Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/133

Rh L Y S L Y S 117 at those spaces being destitute of barbules. The middle pair of feathers (fig. 2, a, b) is nearly as abnormal. These have no outer web, and the inner web very narrow ; near their base they cross each other, and then diverge, bending round forwards near their tip. The remaining twelve feathers (fig. 3) except near the base are very thinly fur nished with barbs, about a quarter of an inch apart, and those they possess, on their greater part, though long and flowing, bear no barbules, and hence have a hair-like appearance. The shafts of all are exceedingly strong. In the male of M. alberti the tail is not only not lyriform, but the exterior rectrices are shorter than the rest. (A. N.) LYSANDER was the leading spirit of Lacedaemonian policy at the end of the Peloponnesian War. He is said by^Elian and Athenseus 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 ^gospotami, 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 govern ment, 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 re stored 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 Haliartus, and was slain in the battle, 395 B.C. He was buried on the road from Delphi to Chasronca, and a monument was erected on his tomb. It is to his credit that, after the power and opportunities he had enjoyed, he died a poor man. LYSIAS, whose name follows those of Antiphon and Andocides on the list of the ten Attic orators, marks an important stage in the development of Greek literary prose, and is, in his own province, one of its most perfect masters. He never acquired the Athenian citizenship, but most of his years were passed at Athens ; and his life has the interest of close personal association with the most criti cal period in the history of the Athenian democracy. Date of His extant work belongs to the space from 403 to 380 jirth. B c&amp;gt;&amp;gt; b u t the date of his birth is uncertain. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and the author of the life ascribed to Plutarch, give 459 B.C. This date was evidently obtained by reckoning back from the foundation of Thurii (444 B.C.), since there was a tradition that Lysias had gone thither at the age of fifteen. Modern critics would place his birth later, between 444 and 436 B.C., because, in Plato s Republic, of which the scene is laid about 430 B.C., Cephalus, the father of Lysias, is among the dramatis persona, and the emigration of Lysias to Thurii was said to have followed his father s death. The latter statement, however, rests only on the Plutarchic life ; nor can Plato s dialogue be safely urged as a minutely accurate authority for a biographical detail. We must be content to say that, while the modern view avoids some difficulties, the higher date assigned by the ancient writers is not inconsistent with any ascertained fact, while it agrees better with the tradition that Lysias reached, or passed, the age of eighty. On the other view, all traces of his industry, previously un remitting, would cease abruptly at the age of sixty-six. Cephalus, the father of Lysias, was a native of. Syracuse. Life to On the invitation of Pericles he had settled at Athens as 413 B.C. a &quot; resident alien &quot; (/x-eVot/cos). The opening scene of Plato s Republic is laid at the house of his eldest son, Polemarchus, in the Peirseus. Cephalus complains that the visits of Socrates have been rare of late, and expresses the hope that he will come oftener, and without ceremony, as to intimate friends. The tone of the picture warrants the inference that the Sicilian family were well known to Plato, and that their houses must often have been hospitable to such gatherings as the Republic supposes. Thus we have an indirect, but very interesting, confirmation of the phrase used by Dionysius in regard to Lysias &quot; he grew up in the society of the most distinguished Athenians.&quot; At the age of fifteen when Cephalus, according to the Plutarchic life, was now dead Lysias removed from Athens to Thurii, the Athenian colony newly planted on the Tarentine Gulf, near the site of the ancient Sybaris. There the boy may have seen the historian Herodotus, another of Thurii s early residents, now a man in middle life ; and it pleases the imagination to think that, in their new Italian home, a friendship may have grown up between these two, neither of them an Athenian by birth, yet alike in a simple grace which Athens loved, and alike also in the love which they bore to Athens. At Thurii Lysias is said to have commenced his studies in rhetoric, doubtless under a master of the Sicilian school, possibly, as tradition said, under Tisias, the pupil of Corax, whose name is associated with the first attempt to formulate rhetoric as an art. In 413 B.C. the Athenian armament in Sicily suffered that crushing disaster which at the moment seemed to imperil the existence of Athens itself. The desire to link famous names is curiously illustrated by the ancient ascription to Lysias of a rhetorical exercise purporting to be a speech in which the captive general Nicias appealed for mercy to the Sicilians. The terrible blow to Athens quickened the energies of an anti-Athenian faction at Thurii. Lysias and his elder brother Polemarchus, with three hundred other persons, were &quot; accused of Atticizing &quot; ( ArTi/aoyxw ey/cAr^eion), a charge which, under th-3 circumstances, implies an honourable loyalty. They were driven from Thurii. Lysias and Polemarchus now settled at Athens (412 B.C.). 412- 404. They were rich men, having inherited property from their father, Cephalus ; and Lysias claims that, though merely resident aliens, they discharged public services with a liber ality which shamed many of those who enjoyed the franchise (oi*Y OyUOtO)? /JLCTOlKOVVTaS GJCTTTCp ailTOi 7TO X ITfVO VTO, In JZratosth., 20). The fact that they owned house property shows that they were classed as lo-oreAets, i.e., foreigners who paid only the same tax as citizens, being exempt from the special tax (/ACTO/KIOV) on resident aliens. Polemarchus occupied a house in Athens itself, Lysias another in the Peiraeus, near which was their shield manu factory, employing a hundred and twenty skilled slaves. This life of comparative peace and prosperity was broken up by the defeat of Athens at /Egospotami (405 B.C.). In the next spring Athens surrendered to Lysander. The Thirty Tyrants were established at Athens under the protec tion of a Spartan garrison. One of their earliest measures was an attack upon the resident aliens, who were represented as disaffected to the new government. As foreign residents