Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/321

 CHARACTER OF LYSANDER. 299 wherein it has been made good ; but even if we grant it to be valid against Athens and her democracy, the fate of Pausanias will show us that the ephors and senate of anti-democratical Sparta were capable of the like unjust misjudgment. Hardly a single instance of Athenian condemnation occurs, which we can so clearly prove to be undeserved, as this of a Spartan king. Turning from the banished king to Lysander, the Spartans had indeed valid reasons for deploring the fall of the latter. He had procured for them their greatest and most decisive victories, and the time was coming when they needed his services to procure them more ; for he left behind him no man of equal warlike re- source, cunning, and power of command. But if he possessed those abilities which powerfully helped Sparta to triumph over her enemies, he at the same time did more than any man to bring her empire into dishonor, and to render its tenure precarious. Hia decemviral governments or dekarchies, diffused through the sub- ject cities, and each sustained by a Lacedaemonian harmost and garrison, were aggravations of local tyranny such as the Grecian world had never before undergone. And though the Spartan au- thorities presently saw that he was abusing the imperial name of the city for unmeasured personal aggrandizement of his own, and partially withdrew their countenance from his dekarchies, yet the general character of their empire still continued to retain the impress of partisanship and subjugation which he had originally stamped upon it. Instead of that autonomy which Sparta had so repeatedly promised, it became subjection every way embittered. Such an empire was pretty sure to be short-lived ; but the loss to Sparta herself, when her empire fell away, is not the only fault which the historian of Greece has to impute to Lysander. His far deeper sin consists in his having thrown away an opportunity, such as never occurred either before or afterwards, for organ- izing some permanent, honorable, self-maintaining, Pan-hellenic combination under the headship of Sparta. This is (as I have before remarked) what a man like Kallikratidas would have at- tempted, if not with far-sighted wisdom, at least with generous sincerity, and by an appeal to the best veins of political sentiment in the chief city as well as in the subordinates. It is possible" that with the best intentions even he might have failed ; so strong was the centrifugal instinct in the Grecian political mind. But what