Free The Queen of Sparta by T. S. Chaudhry

Cleomenes saw the rising power of Persia as a threat to Sparta’s existent and he did not want Athens to become its beach-head in Greece. He had arrived in Athens confident that his intervention would have support from the Athenian opposition, if not the Athenian people themselves. In reality, it did not. Nor for that matter did he have any support from Sparta for this Athenian adventure of his. The Gerousia refused to authorize a campaign to overthrow an Athenian government that had thus far done nothing hostile to Sparta. But Gorgo’s father went in any case, taking with him a small band of armed men, mostly his faithful Helots along with some non-Spartan mercenaries whose wages he paid himself.
    The regime was easily overthrown and its leaders expelled. Cleomenes set himself and his followers up on the Acropolis as he went about reconstituting a new government for Athens. The Acropolis was located at the highest point in Athens and it was the home of the sacred complex of the temple of Athena Parthenos, where all the city’s sacred and public business was conducted. The Spartan King invited the citizens of Athens to witness the inauguration of its new leaders. And thus the Athenian people came, and in large numbers, but not in the way Gorgo’s father had expected. He had grievously miscalculated.
    Angered that a Spartan king would try to impose his will on Athens, the Athenians rose up against Cleomenes and stormed the Acropolis, forcing him and his followers to take refuge in the Temple of Athena. Refused entry by the priestess because he was not of Achaean blood, he told her that all his followers whether Helots or mercenaries were, in fact, of Achaean descent, thus securing their entry into the Temple. Cleomenes then secured his own admittance by confusing history itself and blurring the difference between Dorian and Achaean Greeks.
    So, for several days, Cleomenes and his followers remained besieged in the Temple on the Acropolis while an angry crowd frothed outside. Finally, in flagrant violation of their own laws regarding the sanctity of the holiest shrine of their city, the Athenian crowd stormed the Temple complex. The Spartan King, already exhausted and starving, was brought out and put in chains. However, as he was presented before them in this piteous state, the mob threw down their weapons and clubs, remembering him as the man who had earlier rid Athens of tyranny. The people of Athens hastily called to session what was to be their very first Democratic Assembly to try my father and his followers. Though the Assembly pardoned him and allowed him to return home in safety along with his Helots, all his non-Spartan followers, including sons of the noblest families of Greece, were executed as a warning against future attempts of this kind. But this did not deter Cleomenes. Upon his return to Sparta, he continued to hound the Athenians until they finally agreed to abrogate the treaty of submission they had concluded with Persia and ally with Sparta.
    And that was the crux of it. Half a century earlier, the Persian Empire had appeared on the eastern shores of the Aegean, replacing the Kingdom of Lydia as the overlord of many Greek colonies in Asia. Cleomenes knew that it was only a matter of time before the Persians would cast their gaze across the sea and try to conquer the whole of Greece. Of all the Greek rulers, only Cleomenes had the foresight to see this, and he took action accordingly. All of his interventions throughout Greece were aimed at limiting Persian influence – knowing that Persia’s best option would be to try to divide and rule the Greeks. In his view, the best way to defend Greece was for Sparta to establish a web of alliances so that some of the important Greek states stood together alongside Sparta. So he focused on those who had a common distrust, if not hatred, of Persia. ‘The enemy of my enemy,’ he told the Gerousia, ‘will always be my best ally.’
    Cleomenes also wanted to