Lysander (died 395 BC) was a Spartan admiral who played a major role in the later Peloponnesian War and the Corinthian War. Lysander rose from slavery to being a general, and he decisively defeated the Athenian navy at the Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC and captured Athens itself in 404 BC. However, he was slain at the Battle of Haliartus in Boeotia in 395 BC.
Biography[]
Lysander in Sparta, 429 BC
Lysander was born in Laconia to a Spartan father who claimed descent from Heracles and to a helot (enslaved) mother. Lysander grew up in poverty, but he was remembered by Plutarch as someone with a "manly spirit", and his ambition led to him rising in the ranks of the Spartan military during the Peloponnesian War. Lysander bore a private grudge against the Kings of Sparta, contrasting himself with the monarchs: "From slave to general, bathing in the blood of this war, while our leaders stuff their faces and preen." In 429 BC, Lysander met the mercenary Kassandra at the Tomb of Leonidas, where he enlisted her help in ending the war in "his" favor by infiltrating the Athenian forts, killing their polemarchs to clear the way for his Spartan troops, and bringing their seals to him as proof of their deaths.
In 407 BC, Lysander was appointed a navarch (admiral) for the Aegean Sea, and he befriended Darius II's son Cyrus the Younger and obtained Persian support for building a Spartan fleet at Ephesus. Lysander's fleet, aided by the Persians, defeated the Athenians at the Battle of Notium in 406 BC, forcing the Athenian admiral Alcibiades to go into exile. However, Callicratidas was appointed to replace Lysander as navarch in accordance with Spartan law, leading to the leajous Lysander returning the monetary donations from Persia to the Achaemenids. After Callicratidas was killed at the Battle of Arginusae, Lysander returned to command the Spartan fleet as the titular deputy navarch under Aracus, and, in 405 BC, he defeated the Athenians at the Battle of Aegospotami. Afterwards, Lysander captured both Byzantion and Chalcedon, expelling the Athenian colonists there, before moving on to take Lesbos. In 404 BC, Lysander blockaded the port of Piraeus as King Pausanias attacked Athens from the land, resulting in the city's fall and the end of the war. Lysander proceeded to install a 30-man oligarchy, the "Thirty Tyrants", in power in Athens, ushering in the Spartan hegemony. Lysander also had Alcibiades assassinated before he could obtain Persian support for the Athenians. Lysander was soon faced with a rebellion led by Thrasybulus, who rejected the rule of the Spartan puppet government in Athens, and, following the Battle of Piraeus, a democratic government was reinstated in Athens.
However, Lysander remained a kingmaker, backing Agesilaus II's claim to the Spartan throne after the death of Agis II and supporting Cyrus' unsuccessful rebellion against his brother Artaxerxes II. In 396 BC, Lysander arranged for Agesilaus to lead the Greeks against Persia, but Agesilaus instead had Lysander sent to lead the expedition to the Hellespont, where he would be far from Greece. Lysander returned a year later, and he was instrumental in starting a war with Thebes and other Greek cities in the Corinthian War. Lysander was killed at the disastrous Battle of Haliartus in 395 BC after bringing his forces too close to the walls of the city.