Plutarch's Lives, Volume II eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 680 pages of information about Plutarch's Lives, Volume II.

Plutarch's Lives, Volume II eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 680 pages of information about Plutarch's Lives, Volume II.

XIII.  Now Lysander, after the three thousand Athenians whom he had taken prisoners had been condemned to death by the council, called for Philokles their general, and asked him what punishment he thought that he deserved for having advised his fellow-countrymen to treat Greeks in such a cruel manner.[148] Philokles, not in the least cast down by his misfortunes, bade him not to raise questions which no one could decide, but, since he was victor, to do what he would himself have suffered if vanquished.  He then bathed, put on a splendid dress, and led his countrymen to execution, according to the account given by Theophrastus.  After this Lysander sailed to the various cities in the neighbourhood, and compelled all the Athenians whom he met to betake themselves to Athens, giving out that he would spare no one, but put to death all whom he found without the city.  His object in acting thus was to produce famine in Athens as speedily as possible, that the city might not give him the trouble of a long siege.  He now destroyed the democratic and popular constitutions in all the Greek cities which had been subject to Athens, placing a Lacedaemonian in each as harmost or governor, with a council of ten archons under him, composed of men selected from the political clubs which he had established.  He proceeded leisurely along, effecting these changes alike in the cities which had been hostile to him and in those which had fought on his side, as though he were preparing for himself a Greece in which he would take the first place.  He did not choose his archons by their birth, or their wealth, but favoured his own friends and political adherents, to whom he gave irresponsible power; while by being present at several executions, and driving the opponents of his friends into exile, he gave the Greeks a very unpleasant idea of what they were to expect from the empire of Lacedaemon.  The comic poet Theopompus therefore appears to talk at random when he compares the Lacedaemonians to tavern-keepers, because they at first poured out for the Greeks a most sweet draught of liberty and afterwards made it bitter; whereas in truth the taste of their rule was bitter from the beginning, as Lysander would not allow the people to have any voice in the government, and placed all the power in each city in the hands of the most daring and ambitious men of the oligarchical party.

XIV.  After spending a short time in arranging these matters and having sent messengers to Laconia to announce that he was coming thither with a fleet of two hundred ships, he joined the Spartan kings, Agis and Pausanias, in Attica, and expected that the city of Athens would soon fall into his hands.  Finding, however, that the Athenians made an obstinate defence, he crossed over to Asia again with the fleet.  Here he overthrew the existing constitutions and established governments of ten in all the cities alike, putting many citizens to death, and driving many into exile.  He drove out all the inhabitants from the island of

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Plutarch's Lives, Volume II from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.