The only one to medise? Notes on the career of King Demaratus of Sparta

The only way to grasp intra-elite strife at Sparta is to focus on the two royal families of the Agiads and Eurypontids. The continuing rivalry that marked their relationship was inevitably reflected in the attitudes of the two kings and their factions towards the Persians. In 491 BCE, while the Agiad king Cleomenes appears to have taken a consistently anti-Persian stance, his Eurypontid colleague, Demaratus, came to adopt a different, ‘medising’, attitude. In particular, through an unorthodox translation of Herodotus 6.70.3, this paper suggests that Demaratus was not, in Herodotus’ words, the only Spartan king to achieve a chariot-race victory at the Olympic games – as the passage is generally interpreted – but the only one to flee to Persia, namely to medise. It is also argued that Demaratus’ choice can be explained most easily if we admit that he had already entertained relations with the Persians and that there were groups at Sparta that did not disapprove of his philo-Persian attitude.