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Proud Athens, which had once gorged itself on the fruits of its empire, now starved.
Sallow-faced and trembling, the Athenians begged Lysander to lift his siege.
To make sure that Athens would always remain at his mercy,
Lysander tore down the long walls to the mocking music of flute girls.
Lysander finally had his victory, and he made sure it was never forgotten:
at Delphi, the center of the Greek world, he had himself sculpted in bronze.
But — as you must have learned by now — great men rarely meet great ends.
And before long, Lysander was dead,
his legacy scorned by the kings he served,
his memory blackened with accusations of arrogance, violence, and greed.
You might think that after spending nearly three decades at war,
the Greeks would settle down, at least for a little while.
Alas, they were at each other’s throats again soon enough,
endless configurations of cities in alliances and leagues and empires,
fighting for gold or territory or honor, or sometimes for no good reason at all.
No, the Greeks would never stand together by choice,
only by necessity — or compulsion.
And indeed, the day would soon come when unity would be forced upon them,
by a man whose cunning eclipsed Themistocles, whose swiftness was greater than Brasidas,
whose ruthlessness was beyond even Lysander,
and whose ambitions were a match for any king who ever lived.
But I grow weary now.
Return on the morrow, and I shall continue our tale.