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she was

his sepulchre, calling it Alea; and the monument also of Alcmena is hard by; for there, they say, buried, having married Rhadamanthus after Amphitryon's death.* But the Thebans inside the city, forming in order of battle with the Haliartians, stood still for some time; but on seeing Lysander, with a party of those who were foremost, approaching, on a sudden opening the gates and falling on, they killed him with the soothsayer at his side, and a few others; for the greater part immediately fled back to the main force. But the Thebans not slackening, but closely pursuing them, the whole body turned to fly towards the hills. There were one thousand of them slain; there died also of the Thebans three hundred, who were killed with their enemies, while following them into craggy and difficult places. These had been under suspicion of favouring the Lacedæmonians, and in their eagerness to clear themselves in the eyes of their fellow-citizens exposed themselves in the pursuit, and so met their death.

News of the disaster reached Pausanias as he was on the way from Platea to Thespia; and having set his

* Haliartus is not far from Thebes, on a low hill terminating in cliffs on the southern edge of the lake Copaïs. Though not fifty feet higher than the water," says Colonel Leake, "the rocky point projecting into the marsh is remarkable from every part of the plain."- Hoplites is "the rivulet under the western wall;" and Cissusa "the fountain below the cliffs." Cissusa has nothing to do with Tilphussa, the spring beside which, according to the story, Tiresias died. In Plutarch's time the town of Haliartus was extinct; one of the few remaining objects, when Pausanias went there, was a monument of Lysander.

army in order he came to Haliartus: Thrasybulus also came from Thebes, leading the Athenians. Pausanias proposing to request the bodies of the dead under truce, the elder men of the Spartans took it ill and were angry among themselves, and coming to the king, declared that Lysander should not be taken away upon any conditions; if they fought it out by arms about his body and conquered, then they might bury him, and if they were overcome, it was glorious to die upon the spot with their commander. When the elders had spoken these things, Pausanias saw it would be a difficult business to vanquish the Thebans, who had but just been conquerors; that Lysander's body also lay near the walls, so that it would be hard for them, though they overcame, to take it away without a truce: he therefore sent a herald, obtained a truce, and withdrew his forces. And carrying away the body of Lysander, they buried it in the first friendly soil they reached on crossing the Boeotian frontier, in the country of the Panopeans; where the monument still stands on the roadside, as you go from Delphi to Chæronea. Now the army quartering there, it is said that a person of Phocis, relating the battle to one who was not in it, said the enemies fell upon them just after Lysander had passed over Hoplites; surprised at which a Spartan, a friend of Lysander, asked what Hoplites he meant, for he did not know the name. "It was there," answered the Phocian," that the enemy killed the first of us; the rivulet by the city is called Hoplites." On hearing which the Spartan shed tears and observed, How impossible it is for any man to avoid his appointed lot;

Lysander, it appears, having received an oracle as follows:

Sounding Hoplites see thou bear in mind,

And the earth-born dragon following behind.

Some however say that Hoplites does not run by Haliartus, but is a watercourse by Coronea, falling into the river Philarus near the town in former times called Hoplias and now Isomantus. The man of Haliartus who killed Lysander, by name Neochorus, bore on his shield the device of a dragon; and this, it was supposed, the oracle signified. It is said also that in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the Thebans received an oracle from the sanctuary of the Ismenian Apollo, referring at once to the battle of Delium and to this which thirty years after took place at Haliartus. It ran thus :—

Hunting the wolf, observe the utmost bound,

And Orchalid the hill where foxes most are found.

By the words, the utmost bound, Delium being intended, where Boeotia touches Attica, and by Orchalid the hill now called Alopecus*, which lies in the parts of Haliartus towards Helicon.

30 But such a death befalling Lysander, the Spartans took it so grievously at the time, that they put the king to a trial for his life, which he not daring to await fled to Tegea, and there lived out his life in the sanctuary

* Alópecus, derived from alóper, a fox. Hoplites, it should also be said, in explanation of the surprise of Lysander's friend, would be an unusual name for a stream, being the ordinary word for a heavy-armed soldier, a man-at-arms: and in this sense it would be understood in the oracle; "The sounding man-at-arms see thou bear in mind, and the earth-born dragon," &c.

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of Minerva. The poverty also of Lysander being discovered by his death, made his merit more manifest, since from so much wealth and power, from all the homage of the cities and of the Persian kingdom, he had not in the least degree, so far as money goes, taken means for any private splendour, as Theopompus in his history relates, to whom any one may rather give credit when he commends, than when he finds fault, as he likes better to blame than to praise. But subsequently, Ephorus says, some controversy arising at Sparta about

Plain of Sparta. (From an original sketch by Sir W. Gell, in the British Museum.)

some matter of the allies, which made it necessary to consult the writings which Lysander had kept by him, Agesilaus came to his house, and finding the book in which the oration on the Spartan constitution was written out, to the effect that the kingdom ought to be taken from the Eurypontida and Agiada and be offered in common, and a choice made out of the best citizens,

at first he was eager to make it public and to show his countrymen the real character of Lysander. But Lacratidas, a wise man and at that time chief of the Ephors, stopped Agesilaus, and said, they had better not dig up Lysander again, but rather bury with him such a plausible and dangerous speech. All the honours were paid him after his death; and moreover they imposed a fine upon those who had engaged to marry his daughters, and then, on his decease, when Lysander was found to be poor, had refused them; because when they thought him rich they had been observant of him, but now when his poverty had proved him just and good, forsook him. For there was, it seems, in Sparta a punishment for not marrying, for a late, and for a bad marriage; and to the last penalty those were most especially liable who sought alliances with the rich, instead of with the good and with their friends. Such is the account we have collected of Lysander.

R.

Coin of Ægina.