Samos in a body, and handed over the cities in that island to those who had previously been banished.  He also took Sestos from the Athenians, and would not allow the people of Sestos to live there, but gave the city and territory over to those who had acted as steersmen and masters on board of his ships.  This indeed was the first of his acts which was cancelled by the Lacedaemonians, who restored Sestos to its inhabitants.  Yet his proceedings were viewed with satisfaction by the Greeks, when he restored the AEginetans, who had for a long time been banished from their island, and also refounded Melos and Skione, the Athenians being driven away and forced to give up the cities.

By this time he learned that the people of Athens were nearly starved out, and consequently sailed to Peiraeus and received the submission of the city, which was obliged to accept whatever terms of capitulation he chose to offer.  I have indeed heard Lacedaemonians say that Lysander wrote to the Ephors, saying “Athens is taken;” and that they wrote to Lysander in answer, “To have taken it is enough.”  But this tale is merely invented for effect.  The real decree of the Ephors ran as follows:—­“This is the decision of the Lacedaemonian government.  Throw down the walls of Peiraeus and the Long Walls.  Withdraw from all other cities and occupy your own land, and then you may have peace, if you wish for it, allowing likewise your exiles to return.  With regard to the number of the ships, whatever be judged necessary by those on the spot, that do.”

The Athenians accepted these terms, by the advice of Theramenes the son of Hagnon:  and on this occasion it is said that when he was asked by Kleomenes, one of the younger orators, how he dared to act and speak against what Themistokles had done, by giving up to the Lacedaemonians those walls which Themistokles had built in spite of them, he answered, “My boy, I am doing nothing contrary to Themistokles; for these same walls he built up to save his countrymen, and we will throw them down to save them.  Indeed, if walls made a city prosperous, then ought Sparta, which has none, to be the most miserable of all.”

XV.  Now Lysander, after taking all the fleet of the Athenians except twelve ships, and having taken possession of their walls, began to take measures for the subversion of their political constitution, on the sixteenth day of the month Munychion, the same day on which they had defeated the Persians in the sea-fight at Salamis.  As they were greatly grieved at this, and were loth to obey him, he sent word to the people that the city had broken the terms of its capitulation, because their walls were standing although the time within which they ought to have been destroyed had elapsed.  He therefore would make an entirely new decision about their fate, because they had broken the treaty.  Some writers say that he actually consulted the allies about the advisability of selling the whole population for slaves, in which debate the Theban Erianthus proposed to destroy the city and make the site of it a sheep walk.  Afterwards, however, when the generals were drinking together a Phokian sang the first song in the Elektra of Euripides, which begins with the words—­