Lysander

The treasury of the Acanthians at Delphi bears this inscription: Brasidas and the Acanthians, with spoil from the Athenians.[*](In B.C. 424, Brasidas won Acanthus, a town on the Chalcidic peninsula, away from its alliance with Athens (Thuc. 4.84-88).) For this reason many think that the marble figure standing within the edifice, by the door, is a statue of Brasidas. But it really represents Lysander, with his hair very long, after the ancient custom, and growing a generous beard.

For it is not true, as some state, that because the Argives, after their great defeat, shaved their heads for sorrow, the Spartans, in contrary fashion, let their hair grow long in exultation over their victory;[*](Hdt. 1.82) nor was it because the Bacchiadae,[*](An oligarchical family, deposed from rule in Corinth by Cypselus, about 650 B.C. (Hdt. 5.92).) when they fled from Corinth to Lacedaemon, looked mean and unsightly from having shaved their heads, that the Spartans, on their part, became eager to wear their hair long; but this custom also goes back to Lycurgus. And he is reported to have said that a fine head of hair makes the handsome more comely to look upon, and the ugly more terrible.[*](Cf. Plut. Lyc. 22.1.)

The father of Lysander, Aristocleitus, is said to have been of the lineage of the Heracleidae, though not of the royal family. But Lysander was reared in poverty, and showed himself as much as any man conformable to the customs of his people; of a manly spirit, too, and superior to every pleasure, excepting only that which their good deeds bring to those who are successful and honored. To this pleasure it is no disgrace for the youth in Sparta to succumb.

Indeed, from the very first they wish their boys to be sensitive toward public opinion, distressed by censure, and exalted by praise; and he who is insensible and stolid in these matters, is looked down upon as without ambition for excellence, and a cumberer of the ground. Ambition, then, and the spirit of emulation, were firmly implanted in him by his Laconian training and and no great fault should be found with his natural disposition on this account.

But he seems to have been naturally subservient to men of power and influence, beyond what was usual in a Spartan, and content to endure an arrogant authority for the sake of gaining his ends, a trait which some hold to be no small part of political ability. And Aristotle, when he sets forth that great natures, like those of Socrates and Plato and Heracles, have a tendency to melancholy, writes also[*](Aristot. Prob. 30.1) that Lysander, not immediately, but when well on in years, was a prey to melancholy.

But what is most peculiar in him is that, though he bore poverty well, and though he was never mastered nor even corrupted by money, yet he filled his country full of wealth and the love of wealth, and made her cease to be admired for not admiring wealth, importing as he did an abundance of gold and silver after the war with Athens, although he kept not a single drachma for himself.