Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/263

SILENUS FAILS IN HIS PROJECT. 2-4l death. It might probably have succeeded, had he found temple- confederates of proper courage and cunning, when we consider the profound and habitual deference of the Spartans to Delphi ; upon the sanction of which oracle the Lykurgean institutions them- selves were mainly understood to rest. And an occasion presently arose, on which the proposed change might have been tried with unusual facility and pertinence ; though Lysander himself, having once miscarried, renounced his enterprise, and employed his influ- ence, which continued unabated, in giving the sceptre to another instead of acquiring it for himself, 1 like Mucian in reference to the emperor Vespasian. It was apparently about a year after the campaigns in Elis, that king Agis, now an old man, was taken ill at Herasa in Arcadia, and carried back to Sparta, where he shortly afterwards expired. His wife Mimosa had given birth to a son named Leotychides, now 1 Tacit. Histor. i, 10. " Cui expeditius fucrit tradcrc impcrium, quara obtinere." The general fact of the conspiracy of Lysander to open for himself a way to the throne, appears to rest on very sufficient testimony, that of Ephorus ; to whom perhaps the words <j>aai rives in Aristotle may allude, where he mentions this conspiracy as having been narrated (Polit. v, 1, 5). But Plutarch, as well as K. 0. Miiller (Hist, of Dorians, iv, 9, 5) and others, erroneously represent the intrigues with the oracle as being resorted to after Lysander returned from accompanying Agesilaus to Asia; which is cer- tainly impossible, since Lysander accompanied Agesilaus out, in the spring of 396 B.C. did not return to Greece until the spring of 395 B.C. and was then employed, with an interval not greater than four or five months, on that expedition against Breotia wherein he was slain. The tampering of Lysander with the oracle must undoubtedly have taken place prior to the death of Agis, at some time between 403 B. c. and 399 B. c. The humiliation which he received in 396 B. c. from Agesi- laus might indeed have led him to revolve in his mind the renewal of his former plans ; but he can have had no time to do anything towards them. Aristotle (Polit. v, 6, 2) alludes to the humiliation of Lysander by the kings as an example of incidents tending to raise disturbance in an aristo- cratical government ; but this humiliation, probably, alludes to the manner in which he was thwarted in Attica by Pausanias in 403 B. c. which pro- ceeding is ascribed by Plutarch to both kings, as well as to their jealousy of Lysander (see Plutarch, Lysand. c. 21) not to the treatment of Lysandoj by Agesilaus in 396 B. c. The mission of Lysander to the despot Diony- sins at Syracuse (Plutarch, Lysand. c. 2) must also have taken place prior to the death of Agis in 399 B. c. ; whether before or after the failure of the stratagem at Djlphi, is uncertain; perhaps after it. VOT,. rx. 11 IGoe.