Wikipedia
In Greek mythology, Eurysthenes (, "widely ruling") was one of the Heracleidae, a great-great-great-grandson of Heracles, and a son of Aristodemus and Argia. His twin was Procles. Together they received the land of Lacedaemon after Cresphontes, Temenus and Aristodemus defeated Tisamenus, the last Achaean king of the Peloponnesus. 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.
The title of archēgetēs, "founding magistrate," was explicitly denied to Eurysthenes and Procles by the later Spartan government on the grounds that they were not founders of a state, but were maintained in their offices by parties of foreigners. Instead the honor was granted to their son and grandson, for which reason the two lines were called the Agiads and the Eurypontids.
Eurysthenes was a descendant of the Spartan king Demaratus.
After his deposition in 491 BC Demaratus had fled to Persia, where king Darius I made him ruler of the cities of Pergamon, Teuthrania and Halisarna. About hundred years later Eurysthenes and his brother Procles reigned over the same cities; their joint rule is at least attested for the year 399 BC.
Eurysthenes may refer to:
- Eurysthenes, a Heraclid, one of the two first kings of Sparta, father of the founder of the Agiad line
- Eurysthenes, one of the sons of Aegyptus killed by his wife, one of the Danaids
- Eurysthenes (Pergamon), a descendant of the deposed Spartan king, Demaratus
- Adhemarius eurysthenes, a species of moth