m his success, and yet
continue to be ruled by men of no better family than himself. He
meditated, therefore, the abolition of the exclusive right to the
throne possessed by these two families, and throwing it open to all
the descendants of Herakles, or even, according to some historians, to
all Spartans alike, in order that the crown might not belong to the
descendants of Herakles, but to those who were judged to be like
Herakles in glory, which had raised Herakles himself to a place among
the gods themselves. If the throne were disposed of in this manner he
imagined that no Spartan would be chosen king before himself.

XXV. First then he proposed to endeavour to win over his countrymen to
his views by his own powers of persuasion, and with this object
studied an oration written for him by Kleon of Halikarnassus. Soon,
however, he perceived that so new and important a scheme of reform
would require more violent means to carry it into effect, and, just as
in plays supernatural machinery is resorted to where ordinary human
means would fail to produce the wished-for termination, even so did
Lysander invent oracular responses and prophecies and bring them to
bear on the minds of his countrymen, feeling that he would gain but
little by pronouncing Kleon's oration, unless the Spartans had
previously, by superstition and religious terrors, been brought into a
state of feeling suitable for its reception. Ephorus relates in his
history that Lysander endeavoured by means of one Pherekles to bribe
the priestess at Delphi, and afterwards those of Dodona; and that, as
this attempt failed, he himself went to the oracle of Ammon and had an
interview with the priests there, to whom he offered a large sum of
money. They also indignantly refused to aid his schemes, and sent an
embassy to Sparta to charge him with having attempted to corrupt them.
He was tried and acquitted, upon which the Libyans, as they were
leaving the country, said:--"We at any rate, O Spartans, will give
more righteous judgments when you come to dwell amongst us"--for there
is an ancient oracle which says that the Lacedaemonians shall some day
settle in Libya. Now as to the whole framework of Lysander's plot,
which was of no ordinary kind, and did not take its rise from
accidental circumstances, but consisted, like a mathematical
demonstration, of many complicated intrigues all tending to one fixed
point, I will give a short abstract of it extracted from the works