Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/161

 LYSANDER. 139 duties of military command, bvit possessed also great I ilents for intrigue, and for organizing a political party as well as keeping up its disciplined movements. Though indifferent to the temptations either of money or of pleasure, 1 and willingly acquiescing in the poverty to which he was born, he was altogether unscrupulous in the prosecution of ambitious objects, either for his country or for himself. His family, poor as it was, enjoyed a dignified position at Sparta, belonging to the gens of the Herakleidte, not connected by any near relationship with the kings : moreover, his personal reputation as a Spartan was excellent, since his observance of the rules of discipline had been rigorous and exemplary. The habits of self-constraint thus acquired, served him in good stead when it became necessary to his ambition to court the favor of the great. His recklessness about falsehood and perjury is illustrated by various current sayings ascribed to him ; such as, that children were to be taken in by means of dice ; men, by means of oaths. 2 A selfish ambition for promoting the power of his country not merely in connection with, but in subservience to, his own guided him from the beginning to the end of his career. In this main quality, he agreed with Alkibiades ; in reckless immorality of means, he went even beyond him. He seems to have been cruel ; an attribute which formed no part of the usual character of Alkibiades. On the other hand, the love of personal enjoyment luxury, and ostentation, which counted for so much in Alkibiades, was quite unknown to Lysander. The basis of his disposition was Spartan, tending to merge appetite, ostentation, and expan- sion of mind, all in the love of command and influence, not Athenian, which tended to the development of many and diver- sified impulses ; ambition being one, but only one, among the number. Kratesippidas, the predecessor of Lysander, seems to have enjoyed the maritime command for more than the usual yearly period, having superseded Pasippidas during the middle of the year of the latter. But the maritime power of Sparta was then so weak, having not yet recovered from the ruinous defeat at Kyzikus, that he achieved little or nothing. We hear of him only as further- 1 Thcopompus, Fragm. 21, cd. Didot; Plutarch, Lysand. c. 30.
 * Plutarch, Lysander, c. 8.