The facts, which Plutarch states respecting Lysander, cannot be reconciled with the chronology which he adopts. He represents the recall of Lysander at the instance of Pharnabazus, with all the facts which preceded it, as having occurred prior to the reconstitution of the Athenian democracy, which event we know to have taken place in the summer of 403 B.C.
Lysander captured Samos in the latter half of 404 B.C., after the surrender of Athens. After the capture of Samos, he came home in triumph, in the autumn of 404 B.C. (Xen. Hellen. iii, 3, 9). He was at home, or serving in Attica, in the beginning of 403 B.C. (Xen. Hellen. ii, 4, 30).
Now when Lysander came home at the end of 404 B.C., it was his triumphant return; it was not a recall provoked by complaints of Pharnabazus. Yet there can have been no other return before the restoration of the democracy at Athens.
The recall of Lysander must have been the termination, not of this command, but of a subsequent command. Moreover, it seems to me necessary, in order to make room for the facts stated respecting Lysander as well as about the dekarchies, that we should suppose him to have been again sent out (after his quarrel with Pausanias in Attica) in 403 B.C., to command in Asia. This is nowhere positively stated, but I find nothing to contradict it, and I see no other way of making room for the facts stated about Lysander.
It is to be noted that Diodorus has a decided error in chronology as to the date of the restoration of the Athenian democracy. He places it in 401 B.C. (Diod. xiv, 33), two years later than its real date, which is 403 B.C.; thus lengthening by two years the interval between the surrender of Athens and the reëstablishment of the democracy. Plutarch also seems to have conceived that interval as much longer than it really was.
[350] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 25.
[351] Plutarch, Lysander, c. 2.
[352] Thucyd. viii, 5, 18-37, 56-58, 84.
[353] Plutarch, Lysander, c. 19, 20; Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 9.
[354] Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 13.