King Agesilaus II And The Sacred Liver Hoax

King Agesilaus II was a king of Sparta from around 400 BCE until his death in 360 or 359 BCE. A brilliant military strategist and a model of the Spartan way of life, King Agesilaus was remembered as one of his country’s better kings. He had such an active spirit that, even in his final years, the elderly Spartan king could be found campaigning in foreign lands.

In 360 BCE, when the king was over eighty years of age, Agesilaus II accepted a military contract from a pharaoh of Egypt. The contract quickly proved to be more complicated than it originally seemed. According to Plutarch, Egypt erupted into a civil war not long after Agesilaus’ arrival. Nectanebis, a cousin of the pharaoh, rebelled in hopes of seizing the throne for himself. In addition, there was an unnamed third claimant who originated from the region of Mendes. Ultimately, Agesialus II brought his mercenaries over to the side of Nectanebis and the two holed up their forces in an undisclosed walled city. While they were waiting, Agesilaus and Nectanebis were besieged by the army from Mendes, which was supposedly much larger than what was guarding the city. As the defending garrison watched the besieging army begin to dig a series of trenches around the city, the morale of the troops quickly started to fall. Yet, Agesilaus had a plan to keep his warriors in the right state of mind.

There is a story about this event in the Sayings of the Spartans, a collection of witty Spartan verbal jibes or actions, presumably collected by Plutarch (c. 50-120) while he was researching the kings of Sparta. The sayings are often considered to be more folklore than historical record, and Plutarch even left the following episode out of his final Life of Agesilaus. Nevertheless, the tale is an interesting piece of additional information, and also gives an example of the craftiness that Agesilaus was said to have wielded. So, as always with ancient stories, enjoy the tale, but treat its historical accuracy with caution.

According to the Sayings of the Spartans, when King Agesilaus and his mercenaries were besieged by the army from Mendes, the Spartan king ordered an animal sacrifice to be performed in order to determine the gods’ favor. He had a practitioner of heptoscopy (divination based on examining livers) extract the liver of the sacrificed animal. Before the organ was ever removed, the king had already ensured that it would be a favorable omen. According to the tale, Agesilaus preemptively inked the word “victory” in reverse on the inside of his hand. When the diviner passed the liver to the king, the ink from his hand transferred the to the liver, unmistakably stamping it with the victorious word. With his clever con complete, King Agesilaus II triumphantly showed his troops the miraculous sign of the gods’ support for their cause. With his army thus inspired, Agesilaus was able to break through the siege and defeat the army from Mendes.

If you would like to read a fuller account about the Egyptian civil war between the pharaoh, Nectanebis and the army from Mendes, click HERE.

If you are curious about more kinds of divination, read our article on the subject, HERE.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Illustration from the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us, by Charles Foster, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Agesilaus and Sayings of the Spartans), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.

The Ancient Spartan Attitude Toward “Cowards”

In the 6th century BCE, Sparta started to become noticeably more militant and frugal than their neighboring Greek cities. These changes were attributed to a semi-mythical man named Lycurgus, who lived anywhere from as early as the 9th century BCE up to the 6th century BCE, when the changes in Sparta became visible. Whatever the cause, Sparta’s culture changed dramatically, with Spartan citizens strategically banned from doing manual labor so that they could devote more time to training their bodies and minds for war. King Agesilaus II of Sparta (r. 400-360 BCE) was said to have explained the Spartan culture for war in an interesting way to his allies. During a meeting of his coalition forces, Agesilaus gathered the allied troops together and told them all to stand up if their profession was announced. After shouting many jobs—potters, smiths, carpenters, builders, laborers, etc…— the Spartans soldiers were the only warriors still sitting down, as soldiering was their sole profession.

With this attitude and mindset, cowardice was not tolerated in Sparta. They had such pride in their military might that they did not build a defensive wall around their city, and they allegedly bragged that none of their women had ever seen the smoke from an enemy campfire. They also teased other Greek cities about how few foreign dead were found near Sparta, for few could, or would, attack the Spartan homeland, whereas heroic Spartan dead were scattered throughout Greece. From the 6th century BCE until the early 4th century BCE, Sparta’s arrogant mindset was backed by spectacular military victories, which increased Spartan pride and created an illusion that the Spartans were unbeatable on the battlefield.

With such pride and devotion to war, the Spartans had little pity for the man who did not meet the high standard that was demanded of a Spartan warrior. Evaluation began as soon as a Spartan was born. According to the Greek-Roman historian Plutarch (c. 50-120 CE), Spartan newborns were brought to a meeting called a lesche, where the elders would determine the fate of the child. If healthy, Plutarch wrote that the child would be approved for upbringing and granted a portion of land. If the elders disliked what they saw, the newborn was allegedly condemned to abandonment at Apothetae, “the place of rejection,” located near Mount Taygetus. If infants were not spared for weakness, neither would grown adults be spared for cowardice. Sparta’s fluid definition for cowardice did not just describe a person who failed to face their fears, but also applied to soldiers who fought bravely in a battle but survived when the Spartan leadership and citizenry thought they should have died in a final last stand.

As long as Sparta kept alive its reputation as an undisputed infantry power, most Spartans could accept such a view on cowardice. After all, the Spartans thought themselves to be unbeatable on a pitched battlefield, so they presumably believed dramatic final stands would be the rare exception, not the norm. With such confidence in their armed forces, the Spartans thought that the only honorable way to fight was to win the battle or to literally die trying. That meant that if a lone Spartan warrior survived while his comrades died in battle, the rest of the Spartan community would call that survivor a coward.

Plutarch wrote of at least six ways that the so-called cowards were ostracized by the Spartan community:

1. They were disqualified from holding a Spartan office.
2. Women were discouraged from marrying a man who was labeled as a coward.
3. It was deemed disgraceful for a Spartan man to marry a close female relative of an accused coward.
4. Accused cowards were commanded to live in a shabby and unwashed state. 
5. Accused cowards supposedly were forced to maintain an odd physical appearance. This supposedly included a requirement to shave off half of their mustaches and to wear easily recognizable patchwork cloaks. 
6. Finally, Spartan citizens could apparently strike and beat accused cowards without fear of repercussion or reprimand. 

In the 4th century BCE, Epaminondas, a gifted military leader from Thebes, finally forced the Spartans to reevaluate their treatment of the so-called cowards. Epaminondas wrecked havoc in the Peloponnesus for several years, shattering Sparta’s carefully cultivated illusion of invincibility on land. The Thebans defeated a Spartan army at Tegyra (c. 375) and later won an even more significant battle against Spartan forces at Leuctra, in 371 BCE. Epaminondas followed that up by invading the Peloponnesus and besieging the city of Sparta, itself, not once, but at least twice in separate campaigns, the first in the winter of 370-369 BCE, and the second in 362 BCE. Facing so many defeats, countless Spartan warriors could have been classified under Sparta’s definition of cowardice. Therefore, to reassure his men and to avoid a mutiny, King Agesilaus II gave his defeated troops a pardon.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Statue of an Ancient Spartan, [Public Domain] via maxpixel.net).

Soiurces:

• On Sparta (Life of Agesilaus), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.

The Misdirections Of The Spartan King Agesilaus II Against The Persian Satrap, Tissaphernes

Agesilaus II was the Eurypontid monarch of Sparta who ruled from 400-360/359 BCE. In the first few years of his reign, world events pushed him into a confrontation with Tissaphernes, a Persian satrap with whom the Greeks had a long history.

Tissaphernes entered the historical record around 415 BCE, when he dismantled a rebellion by a troublesome Persian satrap named Pissuthnes. After the rebellious satrap was executed, Tissaphernes was appointed the new governor of eastern Anatolia, overseeing the regions of Lydia and Caria.

In his role as satrap of those regions, Tissaphernes aligned with Sparta around 413 BCE to push Athenian influence out of Anatolia. Persia, of course, kept the lands that the Athenians relinquished. Yet, the campaigns still tremendously helped Spartan interests in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE). Even though his alliance with Sparta helped Tissaphernes reclaim almost all of the Greek settlements in Anatolia, the satrap was worried about the dangers that a victorious Sparta could pose to Persia. Therefore, he strove to be the least effective ally he could be, often withholding troops, ships and information from his Spartan allies. This policy eventually drew the ire of the Persian King of Kings, Darius II (r. 423-404 BCE), who decided to give his full support to Sparta around 407 BCE.

Darius II eventually removed Tissaphernes from office and instead put his son, Cyrus the Younger, in charge of governing Lydia. Tissaphernes began to rise back to power after the death of Darius II in 404 BCE. The throne passed to Artaxerxes, the brother of Cyrus the Younger, and the siblings did not get along. By 401 BCE, Cyrus the Younger rebelled. Cyrus was killed in the battle of Cunaxa (401 BCE), and in the aftermath of the battle, Tissaphernes was reinstated as the satrap of Lydia and Caria.

Many of the Greek settlements in Anatolia had joined the rebellion of Cyrus the Younger, and they refused to rejoin the Persian Empire even after Cyrus’ death. This was the world that King Agesilaus II faced when he took the throne in 400 BCE.

Sparta sent multiple armies to aid the Greeks in Anatolia against the Persians. Two commanders, Thibron and Dercylidas, were fairly ineffective in their campaigns. Finally, King Agesilaus II decided to personally lead a larger force against Tissaphernes.

The Spartan king supposedly gathered his forces at Ephesus and attempted to resolve the situation with diplomacy. When negotiations failed, he readied his army to march. He announced openly that he planned to march against southern Anatolia, to raid the region of Caria. He even supposedly had supplies and markets set up southward along the planned route, so that his troops would be well provisioned as they moved. All this visual and verbal information eventually leaked back to Tissiphernes, who promptly moved his forces to defend the south.

Unfortunately for the Persian satrap, it had all been a trick. When Agesilaus II readied his men, he did not have them move south, but instead marched north and east, raiding into Lydia and Phrygia. As Tissaphernes had relocated his troops south, Agesilaus met very little resistance and his troops suffered few casualties.

In 395 BCE, Tissaphernes saw eerily similar signs coming from the Spartan army. He heard reports that King Agesilaus II was planning to move north against Lydia. Again, supply depots and markets were being preemptively organized by the Greeks; this time they were being placed along the roads leading toward the Lydian capital of Sardis. Remembering Agesilaus’ last raid, Tissaphernes positioned his troops in the opposite direction of the signs. Instead of defending Lydia, he moved his forces south to protect Caria.

Agesilaus II and the Spartan army, however, did exactly as they announced and marched toward the Lydian capital of Sardis. When Tissaphernes realized he had been tricked yet again, he frantically rushed his forces northward to intercept the Spartans. In his haste, the satrap failed to keep his forces together and he allegedly arrived on the fields of Sardis without any infantry. King Agesilaus II pounced on the tired and unbalanced army, inflicting an embarrassing defeat on Tissaphernes. The loss did not only harm Tissaphernes’ lands, but also irreparably tattered his own reputation. After the Battle of Sardis in 395 BCE, the Persian King of Kings, Artaxerxes, lost all confidence in Tissaphernes and had the unfortunate man executed within the year.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Attic Greek wine-mixing bowl, circa 450 B.C., [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Agesilaus), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tissaphernes 
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:entry=tissaphernes-bio-1 
• http://www.livius.org/articles/person/tissaphernes/ 
• http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/people_tissaphernes.html  

King Agesilaus II Of Sparta Commanded A Mercenary Company In Egypt When He Was 84 Years Old

King Agesilaus II had an interesting and paradoxical reign in ancient Sparta. He succeeded to the throne after the death of his brother, King Agis II, in 400 BCE. Agis had a son, named Leotychidas, but he was excluded from the kingship after questions were raised about the legitimacy of his birth. The crown then passed to Leotychidas’ uncle, Agesilaus, who ruled from 400 BCE to around 360 or 359 BCE, a reign of about forty-one years in total. He was a king of tremendous military skill who took the throne at the height of Sparta’s power, yet despite his battlefield prowess, his reign ended with the Spartan empire in tatters.

In the final year of his rule, King Agesilaus was said to have been eighty-four years old. By then, the façade of an unbeatable Sparta had been shattered—Epaminondas, a brilliant military leader from Thebes, defeated the Spartan army in a pitched battle at Leuctra (371 BCE), and laid siege to the wall-less city of Sparta at least two times, in 370 BCE and 362 BCE. Although Sparta survived both sieges and even killed Epaminondas in 362 BCE, their reputation as a state of invincible warriors had been irreparably damaged and the Spartans were even pushed out of their long-held territory of Messenia by Thebes.

Toward the end of his life, elderly King Agesilaus was still trying to reassert Sparta as a major regional power. Despite being in his eighties, he was still very active in the military and international politics. In 360 BCE, King Agesilaus accepted a military contract from Tachos, a Pharaoh of the 30th dynasty of Egypt. The frail Agesilaus personally gathered a band of Greek mercenaries and sailed with them across the Mediterranean to help Tachos in a war against Persia. When he arrived in Egypt, the locals found it hard to reconcile the shrunken old man that they saw before them with the stories of the famous Spartan king who was a veteran of countless battles. The Greek-Roman biographer, Plutarch (c. 46-119 CE), recreated the scene in his Parallel Lives:

“Agesilaus’ name and fame had aroused great interest and high expectations among Egyptians generally, and everyone thronged to catch a glimpse of him. When the sight proved to be nothing brilliant or elaborate, but a pathetic old man of slight build, wrapped in a coarse, shabby cloak, and lying on a patch of grass by the sea, they began to laugh and make fun of him, remarking that here was the perfect illustration of the saying about the mountain being in labour and then giving birth to a mouse” (Life of Agesilaus, chapter 36).

Tachos, too, was unimpressed by what he saw when he met with the Spartan king. The Pharaoh did not give the Spartan a significant position of command in his army, but only left him in charge of the mercenaries he had brought from Greece. In contrast to this, Tachos placed an Athenian named Chambrias in charge of the whole Egyptian fleet. Agesilaus absorbed the laughter and insults of the Egyptians and Tachos without flinching, but he did not forget their words and actions. Unfortunately for the Pharaoh, the Spartan king would soon prove that his military skills were very much still intact.

While Agesilaus II was serving in Egypt, Tachos’ cousin, Nectanebis (or Nectanebo II), launched a coup to usurp power in Egypt. After his cold welcome, Agesilaus had little sympathy for the reigning pharaoh, so he abandoned Tachos and sided with Nectanebis. Tachos eventually fled from Egypt, but before Nectanebis could seize control, an unnamed rival from Mendes raised his own force in an effort to take the Egyptian throne. Nectanebis allegedly had fewer troops than the new upstart, so he withdrew, in fear or by plan, to an unknown city with sturdy defenses. The rival to the throne quickly arrived and laid siege to the city, trapping Nectanebis and Agesilaus inside. The besiegers then began digging a deep trench in a circle around the city to further trap the defenders inside.

When the trench was nearly completed, Agesilaus revealed to Nectanebis that he had a plan. By this point, the trench had almost encircled the city, but there was still a small gap yet to be finished. Agesilaus explained that they could use the enemy’s trenches to their own advantage, using the gap as a bottleneck to swing the balance of power back into their favor. He convinced Nectanebis to move his troops to the gap in the trench once night fell and to attack the besieging forces stationed there. According to Plutarch, the numerically superior besiegers were blocked from doing any devastating flanking maneuvers by the trenches that they themselves had dug. Instead, the two opposing forces clashed, head to head, at the gap between the ends of the trenches. Nectanebis and Agesilaus’ Greek mercenaries quickly proved themselves as the better fighting force and caused their enemies to flee.

Under Agesilaus’ direction, the victorious troops left the gap and confronted the remaining besiegers. With a series of feints and repositioning, Agesilaus eventually cornered the enemy forces between two canals. There, the Spartan was able to fill the space between the channels with his Greek hoplite spearmen and slaughter the army of Nectanebis’ rival.

Not long after that battle, King Agesilaus II decided to return to Sparta. Nectanebis gave the Spartan 230 talents of silver in payment for his help in the war effort. The eighty-four-year-old Spartan King did not survive the journey home. He died in 360 or 359 BCE, while his ships were anchored in a region of Libya known as Menelaus’ Harbor.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Tondo from an Attic red cup, possibly Briseis and Phoenix (Louvre caption) or Hecamede and Nestor, ca. 490 BC. From Vulci. [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Agesilaus), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Epaminondas
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Plutarch 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tachos
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nectanebo-II
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Artaxerxes-III

King Archidamus II Was Fined By The Spartan Ephors Because They Thought His Wife Was Too Short

The Spartan king, Archidamus II, ruled from about 469-427 BCE and was the reigning Eurypontid monarch of Sparta at the start of the Peloponnesian War (c. 431-404 BCE). From the surviving ancient sources, Archidamus II was said to have married twice and each bride gave birth to a future king of Sparta.

According to the surviving ancient sources, Sparta had a cold and calculating view of children. The Greek-Roman historian, Plutarch (c. 50-120), to whom we owe much of our knowledge on Sparta, wrote that the ancient Spartans basically practiced a eugenics system. Based on his impressive library of texts and his access to now lost Spartan archives, Plutarch concluded that extramarital affairs were condoned, and sometimes even encouraged, if superior children were produced. In addition to this, Plutarch wrote that newborn Spartans were brought before elders in a grisly ceremony called the lesche, where the infants underwent judgment to determine if they were worthy of joining the Spartan community. If the judgment was unfavorable, the child would then allegedly be abandoned at Apothetae, “the place of rejection,” said to have been located near Mount Taygetus.

Spartan royalty, like all royal families, saw producing children as vital to their dynasty’s survival. With Sparta’s calculated view of children, the Spartan kings were not only expected to produce a great quantity of children; these princes and princesses also were expected to be of great quality, too. Therefore, the Spartan society and especially the ephors, an elected council that shared power with the kings, would sometimes scrutinize the royal marriages for potential genetic problems.

The first bride of King Archidamus II was a woman named Lampido. The ephors seemed to have no problem with the match, and Archidamus’ successor, King Agis II (r. 427-400 BCE), was born from their union. Later on, Archidamus II married again, this time to Eupolia. Whereas the ephors had no qualms with the king’s first marriage, they immediately voiced protest over the second. The issue was apparently that Eupolia was a short woman. Plutarch wrote down a quote about this incident that he attributed to the ephors, yet it is uncertain if the passage was copied from an archive or invented for literary effect. According to Plutarch, the ephors criticized Eupolia’s short stature and argued that “She will bear us kinglets instead of kings” (Plutarch, Life of Agesilaus, ch. 2). When Archidamus persisted in the marriage, the ephors decided to let it slide, and settled with imposing a fine on the king. After all, the ephors could rest assured that Agis was the heir and any son of Eupolia would likely not become king.

The ephors must have grumbled to themselves when Eupolia gave birth to her son, Agesilaus, around 445 BCE. According to Plutarch’s sources, Agesilaus was short like his mother and also had a slightly lame leg. He was raised like any other Spartan grunt, taught to be an obedient soldier. Yet, despite his short size and his malformed leg, Agesilaus showed great military skill and won over influential friends to his cause. After the death of King Agis II in 400 BCE, Agesilaus’ friends accused the heir to the throne, Leotychidas (son of Agis II), with the charge of not being fathered by the late king. With Leotychidas discredited, the crown passed to the man who was never meant to be king—Agesilaus II (r. 400-360 BCE).

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Photo of the decoration on an Attic red-figure vase depicting Eurynome, Himeros, Hippodamia, Eros, Iaso, and Asteria. [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Lycurgus), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.

The Bare Charge Of The Spartan Warrior, Isadas

Around 362 BCE, the Spartan king, Agesilaus II (r. 400-360 BCE) left Sparta with an army intended to help the Mantineans rebel against Thebes. When the Theban military leader, Epaminondas, heard of the approaching army, he decided that Sparta needed to be dealt with before he could focus on subduing Mantinea. Therefore, he evaded King Agesilaus and began marching his Theban forces against the undefended city of Sparta.

Before the 4th century BCE, nobody would have dared to march against the Spartan homeland. The Spartans were so sure of their military might that they never built a wall around their city and they proudly bragged that no woman in Sparta had ever seen smoke from an enemy campfire. Yet, Epaminondas had shattered this arrogance. He had defeated a Spartan army in a pitched battle at Leuctra, in 371 BCE, and followed that up by besieging the city of Sparta in the winter of 370 and early 369 BCE. During that siege, king Agesilaus kept a strictly defensive strategy, and, for unknown reasons, Epaminondas eventually called off the siege and withdrew.

So, when Epaminondas marched into the Peloponnesus in 362 BCE, it was nothing new to him or to Sparta. Thankfully for the Spartans, King Agesilaus discovered Epaminondas’ plan and was able to return to Sparta before the forces from Thebes besieged the city. Although Agesilaus had chosen a defensive strategy in the earlier siege of 370 BCE, his reaction to the 362 BCE siege was vastly different. This time, the aging king (reportedly eighty-two years old) had the Spartans repel the Thebans by overwhelming force.

The Greek-Roman historian, Plutarch (c. 50-120 CE), described the siege in his biography of King Agesilaus II, included in his Parallel Lives. He wrote that the Spartan forces faced the Thebans in the narrow streets of the city. King Agesilaus micromanaged his troops with skillful coordination, attacking where the besiegers were thin and sending reinforcements to where his own soldiers faced pressure. Plutarch wrote that many Spartans showed heroism during the battle to end the siege, but that a young man named Isadas was the hero that stood out above the rest.

At the time of the siege, Isadas was in his teens or early twenties. Or, as Plutarch put it, “Handsome in appearance and tall in stature, he was at the age when the human physique reaches perfection as boyhood merges into manhood” (Life of Agesilaus, chapter 34). When the Spartans began to counter-attack, this ideal Spartan youth apparently burst out of his home completely in the nude and charged at the enemy with nothing but a spear in one hand and a sword in the other. Equipped in this manner, the naked warrior ran past his startled comrades and plunged straight into the shocked enemy lines. According to the tale, he struck down countless foes while not even suffering a scratch during his frenzied fight. The Thebans were apparently convinced that the nude warrior was protected from harm by the gods and granted superhuman strength. Against such staunch defenders, Epaminondas once again abandoned his siege of Sparta and withdrew his forces.

Plutarch wrote that the government of Sparta recognized Isadas’ valor after the battle. The youth was given an honorary crown by the Ephors of the city, a governing council that shared power with the Spartan kings. Yet, they also wanted to use the occasion as a teaching point—in addition to the crown, they fined Isadas 1,000 drachmas as punishment for the idiocy of charging into battle without armor.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Ancient Greek running warrior by a Colmar Painter (–520–445 BCE), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Agesilaus), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.

Cynisca, The First Woman In Greece to Win An Olympic Chariot Race

Cynisca was the sister of Agesilaus II, a king of Sparta from about 400 to 360 BCE. Agesilaus was known to help his friends, even if it required corrupt action, so when his sister, Cynisca, became passionate about horse breeding and chariot racing, the king gave her patronage and support.

Driven by her ambition and backed by her family’s wealth, the Spartan princess created one of the most talented horse breeding and training programs in 4th-century Greece. Her chariot teams won glory in the Olympic Games of 396 and 392 BCE, making her the first woman in recorded Greek history to own a victorious Olympic chariot team. The historians, Plutarch (c. 50-120 CE) and Pausanias (143-176 CE), both wrote of her successes. Plutarch’s account presented her only as the trainer and owner of the chariot teams, with no role in the physical operation of the vehicles. Pausanias was more vague in his wording, with a general statement that she won victories at the Olympics. Yet, he, too, did not explicitly credit her with the act of driving the chariot during the race. Nevertheless, she was honored with a statue and a stone inscription at Olympia for her accomplishments. The inscribed stone base still survives today and is on display at the Museum of the Olympic Games in Olympia, Greece.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (The Chariot Race in the Circus Maximus, by Alfredo Tominz (1854–1936), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• On Sparta (Life of Agesilaus), by Plutarch excerpted from his Parallel Lives, translated by Richard J. A. Talbert. New York: Penguin Classics, 2005.
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Paus.%203.8.1&lang=original 
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Paus.%203.8.1&lang=original 
• http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/world-changing-women-cynisca 
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/cynisca-fl-396-392-bce 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pausanias-Greek-geographer 
• https://www.britannica.com/biography/Plutarch