Lysander

Biography

Lysander was the man who actually won the Peloponnesian War for Sparta — and did it by breaking every rule Sparta claimed to stand for. Born a mothax (a Spartan of inferior status, son of a Spartiate father but a helot mother), he rose through talent and ruthless ambition to become Sparta's greatest admiral. He cultivated Persian patronage — personally befriending the young Cyrus the Younger and securing the gold that allowed Sparta to build a fleet that could challenge Athenian naval supremacy. At Aegospotami in 405 BC, Lysander won the war in a single morning without a battle: he caught the Athenian fleet beached and unguarded and captured virtually every ship. Three thousand Athenian prisoners were executed. With Athens starved into submission, Lysander installed pro-Spartan oligarchies — the 'Thirty Tyrants' — across the Greek world, creating a Spartan imperial system as oppressive as anything Athens had built. His power terrified Sparta's own kings and ephors. Laws were passed specifically to prevent any single general from holding navarchy twice. He was given the command at Aegospotami through a legal fiction. In his later career, he schemed to change the Spartan kingship itself, intriguing with the Oracle at Delphi. He died in battle in 395 BC, leading a Spartan army in Boeotia, before his schemes could bear fruit. Sparta's victory lasted barely thirty years; at Leuctra in 371, everything Lysander had built was undone in an afternoon.

Key Battles