Lysander (d. 395 BC) ( Λύσανδρος).)was the commander of the Spartan fleet which was victorious against the Athenians at Aegospotami in 405 BC. The following year, he took Athens itself, bringing the Peloponnesian War to an end.

Lysander establishes himself

Lysander was one of the Heraclidae, but not a member of the Spartan royal families. Details of his early life and career are not known. Lysander was put in charge of the Spartan fleet in the Aegean, based at Ephesus (407 BC) when Alcibiades rejoined the Athenian side towards the end of the Peloponnesian War. Not coming from a wealthy family it is not known how Lysander came to be entrusted with command, but in his first year as admiral (406 BC) he won a sea battle at Notium and obtained support for the Spartan cause from Cyrus the Younger, Persian viceroy and son of the Cyrus the Great.

Amongst the cities subject to Athens he gained Partisan support by promising to establish "decarchies" (of oligarchists) and promoting the interests of cetain potential allies.

Triumph

Spartan law forbade him from serving a second term so he was nominally second in command, but the de facto Spartan leader, at the Battle of Aegospotami in which the Athenian fleet was destroyed (405 BC). This action effectively starved Athens into surrender by shutting the grain route through the Hellespont.

Lysander then joined the Spartan kings, Agis and Pausanias, in Attica. When Athens succumbed after the siege, Lysander installed a government of thirty, later known as the Thirty Tyrants (404 BC). The decarchies which he had set up in many of Athens former allies were in many cases reinforced by garrisons led by Spartan commanders.

Decline and death

However, Lysander became unpopular throughout Greece, promoting the interests of his friends' and displaying vindictiveness against those who displeased him. In 403 he was sent in to support the "Thirty" at Athens against the democratic revolt of Thrasybulus. It is likely he would have succeeded except for a policy reversal by the Spartan Kings who now supported increased democracy. His "decarchies" of oligarchs are likely to have been abolished and this period saw a considerable diminution of Lysanders influence and political power, which was presumably the exact intention of the Spartan monarchs.

On the death of King Agis, Lysander was instrumental in Agis' brother Agesilaus II being made king in 399 BC but after mounting a joint expedition to attack Persia he was soon spurned and undermined by the new monarch as well and returned to Sparta in 396 BC where he may or may not have begun conspiring against the traditional power of the Royal families.

At the beginning of the Corinthian war (395-387 BC) Lysander led an army of allies into Boeotia from Phocis and was killed when his troops were surprised by a Theban ambush at Haliartus.

Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans Alcibiades and Coriolanus - Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar - Aratus & Artaxerxes and Galba & Otho Aristides and Cato the Elder - Crassus and Nicias - Demetrius and Antony - Demosthenes and Cicero Dion and Brutus - Fabius and Pericles - Lucullus and Cimon - Lysander and Sulla - Numa and Lycurgus Pelopidas and Marcellus - Philopoemen and Flamininus - Phocion and Cato the Younger - Pompey and Agesilaus Poplicola and Solon - Pyrrhus and Gaius Marius - Romulus and Theseus - Sertorius and Eumenes Tiberius Gracchus & Gaius Gracchus and Agis & Cleomenes - Timoleon and Aemilius Paulus - Themistocles and Camillus