Lysander

Surely it was not possible for those who saw money publicly honored, to despise it privately as of no service; or to consider as worthless for the individual’s private use that which was publicly held in such repute and esteem. Moreover, it takes far less time for public practices to affect the customs of private life, than it does for individual lapses and failings to corrupt entire cities.

For it is natural that the parts should rather be perverted along with the whole, when that deteriorates; but the diseases which flow from a part into the whole find many correctives and aids in the parts which remain sound. And so these magistrates merely set the fear of the law to guard the houses of the citizens, that money might have no entrance there, but did not keep their spirits undaunted by the power of money and insensible to it; they rather inspired them all with an emulous desire for wealth as a great and noble object of pursuit. On this point, however, we have censured the Lacedaemonians in another treatise.[*](Inst. Lacon. 42 (Plut. Morals 239 f.).)

Out of the spoils, Lysander set up at Delphi bronze statues of himself and each of his admirals, as well as golden stars of the Dioscuri, which disappeared before the battle of Leuctra.[*](An omen of the defeat of the Spartans in that battle (371 B.C.).) And in the treasury of Brasidas and the Acanthians[*](Cf. Plut. Lys. 1.1.) there was stored a trireme two cubits long, made of gold and ivory, which Cyrus sent Lysander as a prize for his victory.

Moreover, Anaxandrides the Delphian writes that a deposit of Lysander’s was also stored there, consisting of a talent of silver, and fifty-two minas, and eleven staters besides; a statement that is inconsistent with the generally accepted accounts of his poverty. At any rate, Lysander was at this time more powerful than any Greek before him had been, and was thought to cherish a pretentious pride that was greater even than his power.

For he was the first Greek, as Duris writes, to whom the cities erected altars and made sacrifices as to a god, the first also to whom songs of triumph were sung. One of these is handed down, and begins as follows:—

1. The general of sacred Hellas
2. who came from wide-spaced Sparta
3. will we sing, O! Io! Paean.

The Samians, too, voted that their festival of Hera should be called Lysandreia. And the poet Choerilus was always kept in his retinue, to adorn his achievements with verse; while with Antilochus, who composed some verses in his honor, he was so pleased that he filled his cap with silver and gave it to him. And when Antimachus of Colophon and a certain Niceratus of Heracleia competed with one another at the Lysandreia in poems celebrating his achievements, he awarded the crown to Niceratus, and Antimachus, in vexation, suppressed his poem.

But Plato, who was then a young man, and admired Antimachus for his poetry, tried to cheer and console him in his chagrin at this defeat, telling him that it is the ignorant who suffer from their ignorance, just as the blind do from their blindness. However, when Aristonous the harper, who had been six times victor at the Pythian games, told Lysander in a patronizing way that if he should be victorious again, he would have himself proclaimed under Lysander’s name, That is, Lysander replied, as my slave?