Eurypontids

The Eurypontids were one of the two royal houses of ancient Sparta, the other being the Agiads. The Eurypontid line was traditionally regarded as descended from Eurypontus, a legendary Spartan king; the Agiads traced their line to Agis. Together, the two houses supplied a king from each line, who ruled jointly as co-kings.

In the Spartan constitution, the kings presided over major religious rites and commanded the army in war, but their political authority was checked by other institutions. The Gerousia, or council of elders (including the two kings), prepared proposals for the Apella; the Apella, a citizen assembly, approved or rejected laws and policies. The Ephors, a group of five elected magistrates, exercised broad supervision over the kings and could limit royal power. This system preserved an oligarchic balance in which the dual monarchy operated alongside elected and hereditary bodies.

Historically, the Eurypontids participated in the major military and political episodes of classical Sparta, though the Agiad line often held comparable influence. The dual kingship endured through much of Sparta’s classic and Hellenistic periods, but the monarchy’s political weight waned under shifting regional dynamics and later Roman domination.

Scholars rely on sources such as Herodotus, Pausanias, and Plutarch for the traditions surrounding the Eurypontids, though early genealogies combine legend with historic memory. The lineage is typically treated as essential to understanding Spartan aristocratic ideology and the distinctive dual-monarchical system that characterized much of the city’s history.