[419] Duris ap. Athenæum, xv, p. 696.
[420] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 18; Plutarch, Agesil. c. 20.
[421] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 17.
[422] Aristotle (Polit. v, 1, 5) represents justly the schemes of Lysander as going πρὸς τὸ μέρος τι κινῆσαι τῆς πολιτείας· οἷον ἀρχήν τινα καταστῆσαι ἢ ἀνελεῖν. The Spartan kingship is here regarded as ἀρχή τις—one office of state, among others. But Aristotle regards Lysander as having intended to destroy the kingship—καταλῦσαι τὴν βασιλείαν—which does not appear to have been the fact. The plan of Lysander was to retain the kingship, but to render it elective instead of hereditary. He wished to place the Spartan kingship substantially on the same footing, as that on which the office of the kings or suffetes of Carthage stood; who were not hereditary, nor confined to members of the same family or Gens, but chosen out of the principal families or Gentes. Aristotle, while comparing the βασιλεῖς at Sparta with those at Carthage, as being generally analogous, pronounces in favor of the Carthaginian election as better than the Spartan hereditary transmission. (Arist. Polit. ii, 8, 2.)
[423] Thucyd. v, 63; Xen. Hellen. iii, 5, 25; iv, 2, 1.
[424] Diodor. xiv, 13; Cicero, de Divinat. i, 43, 96; Cornel. Nepos, Lysand. c. 3.
[425] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 25, from Ephorus. Compare Herodot. vi, 66; Thucyd. v, 12.
[426] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 26.
[427] Tacit. Histor. i, 10. “Cui expeditius fuerit tradere imperium, quam obtinere.”
The general fact of the conspiracy of Lysander to open for himself a way to the throne, appears to rest on very sufficient testimony,—that of Ephorus; to whom perhaps the words φασί τινες in Aristotle may allude, where he mentions this conspiracy as having been narrated (Polit. v, 1, 5). But Plutarch, as well as K. O. Müller (Hist. of Dorians, iv, 9, 5) and others, erroneously represent the intrigues with the oracle as being resorted to after Lysander returned from accompanying Agesilaus to Asia; which is certainly impossible, since Lysander accompanied Agesilaus out, in the spring of 396 B.C.—did not return to Greece until the spring of 395 B.C.—and was then employed, with an interval not greater than four or five months, on that expedition against Bœotia wherein he was slain.