（
Κλεομένης).
1.
King of Sparta, ascended the throne B.C. 519. At the beginning of his reign he undertook an
expedition against the Argives, defeated them, and destroyed a large number who had taken
refuge in a sacred grove. He afterwards drove out the Pisistratidae from Athens. This is the
same Cleomenes whom Aristagoras endeavoured, but in vain, to involve in a war with the
Persians. He afterwards managed, by undue influence, to procure an oracular response from
Delphi, pronouncing his colleague Demaratus illegitimate, and thus obtained his deposition.
Becoming alarmed, subsequently, lest the fraud should be discovered, Cleomenes fled secretly
to Thessaly, and from thence passing into Arcadia, he began to stir up the people of this
latter country against Sparta. The Lacedaemonians, fearing his intrigues, recalled him, but
he died soon after his return, in a fit of insanity, by his own hand (
Herod.v. 64; v. 49 foll.; v. 65, etc.).
2.
Cleomenes II., succeeded his brother Agesipolis II. on the throne of Sparta, B.C. 371. The
power of his country was then on the decline, and he possessed not the requisite talents to
restore it to its former state. He reigned sixty years and ten months without having done
anything worthy the notice of posterity (Pausan. iii. 6).
3.
Cleomenes III., son of Leonidas II., ascended the Spartan throne B.C. 236. Dissatisfied at
the prevailing manners of Sparta, he resolved to bring about a reform, and to restore the
institutions of Lycurgus, after the example of Agis , who had lost his life in a similar
attempt. Thinking that war would furnish the best opportunity for the execution of his
design, he led his forces against the Achaeans, who were commanded by Aratus, and greatly
distinguished himself. Returning after this to Sparta, with a portion of his army, he put to
death the Ephori, made a new division of the lands, and introduced again the old Spartan
system of education. He also took his brother Euclidas as his colleague on the throne, and
thus for the first and only time the Spartans had two kings of the same family. After a long,
and in many respects successful, series of operations against the Achaeans and Macedonians,
the latter of whom had been called in by Aratus as allies, Cleomenes was
defeated by Antigonus in the battle of Sel
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Venus de' Medici of Cleomenes. (Uffizi Gallery, Florence.)
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lasia (B.C. 222), and immediately after fled to Ptolemy Euergetes in Egypt. This
monarch treated him with some degree of generosity, but his successor, Ptolemy Philopator, a
weak and suspicious prince, soon began to look upon him with an evil eye, and at last kept
him in confinement. The Spartan monarch, in a fit of despair, and taking advantage of the
temporary absence of Ptolemy from his capital, broke forth from the place where he had been
kept in custody, along with thirteen of his friends, and endeavoured to arouse the
inhabitants in the cause of freedom. But, finding their efforts fruitless, they fell by their
own hands (B.C. 220).
4.
An Athenian sculptor, who probably flourished in the Augustan Age. The celebrated Venus de'
Medici, now at Florence, is perhaps his. He is described on the pedestal as son of
Apollodorus. The “Germanicus” of the Louvre was the work of his son, who
bore the same name.
