Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/258

 236 HISTORY OF GREECE. for which king Archidamus takes credit, at the beginning of th Peloponnesian war, is found exchanged, at the cla;e of the war, for a spirit of aggression and conquest, for ambition public as well as private, and for emancipation of the great men from the sub- duing 1 equality of the discipline enacted by Lykurgus. Agis the son of Archidamus (426-399 B. c.), and Pausaniag eon of Pleistoanax(408-394 B. c.), were the two kings of Sparta at the end of the war. But Lysander, the admiral or commander of the fleet, was for the time 2 greater than either of the two kings, who had the right of commanding only the troops on land. I have already mentioned how his overweening dictation and insolence offended not only Pausanias, but also several of the ephors and leading men at Sparta, as well as Pharnabazus the Persian satrap ; thus indirectly bringing about the emancipation of Athens from the Thirty, the partial discouragement of the dekarchies throughout Greece, and the recall of Lysander himself from his command. It was not without reluctance that the conqueror of Athens submitted to descend again to a private station. Amidst the crowd of flatterers who heaped incense on him at the moment of his omnipotence, there were not wanting those who suggested that he was much more worthy to reign than either Agis or Pau- sanias ; that the kings ought to be taken, not from the first- born of the lineage of Eurysthenes and Prokles, but by selection out of all the Herakleids, of whom Lysander himself was one ; 3 6a^aai(tf3poTov (Simonides ap. Plutarch. Agesilaum, c. 1). 8 See an expression of Aristotle (Polit. ii, 6, 22) about the function of admiral among the Lacedaemonians, iiri -yap role Paathevaiv, overt orparj?- yolc uiSioif, i] vavap%i.a o^edov krepa fiaaiTiEia KatieffTTj/ce. This reflection, which Aristotle intimates that he has borrowed from some one else, though without saying from whom, must in all probability have been founded upon the case of Lysander ; for never after Lysander, was there any Lacedcemonian admiral enjoying a power which could by possibility be termed exorbitant or dangerous. "We know that during the later years of the Peloponnesian war, much censure was cast upon the Lace- dsemanian practice of annually changing the admiral (Xen. Hellen. i, 6, 4). The Lacedaemonians seem to have been impressed with these criticisms, for in the year 395 B. c. (the year before the battle of Knidus) they conferred upon King Agesilaus, who was then commanding the land army in Asia Minor, the command of the fleet also in order to secure unity of opera- tions. This had never been done before (Xen. Hellen. iii, 4, 28).
 * Plnturch, Lysand. c. 24. Perhaps he may have been simply a member