Life of Lysander

This life of the Spartan commander Lysander comes from the surviving book of Cornelius Nepos' On Famous Men, devoted to foreign generals. Nepos (about 110 to 24 BC) was writing for Romans, and his lives are short moral portraits rather than full histories.

Nepos begins with Lysander's great achievement: in 405 BC he destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami and so ended the Peloponnesian War in Sparta's favour. But he presents Lysander's victory as owed more to the enemy's indiscipline than to his own skill, and dwells on his conduct afterwards. Lysander abolished democracies throughout the Greek cities and set up boards of ten partisans, the decarchies, to rule them for him, and he had the people of Thasos, who had been loyal to Athens, massacred after promising them safety. He then plotted to make the Spartan kingship open to election, hoping to win it himself. Nepos closes with a story of the Persian satrap Pharnabazus, who gave Lysander a sealed letter apparently praising him but in fact denouncing him to the ephors. Lysander was killed in battle at Haliartus in 395 BC.

The life is only four chapters long and its Latin is simple and direct, a good early text for students. It is an unflattering portrait of a man whom Nepos sees as both able and unscrupulous.