Dr. Owen Rees

Okay.

And he is coming to the throne.

So we're talking 400 BC.

Okay.

He comes to the throne late in life.

He's about 40 years old.

And more interestingly, he was not supposed to be king.

He was not the next in line for the throne.

He very much took an opportunity when his brother, I think it is, or half-brother, died and exploits a question about the legitimacy of the next in line

In part because of the support he had from the great Lysander, who was likely to have been his lover as a younger man.

So a close relationship between those two.

So Agesilaus then takes to the throne in 400, and it is he who takes the Spartans properly to Asia Minor.

So whilst the Spartans are over there sort of doing their actions, Agesilaus finally gets given control of both the army, the navy, and he properly takes, should we say, a more directed campaign?

into Asia Minor.

So yeah, Agesilaus has got to be the starting point.

Yeah, I think that's a perfectly valid way of looking at it.

And I suppose the filling the gaps part of the historian's job here is what they perhaps don't realize is how much discontent there is in Sparta at this point.

So even though we've come out of this victorious moment, by 400, Agiselaus comes to the throne.

So what's that?

Four years after the end of the Peloponnesian War.