Agesilaus was the son of Archidamus II and his second wife, Eupoleia, brother to Cynisca ( the first woman in ancient history to achieve an Olympic victory ), and younger half-brother of Agis II.

We do know that he was not expected to succeed to the throne after his brother king Agis II, largely due to the fact that he was crippled from birth, and since the latter had a son, named Leotychidas.

Early Spartan attempts to break up the coalition failed, and the leadership of the Spartan king Agis was called into question.

He was able to persuade the Spartans to select Agesilaus II as the new Eurypontid Spartan king following the death of Agis II.

Eurysthenes married Lathria, daughter of Thersander, King of Kleonoe, sister of his sister-in-law Anaxandra, and was the father of his successor, Agis I, founder of the Agiad dynasty of the Kings of Sparta.

Blockaded by land and sea, with their food supplies running low, the Athenians sent ambassadors to the Spartan king Agis, whose army was camped outside their walls, offering to join the Spartan alliance if they were allowed to keep their walls and port ; Agis, claiming that he had no power to negotiate, sent the ambassadors on to Sparta, but there they were told that, if they really wanted peace, they should bring the Spartans better proposals.

He began his kingship after the end of the Peloponnesian war after his brother Agis II died and was left without an heir.

( Agis ’ son Leotychidas was rumored to be the illegitimate son of the Athenian Alcibiades.

As Chugg says, " If he did persuade Alexander to reach an accommodation with Demosthenes at this critical juncture, as would seem likely from the circumstances, then he was significantly responsible for saving the situation for Macedon in Greece by preventing the revolt of Agis spreading to Athens and her allies.

His first play, Agis: a tragedy, founded on Plutarch's narrative, was finished in 1747.

Plutarch has Timaia, the wife of King Agis II, " being herself forward enough to whisper among her helot maid-servants " that the child she was expecting had been fathered by Alcibiades, and not her husband, indicating a certain level of trust.

In around 242 BC, Leonidas was exiled from Sparta and forced to seek refuge in the temple of Athena after opposing the reforms of the Eurypontid King, Agis IV.

Cleomenes ' brother-in-law, Cleombrotus, who was a supporter of Agis, became king.

Following the execution of Agis, Cleomenes-who was around eighteen at the time-was made by his father to marry Agis ' widow, Agiatis, who was a wealthy heiress.

Once it became clear, however, that Demosthenes and his men intended to hold the site, the king Agis, who was at the head of an army ravaging Attica, turned for home, cutting his invasion short after only 15 days in Athenian territory.

Immediately afterwards, the Argives denounced the truce and resumed the war, capturing the key town of Orchomenus ; as a result, anger at Agis was such that he was on the verge of being fined 100, 000 drachmas and having his house destroyed.

The Spartan ephors consented, but in an unprecedented move, placed Agis under the supervision of ten advisors, called xymbouloi, whose consent was required for whatever military action he wished to take.

Agis marched the whole of the Spartan army, together with the neodamodeis and everyone who was able to fight in Sparta out to Tegea where he was joined by his allies from Arcadia, and he sent for help from his northern allies, Corinth, Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris.

Again during the reign of King Agis, several ephors brought the people into revolt with oracles from Pasiphaë's shrine promising remission of debts and redistribution of land.

Upon his return, Agis finds that his supporters are discontented with the rule of his uncle, Agesilaus, and are disillusioned by the delay in implementing the Agis IV's reforms.

Rather than engage in a war with Leonidas, Agis takes sanctuary in a temple, but is enticed out, summarily tried and then executed, along with his mother and grandmother.

During Alexander's campaigns in the east, the Spartan king, Agis III sent a force to Crete in 333 BC with the aim of securing the island for Sparta.

* Drawing upon the tradition of the Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, the young Eurypontid king of Sparta, Agis IV, seeks to reform a system that distributes the land and wealth unequally and burden the poor with debt.

Agis is supported by his wealthy mother and grandmother ( who surrender their property ), by his uncle Agesilaus, and by Lysander, who is an ephor ( magistrate with the duty of limiting the power of the king ).

In the Peloponnesus he routes a force under the Macedonian general Coragus and, although Athens stays neutral, he is joined by Elis, Achaea ( except Pellene ) and Arcadia, with the exception of Megalopolis, the staunchly anti-Spartan capital of Arcadia, which Agis III's forces besiege.

Sparta under King Agis II has a major victory over Argos ( and its allies Athens, Ellis and Mantinea ), which has broken its treaty with Sparta's King Agis II at the insistence of Alcibiades.

Agis II's major victory makes amends with the Spartans for his earlier truce with Argos.

Gina Birch and Vicky Aspinall formed Dorothy and Ana da Silva worked with choreographer Gaby Agis on a series of dance projects and formed Roseland with Charles Hayward.

* " The Comparison of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus with Agis and Cleomenes ", by Plutarch, translated by John Dryden

Agis started in 331 BC to besiege the city with his entire army, generating great alarm in Macedon.

This helped to create, with Thessalian help and many mercenaries, a force double that of Agis, which Antipater in person led south in 330 BC to confront the Spartans.

Agis fell with many of his best soldiers, but not without inflicting heavy losses on the Macedonians.

* Maurice Agis ' Dreamspace V, a huge inflatable maze erected in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, killed two women and seriously injured a three-year-old girl when a strong wind broke its moorings and carried it 30 ft into the air, with thirty people trapped inside.

Meanwhile, Agis, having started his reforms went on a campaign near the Isthmus of Corinth which presented Leonidas with an opportunity to regain his throne.

However, the Spartan king Agis ( son of Archidamus ) instead concluded the first campaign with a truce, without explaining his actions to the army or his allies ; the army thus returned home.

Agis next took command of allied Greek forces against Macedon, gaining early successes, before laying siege to Megalopolis in 331 BC.

The establishment of an Athenian garrison in Spartan territory frightened the Spartan leadership, and the Spartan army, which had been ravaging Attica under the command of Agis, ended their expedition ( the expedition only lasted 15 days ) and marched home, and the Spartan fleet at Corcyra sailed to Pylos.

* Agis I ( died 900 BC ), a Spartan king

* Agis II ( died 401 BC ), a Spartan king

* Agis III ( died 331 BC ), a Spartan king

* Agis IV ( 265 BC – 241 BC ), a Spartan king ; Plutarch included a chapter on him in his Parallel Lives

* Archidamus V, son of the Spartan King, Eudamidas II, and grandson of Archidamus IV, flees to Messenia after the murder of his brother Agis IV.

* Archidamus V, brother of the murdered Spartan King Agis IV, is called back to Sparta by the Agiad King Cleomenes III, who has no counterpart on the throne by then.

Agis III is killed, and Spartan resistance is broken.

King Agis II leads the Spartan force that occupies Decelea in Attica.

He quotes sources which suggest that Hephaestion had been approached by Aristion of Athens to effect a reconciliation between Alexander and Demosthenes, and certainly, Athens ' inaction during the revolt of the Spartan king, Agis, would seem to support the idea.

* editions of Isaeus ( 1831 ) and Plutarch's Agis and Cleomenes ( 1839, important for the Attic law of inheritance and the history of the Spartan constitution )