Event
Conspiracy of Cinadon
The conspiracy of Cinadon was an attempted coup d'état in Sparta in 399 BCE, early in the reign of King Agesilaus II. Its leader, Cinadon, was a member of the king's bodyguard but not one of the homoioi, the full citizens, and he drew helots, neodamodes, hypomeiones and perioeci into a plot to break the power of the Spartan elite. The informer who betrayed it to the ephors said that Cinadon had counted only 40 full citizens among some 4,000 people in the agora. The ephors sent Cinadon to Aulon in Messenia on a pretext, had him questioned there and arrested his accomplices; he was whipped through the city and possibly executed. The main source is Xenophon's Hellenica.
See also
Cite this entry
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Conspiracy of Cinadon. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/conspiracy-of-cinadon
- MLA
- “Conspiracy of Cinadon.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/conspiracy-of-cinadon. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Conspiracy of Cinadon.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/conspiracy-of-cinadon.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Conspiracy of Cinadon’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/conspiracy-of-cinadon (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻