Lysander

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.

And when Dionysius the tyrant sent his daughters some costly tunics of Sicilian make, he would not receive them, saying he was afraid they would make his daughters look more ugly. But a little later, when he was sent as ambassador to the same tyrant from the same city, and was presented by him with two robes, and ordered to choose which of them he would, and carry it to his daughter, he said that she could choose better herself, and went off with both of them.