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LYSIAS LYSIMACHUS. 



mur, the haughtiness of the Asiatic satraps ; and, 

 soon after, lie exhibited the same arrogance towards 

 the Greeks. His hatred was implacable, and his 

 revenge terrible. His ruling passion was ambition. 

 He destroyed the powerful city of Athens, and con- 

 ceived the plan of raising his country to the summit of 

 greaUiess, at the same time, it was to be under his own 

 rule. He used every means to accomplish this object; 

 he collected a fleet, and repulsed the Athenians, who 

 lost iu the engagement fifty vessels. The glory of 

 this victory he endeavoured to increase by intrigues. 

 When, therefore, Callicratides, who succeeded him 

 in the command, had been defeated by the Athenian 

 (' oiidii, in an engagement near Arginusae, in which 

 he lost his life, Lysander, contrary to the established 

 custom of Sparta, was a second time appointed admiral 

 of the fleet. He immediately sought the Athenian 

 fleet, which was much superior to the Spartan ; it lay 

 at anchor before yEgospotamos. Only nine of the 

 ships escaped the fury of his attack ; one carried the 

 news of the defeat to Athens ; with the rest, Conon, 

 the Athenian admiral, escaped to Evagoras, king of 

 Cyprus. The remainder of the fleet fell into the 

 kinds of the Spartans, almost without resistance, and 

 Lysander sailed with it into the port of Lampsacus 

 in triumph. He put to death the prisoners (3000), 

 with their generals, because they had thrown from 

 a rock the crews of two Corinthian vessels, and had 

 determined to cut off the right hand of all the Pelo- 

 ponnesian prisoners. After this defeat, all the 

 Athenian allies went over to the Spartans. In the 

 cities and islands which had surrendered, he abolish- 

 ed the democratic government, and founded an 

 oligarchy. With a fleet of 180 ships, he then sur- 

 rounded Athens by sea, white Agis and Pausanias 

 enclosed it with a powerful army on land. Famine 

 at length compelled the Athenians to surrender. 

 They lost their independence, and considered them- 

 selves happy that their city was not destroyed. An 

 oligarchy of thirty tyrants was now established, which 

 was administered with the most terrible cruelty. 

 Lysander then returned to Lacedaemon, where his 

 character was well understood ; yet the splendour of 

 his victories, his extraordinary liberality, and his 

 apparent disinterestedness, gave him such an ascend- 

 ency that, in fact, if not in name, he was sovereign 

 of all Greece. Contrary to the laws of Lycurgus, he 

 brought into Sparta immense sums of money, and valu- 

 able treasures, and thus ruined the Spartan virtue. He 

 now attempted to accomplish, by artifice, his long- 

 conceived plan of destroying the constitution of his 

 country, by admitting to the throne not only all the 

 Heraclidae, but all native Spartans, and, finally, 

 assuming the sceptre himself. Apollo himself was 

 said to have declared that, to secure the prosperity and 

 happiness of Sparta, its worthiest citizens should sit up- 

 on the throne. But the moment that the fraud was to 

 have been committed in the temple at Delphi, one of 

 the priests retracted his consent, from fear of the con- 

 sequences, and frustrated the whole plot, although it 

 was not discovered until after the death of Lysan- 

 der, when the plan was found among his papers. He 

 was killed in a battle, in the Boeotian war, in which 

 he commanded the Spartan forces (B. C. 394). His 

 memory was honoured in Sparta ; for the nation, 

 blind to his guilt, regarded him as a virtuous citizen, 

 since he did not enrich himself, but lived always 

 in great poverty. His life has been written by 

 Plutarch. 



LYSIAS; an Athenian orator, who flourished 

 between the eightieth and hundredth Olympiads, 

 about 458 B. C. His father, Cephalus, was likewise 

 an orator, of whom Plato makes honourable mention 

 in his Republic. Soon after his father's death, Lysias, 

 then in the fifteenth year of his age, wenttoThurium, 



in Magna Graecia, to study philosophy and eloquence 

 under Tisias and Nicias of Syracuse. Having set- 

 tled in Thurium, he was employed in the government; 

 but, on the defeat of the A thenians in Sicily, he was 

 lianMied, with many of his countrymen. He returned 

 to Athens ; but the thirty tyrants banished him from 

 that city, and he retired to Megara. After Athens 

 had recovered its freedom, he exerted himself for the 

 advantage of the city, and even sacrificed much of 

 his property for the public welfare. Yet, notwith- 

 standing his generosity, the rights of an Athenian 

 citizen were never granted him. At first, he gave 

 instruction in eloquence ; but, finding himself sur- 

 passed by Theodorus, another teacher of oratory, he 

 devoted his time to writing orations for others. He 

 wrote more than 200, some say 400, orations ; only 223, 

 however, were regarded as genuine. In these he ex- 

 celled all the orators of his time ; and has rarely been 

 surpassed by succeeding orators. Dionysius praises 

 the purity, clearness, conciseness, and elegance of his 

 expression, the beautiful simplicity of his style, his 

 knowledge of men, and his lively description of their 

 peculiarities, and, above all, his unparalleled grace. 

 His style is applauded as a perfect example of the 

 simple Attic eloquence. The efforts of Lysias in 

 panegyric, however, according to Dionysius, were 

 unsuccessful ; he strives to be magnificent and lofty, 

 but does not fully reach his object. None of these 

 eulogies is extant, except the one entitled Epitaphios, 

 and the genuineness of this is doubted ; hence we 

 cannot form an opinion of this class of his works. 

 Only thirty-four of his orations have come down to 

 our times : editions of them have been published by 

 Taylor (London, 1739, 4to ; and Cambridge 1740), 

 Auger (Paris, 1783, 2 vols.), and Reiske (in the Col- 

 lection of Greek Orators). John Gillies, the historian 

 of Greece, translated the orations of Lysias and 

 Isocrates, and accompanied his translation with an 

 Account of their Lives, and a Discourse on the His 

 tory and Manners of the Greeks (London, 1778). 



LYSIMACHUS; son of Agathocles, a general 

 and friend of Alexander, in the division of whose 

 conquests he received a part of Thrace. The inhab- 

 itants stubbornly opposed his authority, and he was 

 obliged to conquer the country. After this, he built 

 the city of Lysimachia, on the Thracian Chersonesus, 

 assumed the royal title, like the other generals of 

 Alexander, and formed a league with some of them 

 against Antigonus, who had brought under his own 

 power the territories conquered by Alexander in 

 Asia. After the battle of Ipsus, in Phrygia (B. C. 

 301), which cost Antigonus his life and his crown, 

 Lysimachus became master of Asia Minor, Cappa- 

 docia Proper, and all the provinces between the 

 Taurus and the Antitaurus. He next made war on 

 the nations on the borders of Thrace, and enlarged 

 his territories by conquest. In attempting to sub- 

 jugate the Getae, who lived beyond the Danube, his 

 son and himself fell into their hands. He was com- 

 pelled to surrender, with his army, to the barbarians, 

 who, with horrid cries, demanded his death. But 

 their king treated him more generously than the 

 ambitious Lysimachus dared to hope. He provided 

 for his prisoners an entertainment in the manner of 

 the Greeks, and left them their own splendid furni- 

 ture and utensils ; his own food, on the contrary, was 

 mean, and his vessels were all made of clay or wood. 

 After the meal was concluded, he asked the captive 

 monarch whether the rude living of the Getas, or the 

 splendid banquets of his own country, seemed to him 

 most desirable, and advised him to make peace with 

 a nation from whom so little was to be gained, restored 

 him his power, admitted him to his friendship, and 

 dismissed him without a ransom. This generous 

 conduct made a deep impression on the tyrannical 



