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 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 Lacedæmonians, who restored Sestos to its inhabitants. Yet his proceedings were viewed with satisfaction by the Greeks, when he restored the Æginetans, 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 Peiræus and received the submission of the city, which was obliged to accept whatever terms of capitulation he chose to offer. I have indeed heard Lacedæmonians 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 Lacedæmonian government. Throw down the walls of Peiræus 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 Lacedæmonians 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—
"Elektra, Agamemnon's child,
I reach thy habitation wild."
At this their hearts were touched, and it appeared to them to be a shameful deed to destroy so famous a city, and one which had produced such great men. After this, as the Athenians agreed to everything that Lysander proposed, he sent for a number of flute-players out of the city, collected all those in his camp, and destroyed the walls and burned the ships to the sound of music, while the allies crowned themselves with flowers and danced around, as though on that day their freedom began. Lysander now at once subverted the constitution, establishing thirty archons in the city, and ten in Peiræus, placing also a garrison in the Acropolis under the command of Kallibius, who acted as harmost, or governor. This man once was about to strike Autolykus the athlete, in whose house Xenophon has laid the scene of his "Symposium," with his staff, when Autolykus tripped him and threw him down. Lysander did not sympathise with his fall, but even reproached him, saying that he did not know how to govern free men. However, the Thirty, to please Kallibius, shortly afterwards put Autolykus to death.
XVI. After these transactions Lysander set sail for Thrace, but sent home to Sparta all the money for which he had no immediate occasion, and all the presents and crowns[149] which he had received, in charge of Gylippus, who had held a command in Sicily during the war there. His wealth was very great, as many naturally had bestowed rich presents on one who had such great power as to be in some sort dictator of Greece. Gylippus is said to have cut open the seam at the bottom of each bag of money, taken a great deal of it out, and then to have sewn it up again, not knowing that there was a written note in each bag stating the amount which it contained. When he reached Sparta he hid the money which he had stolen under the tiles of his roof, and handed the bags over to the Ephors with the seals unbroken. When the bags were opened and the money counted, the amount was found not to agree with the written notes, and the Ephors were much perplexed at this until a servant of Gylippus explained the cause of it in a riddle, telling them that under his tiles roosted many owls. For, it seems, most of the money current at that period bore the Athenian device of the owl, in consequence of the extent of the Athenian empire.
Gylippus, having sullied the glory of his great achievements by this mean and sordid action, left Sparta in disgrace. Yet the wisest Spartans, fearing the power of the money for this very reason, that it was the chief men in the state who would be tempted by it, reproached Lysander for bringing it, and implored the Ephors to convey solemnly all the gold and silver coin away out of the country, as being so much "imported ruin." On this the Ephors invited discussion upon the subject. Theopompus tells us that it was Skiraphidas, but Ephorus says that it was Phlogidas who advised the Spartans not to receive the gold and silver coinage into their country, but to continue to use that which their fathers had used. This was iron money, which had first been dipped in vinegar when red hot, so that it could not be worked, as its being quenched in this manner rendered it brittle and useless, while it was also heavy, difficult to transport from place to place, and a great quantity of it represented but a small value. It appears probable that all money was originally of this kind, and that men used instead of coin small spits[150] of iron or copper. For this reason we still call small coins obols, and we call six obols a drachma, meaning that this is the number of them which can be grasped by the hand.
XVII. The motion for sending away the money was opposed by Lysander's friends, who were eager to keep it in the state; so that it was at last decided that for public purposes this money might be used, but that if any private person were found in possession of it, he should be put to death: as if Lykurgus had been afraid of money itself, and not of the covetousness produced by it, which they did not repress by forbidding private men to own money so much as they encouraged it by permitting the state to own it, conferring thereby a certain dignity upon it over and above its real value. It was not possible for men who saw that the state valued silver and gold to despise it as useless, or to think that what was thus prized by the whole body of the citizens could be of no concern to individuals. On the contrary, it is plain that national customs much sooner impress themselves on the lives and manners of individuals, than do the faults and vices of individuals affect the national character. When the whole becomes corrupt the parts necessarily become corrupt with it; but the corruption of some of the parts does not necessarily extend to the whole, being checked and overpowered by those parts which remain healthy. Thus the Spartans made the law and the fear of death guard the houses of their citizens so that money could not enter them, but they did not guard their minds against the seductions of money, nay, even encouraged them to admire it, by proclaiming that it was a great and important matter that the commonwealth should be rich. However, I have discussed the conduct of the Lacedæmonians in this respect in another book.
XVIII. From the proceeds of the plunder which he had taken Lysander set up a brazen statue of himself and of each of the admirals[151] at Delphi, and also offered up golden stars to the Dioskuri, which stars disappeared just before the battle of Leuktra. Besides this, in the treasury of Brasidas and the Akanthians there used to be a trireme made of gold and ivory, two cubits long, which was sent to him by Cyrus as a present on the occasion of his victory. Anaxandrides of Delphi also tells us that Lysander deposited there a talent of silver, fifty-two minæ, and eleven of the coins called staters, which does not agree with the accounts given by other writers of his poverty.