Sparta's Last Stand

By the time Cleomenes III became king in 235 BC, Spartan power and prestige had been in steady decline for a century and a half. The state that had defied the Persians at Thermopylae and Plataea and humbled the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War was reduced to a minor player in Greek affairs. Sparta had never recovered from defeat by the Thebans at Leuktra in 371 BC. Much of its territory had been lost and its army, once feared and respected throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, was outdate...