 To take another example, by the mid-third century BC, the Spartiate citizen population had decreased to a tiny fraction of what it had been at the time of the Persian Wars (Cleomenes' army could only field about 5,000 men).The inchoate reforms of Agis IV in the 240s BC had failed after a reaction by those opposed to the reforms.The problem of the lack of man-at-arms was then taken up by Cleomenes III of Sparta, who attempted to address it by his radical reforms.