Areus
Areus a king of the Lacedaemonians, whose letter to the high-priest Onias is given in 1 Maccabees 12:20 sq. He is so called in the A. V. in ver. 20 and in the margin of ver. 7; but Oniares in ver. 19, and so in the Greek text
Ο᾿νιάρης (v. r. Ο᾿νιάρις, Ο᾿νειάρης) in ver. 20, and Darivs (Δαρεῖος) in ver. 7: there can be little doubt, however, that these are corruptions of Α᾿ρεύς. In Josephus (Ant. 12:4, 10) the name is written (Α᾿ρεῖος) as in the Vulgate Arsus. There were two Spartan kings of the name of Areus, of whom the first reigned B.C. 309 265, and the second, the grandson of the former, died when a child of eight years old in B.C. 257. There were three high-priests of the name of Onias, of whom the first held the office B.C. 323300. This is the one who must have written the letter to Areus I, probably in some interval between 309 and 300 (Grimm, Zu Maacc. p. 185). See ONIAS. This Areus was foremost in the league of the Greek states against Anti, onus Gonatus (B.C. 280), and when Pyrrhus attacked Sparta (B.C. 272) he repelled him by an alliance with the Arcives. He fell in battle against the Macedonians at Corinth (Smith's Diet. of Class. Biog. s.v.).
