Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
in a manner, for himself supremacy over the whole of Greece. Neither
did he make choice of rulers by birth or by wealth, but bestowed the
offices on his own friends and partisans, doing everything to please
them, and putting absolute power of reward and punishment into their
hands. And thus, personally appearing on many occasions of bloodshed
and massacre, and aiding his friends to expel their opponents, he did
not give the Greeks a favorable specimen of the Lacedaemonian
government; and the expression of Theopompus, the comic poet, seemed
but poor, when he compared the Lacedaemonians to tavern women,
because when the Greeks had first tasted the sweet wine of liberty,
they then poured vinegar into the cup; for from the very first it had
a rough and bitter taste, all government by the people being
suppressed by Lysander, and the boldest and least scrupulous of the
oligarchical party selected to rule the cities.
Having spent some little time about these things, and sent some
before to Lacedaemon to tell them he was arriving with two hundred
ships, he united his forces in Attica with those of the two kings
Agis and Pausanias, hoping to take the city without delay. But when
the Athenians defended themselves, he with his fleet passed again to
Asia, and in like manner destroyed the forms of government in all the
other cities, and placed them under the rule of ten chief persons,
many in every one being killed, and many driven into exile; and in
Samos, he expelled the whole people, and gave their cities to the
exiles whom he brought back. And the Athenians still possessing
Sestos, he took it from them, and suffered not the Sestians
themselves to dwell in it, but gave the city and country to be
divided out among the pilots and masters of the ships under him;
which was his first act that was disallowed by the Lacedaemonians,
who brought the Sestians back again into their country. All Greece,
however, rejoiced to see the Aeginetans, by Lysander's aid, now
again, after a long time, receiving back their cities, and the
Melians and Scionaeans restored, while the Athenians were driven out,
and delivered up the cities.
But when he now understood they were in a bad case in the city
because of the famine, he sailed to Piraeus, and reduced the city,
which was compelled to surrender on what conditions he demanded. One
hears it said by Lacedaemonians that Lysander wrote to the Ephors
thus: "Athens is taken;" and that these magistrates wrote back to
Lysander, "Taken is enough." But this saying was invented for its
neatness' sake; for the true decree of the magistrates was on this
manner: "The government of the Lacedaemonians has made these orders;
pull down the Piraeus and the long walls; quit all the towns, and
keep to your own land; if you do these things, you shall have peace,
if you wish it, restoring also your exiles. As concerning the number
of the ships, whatsoever there be judged necessary to appoint, that
do." This scroll of conditions the Athenians accepted, Theramenes,
son of Hagnon, supporting it. At which time, too, they say that when
Cleomenes, one of the young orators, asked him how he durst act and
speak contrary to Themistocles, delivering up the walls to the
Lacedaemonians, which he had built against the will of the
Lacedaemonians, he said, "O young man, I do nothing contrary to
Themistocles; for he raised these walls for the safety of the
citizens, and we pull them down for their safety; and if walls make a
city happy, then Sparta must be the most wretched of all, as it has
none."
Lysander, as soon as he had taken all the ships except twelve, and
the walls of the Athenians, on the sixteenth day of the month
Munychion, the same on which they had overcome the barbarians at
Salamis, then proceeded to take measures for altering the government.
But the Athenians taking that very unwillingly, and resisting, he
sent to the people and informed them, that he found that the city had
broken the terms, for the walls were standing when the days were past
within which they should have been pulled down. He should,
therefore, consider their case anew, they having broken their first
articles. And some state, in fact, the proposal was made in the
congress of the allies, that the Athenians should all be sold as
slaves; on which occasion, Erianthus, the Theban, gave his vote to
pull down the city, and turn the country into sheep-pasture; yet
afterwards, when there was a meeting of the captains together, a man
of Phocis, singing the first chorus in Euripides's Electra, which
begins,
Electra, Agamemnon's child, I come
Unto thy desert home,
they were all melted with compassion, and it seemed to be a cruel
deed to destroy and pull down a city which had been so famous, and
produced such men.
Accordingly Lysander, the Athenians yielding up everything, sent for
a number of flute-women out of the city, and collected together all
that were in the camp, and pulled down the walls, and burnt the ships
to the sound of the flute, the allies being crowned with garlands,
and making merry together, as counting that day the beginning of
their liberty. He proceeded also at once to alter the government,
placing thirty rulers in the city, and ten in the Piraeus: he put,
also, a garrison into the Acropolis, and made Callibius, a Spartan,
the governor of it; who afterwards taking up his staff to strike
Autolycus, the athlete, about whom Xenophon wrote his "Banquet," on
his tripping up his heels and throwing him to the ground, Lysander
was not vexed at it, but chid Callibius, telling him he did not know
how to govern freemen. The thirty rulers, however, to gain
Callibius's favor, a little after killed Autolycus.
Lysander, after this, sails out to Thrace, and what remained of the
public money, and the gifts and crowns which he had himself received,
numbers of people, as might be expected, being anxious to make
presents to a man of such great power, who was, in a manner, the lord
of Greece, he sends to Lacedaemon by Gylippus, who had commanded
formerly in Sicily. But he, it is reported, unsewed the sacks at the
bottom, took a considerable amount of silver out of every one of
them, and sewed them up again, not knowing there was a writing in
every one stating how much there was. And coming into Sparta, what
he had thus stolen away he hid under the tiles of his house, and
delivered up the sacks to the magistrates, and showed the seals were
upon them. But afterwards, on their opening the sacks and counting
it, the quantity of the silver differed from what the writing
expressed; and the matter causing some perplexity to the magistrates,
Gylippus's servant tells them in a riddle, that under the tiles lay
many owls; for, as it seems, the greatest part of the money then
current, bore the Athenian stamp of the owl. Gylippus having
committed so foul and base a deed, after such great and distinguished
exploits before, removed himself from Lacedaemon.
But the wisest of the Spartans, very much on account of this
occurrence, dreading the influence of money, as being what had
corrupted the greatest citizens, exclaimed against Lysander's
conduct, and declared to the Ephors, that all the silver and gold
should be sent away, as mere "alien mischiefs." These consulted
about it; and Theopompus says, it was Sciraphidas, but Ephorus, that
it was Phlogidas, who declared they ought not to receive any gold or
silver into the city; but to use their own country coin which was
iron, and was first of all dipped in vinegar when it was red hot,
that it might not be worked up anew, but because of the dipping might
be hard and unpliable. It was also, of course, very heavy and
troublesome to carry, and a great deal of it in quantity and
weight was but a little in value. And perhaps all the old money was
so, coin consisting of iron, or in some countries, copper skewers,
whence it comes that we still find a great number of small pieces of
money retain the name of obolus, and the drachma is six of these,
because so much may be grasped in one's hand. But Lysander's friends
being against it, and endeavoring to keep the money in the city, it
was resolved to bring in this sort of money to be used publicly,
enacting, at the same time, that if anyone was found in possession
of any privately, he should be put to death, as if Lycurgus had
feared the coin, and not the covetousness resulting from it, which
they did not repress by letting no private man keep any, so much as
they encouraged it, by allowing the state to possess it; attaching
thereby a sort of dignity to it, over and above its ordinary utility.
Neither was it possible, that what they saw was so much esteemed
publicly, they should privately despise as unprofitable; and that
everyone should think that thing could be nothing worth for his own
personal use, which was so extremely valued and desired for the use
of the state. And moral habits, induced by public practices, are far
quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the
failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at
large. For it is probable that the parts will be rather corrupted by
the whole if that grows bad; while the vices which flow from a part
into the whole, find many correctives and remedies from that which
remains sound. Terror and the law were now to keep guard over the
citizens' houses, to prevent any money entering into them; but their
minds could no longer be expected to remain superior to the desire of
it, when wealth in general was thus set up to be striven after, as a
high and noble object. On this point, however, we have given our
censure of the Lacedaemonians in one of our other writings.
Lysander erected out of the spoils brazen statues at Delphi of
himself, and of every one of the masters of the ships, as also
figures of the golden stars of Castor and Pollux, which vanished
before the battle at Leuctra. In the treasury of Brasidas and the
Acanthians, there was a trireme made of gold and ivory, of two
cubits, which Cyrus sent Lysander in honor of his victory. But
Alexandrides of Delphi writes in his history, that there was also a
deposit of Lysander's, a talent of silver, and fifty-two minas,
besides eleven staters; a statement not consistent with the generally
received account of his poverty. And at that time, Lysander, being
in fact of greater power than any Greek before, was yet thought to
show a pride, and to affect a superiority greater even than his power
warranted. He was the first, as Duris says in his history, among the
Greeks, to whom the cities reared altars as to a god, and sacrificed;
to him were songs of triumph first sung, the beginning of one of
which still remains recorded: --
Great Greece's general from spacious Sparta we
Will celebrate with songs of victory.
And the Samians decreed that their solemnities of Juno should be
called the Lysandria; and out of the poets he had Choerilus always
with him, to extol his achievements in verse; and to Antilochus, who
had made some verses in his commendation, being pleased with them, he
gave a hat full of silver; and when Antimachus of Colophon, and one
Niceratus of Heraclea, competed with each other in a poem on the
deeds of Lysander, he gave the garland to Niceratus; at which
Antimachus, in vexation, suppressed his poem; but Plato, being then a
young man, and admiring Antimachus for his poetry, consoled him for
his defeat by telling him that it is the ignorant who are the
sufferers by ignorance, as truly as the blind by want of sight.
Afterwards, when Aristonus, the musician, who had been a conqueror
six times at the Pythian games, told him as a piece of flattery, that
if he were successful again, he would proclaim himself in the name of
Lysander, "that is," he answered, "as his slave?"