LYSANDER was the leading spirit of Lacedaemonian policy at the end of the Peloponnesian War. He is said byAelian and Athenaeus to have been of servile origin, and by Plutarch to have belonged to a Heraclid family. His father was named Aristoclitus or Aristocritus. He first appears in history when sent to command the fleet on the Ionian coast in 407 b.c. The story of his skilful diplomacy, of his influence with Cyrus the younger, of his naval victory at Notium, of his quarrel with his successor Callicratidas in 406, of his reappointment in 405, of the decisive victory at Aegospotami, and of the capitulation of Athens in 404, belongs to the history of Greece. After his return to Sparta his pride and vanity became boundless; he was celebrated by poets, and even worshipped in some places as a god. The restraint of life in Sparta, and the enemies whom he had there, were irksome to him, and he soon went to Asia Minor. He had established in all the Greek cities associations which maintained an oligarchical government, and his power over them was so great as to increase the jealousy felt for him at home. He was recalled to Sparta, and the machinations of the Persian satrap Pharnabazus brought him into danger. He had soon after the triumph of being sent with an army to support the oligarchy in Athens; but the king (Pausanias) was sent after him with a second army, and made terms with the restored Athenian democracy. When King Agis died in 398, Lysander worked to secure the succession for Agesilaus, but after two years he found that he had helped his most dangerous enemy. He began to concert revolutionary schemes, but had not proceeded to any overt act when he was sent with an army into Boeotia. He did not wait the arrival of Pausanias with an auxiliary army, but attacked ...