Leonidas I

Leonidas I (/liəˈnaɪdəs, -dæs/; Ancient Greek: Λεωνίδας, Leōnídas; born c. 540 BC; died 11 August 480 BC) was king of the Ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. He was the son of king Anaxandridas II and the 17th king of the Agiad dynasty, a Spartan royal house which claimed descent from Heracles. Leonidas I ascended to the throne in c. 489 BC, succeeding his half-brother king Cleomenes I. He ruled jointly along with king Leotychidas II until his death in 480 BC, when he was succeeded by his son, Pleistarchus.

At the Second Greco-Persian War, Leonidas led the allied Greek forces in a last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), attempting to defend the pass from the invading Persian army, and was killed early during the third and last day of the battle. Leonidas entered myth as a hero and the leader of the 300 Spartans who died in battle at Thermopylae. While the Greeks lost this battle, they were able to expel the Persian invaders in the following year.

According to Herodotus, Leonidas' mother was not only his father's wife, but also his father's niece and had been barren for so long that the ephors, the five annually elected administrators of the Spartan constitution, tried to prevail upon King Anaxandridas II to set her aside and take another wife. Anaxandridas refused, claiming his wife was blameless, whereupon the ephors agreed to allow him to take a second wife without setting aside his first. This second wife, a descendant of Chilon of Sparta (one of the Seven Sages of Greece), promptly bore a son, Cleomenes. However, one year after Cleomenes' birth, Anaxandridas' first wife also gave birth to a son, Dorieus. Leonidas was the second son of Anaxandridas' first wife, and either the elder brother or twin of Cleombrotus. Leonidas' name means "descendant of Leon", and he was named after his grandfather Leon of Sparta.^{[citation needed]} The Doric Greek suffix -ίδας, with corresponding Attic form -ίδης, mainly means "descendant of". But literally his name can also mean "son of a lion", as the name Leon means "lion" in Greek.

King Anaxandridas II died in c. 524 BC, and Cleomenes succeeded to the throne sometime between then and 516 BC. Dorieus was so outraged that the Spartans had preferred his half-brother over himself that he found it impossible to remain in Sparta. He made one unsuccessful attempt to set up a colony in Africa and, when this failed, sought his fortune in Sicily, where after initial successes he was killed. Leonidas' relationship with his bitterly antagonistic elder brothers is unknown, but he married Cleomenes' daughter, Gorgo, sometime before coming to the throne in 490 BC.

Leonidas was heir to the Agiad throne (successor of Cleomenes I) and a full citizen (homoios) at the time of the Battle of Sepeia against Argos (c. 494 BC). Likewise, he was a full citizen when the Persians sought submission from Sparta and met with vehement rejection in 492/491 BC. His elder half-brother, king Cleomenes, had already been deposed on grounds of purported insanity, and had fled into exile when Athens sought assistance against the First Persian invasion of Greece, that ended at Marathon (490 BC).

Plutarch wrote, “When someone said to him: 'Except for being king you are not at all superior to us,' Leonidas son of Anaxandridas and brother of Cleomenes replied: 'But were I not better than you, I should not be king.'" The product of the agoge, Leonidas was unlikely to have been referring to his royal blood alone but rather suggesting that, like his brother Dorieus, he had proved himself superior in the competitive environment of Spartan training and society, thus making him qualified to rule.

Leonidas was chosen to lead the combined Greek forces determined to resist the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 481 BC. This was not simply a tribute to Sparta's military prowess: The probability that the coalition wanted Leonidas personally for his capability as a military leader is underlined by the fact that just two years after his death, the coalition preferred Athenian leadership to the leadership of either Leotychidas or Leonidas' successor (as regent for his still under-aged son) Pausanias. The rejection of Leotychidas and Pausanias was not a reflection on Spartan arms. Sparta's military reputation had never stood in higher regard, nor was Sparta less powerful in 478 BC than it had been in 481 BC.

This selection of Leonidas to lead the defence of Greece against Xerxes' invasion led to Leonidas' death in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.