Sparta, whose stated policy is to oppose…

Sparta, whose stated policy is to oppose and overthrow the tyrannies, draws on its enhanced prestige and popularity in the Peloponnese to take its antipathy to tyranny a stage further.

A papyrus fragment of what looks like a lost history supports Plutarch's statement that Sparta systematically deposed tyrants elsewhere in Greece: the tyrannies in Sicyon, Naxos, and perhaps even the Cypselid at Corinth (though this may be a confusion for a similarly named community called Cerinthus on Euboea).

The most famous deposition is Sparta's forcible ending of the tyranny at Athens.

Perhaps there is genuine ideological dislike of tyranny; or, Sparta may have been worried about the ambitions of Argos, with which certain tyrants, like the Athenian, had close connections.

Or it may have long-sightedly detected sympathy on the part of certain tyrants toward the growing power of Persia: it is true that Sparta made some kind of diplomatic arrangement with the threatened Lydian power of the Anatolian ruler Croesus not long before his defeat by Persia in 546.

If suspicion of Persia is behind the deposition of the tyrants, Sparta is inconsistent in carrying out its anti-Persian policy; it does not help Croesus in his final showdown with Persia.