so did Lysander invent oracular responses and prophecies and bring them to bear on the minds of his countrymen, feeling that he would gain but little by pronouncing Kleon’s oration, unless the Spartans had previously, by superstition and religious terrors, been brought into a state of feeling suitable for its reception.  Ephorus relates in his history that Lysander endeavoured by means of one Pherekles to bribe the priestess at Delphi, and afterwards those of Dodona; and that, as this attempt failed, he himself went to the oracle of Ammon and had an interview with the priests there, to whom he offered a large sum of money.  They also indignantly refused to aid his schemes, and sent an embassy to Sparta to charge him with having attempted to corrupt them.  He was tried and acquitted, upon which the Libyans, as they were leaving the country, said:—­“We at any rate, O Spartans, will give more righteous judgments when you come to dwell amongst us”—­for there is an ancient oracle which says that the Lacedaemonians shall some day settle in Libya.  Now as to the whole framework of Lysander’s plot, which was of no ordinary kind, and did not take its rise from accidental circumstances, but consisted, like a mathematical demonstration, of many complicated intrigues all tending to one fixed point, I will give a short abstract of it extracted from the works of Ephorus, who was both an historian and a philosopher.

XXVI.  There was a woman in Pontus who gave out that she was pregnant by Apollo.  As might be expected, many disbelieved in her pretensions, but many more believed in them, so that when a male child was born of her, it was cared for and educated at the charge of many eminent persons.  The child, for some reason or other, was given the name of Silenus.  Lysander, starting with these materials, constructed the rest of the story out of his own imagination.  He was assisted in his scheme by many persons of the highest respectability, who unsuspiciously propagated the fable about the birth of the child:  and who also procured another mysterious story from Delphi, which they carefully spread abroad at Sparta, to the effect that some oracles of vast antiquity are guarded by the priests at Delphi, in writings which it is not lawful to read; nor may any one examine them or look upon them, until in the fulness of time one born of Apollo shall come, and after clearly proving his birth to the guardians of these writings, shall take the tablets which contain them.  This having been previously arranged, Silenus’s part was to go and demand the oracles as Apollo’s child, while those of the priests who were in the plot were to make inquiries and examine carefully into his birth, and at length were to appear convinced of the truth of the story, and show the writings to him, as being really the child of Apollo.  He was to read aloud in the presence of many persons all the oracles contained in the tablets, especially one which said that it would be better for the Spartans to choose their kings from the best of the citizens.  Silenus was nearly grown up, and the time to make the attempt had almost arrived, when the whole plot was ruined by the cowardice of one of the principal conspirators, whose heart failed him when the moment for action arrived.  None of these particulars, however, were discovered till after Lysander’s death.