and
also a Spartan governor in Athens. Under Lysander, the Lacedaemonian rule
was paramount in Greece. At one time, he had more power than any man in
Greece ever enjoyed. He undertook to change the government of the allied
cities, and there was scarcely a city in Greece where the Spartans had not
the ascendency. In most of the Ionian cities, and in all the cities which
had taken the side of Athens, there was a Spartan governor, so that when
Xenophon returned with his Ten Thousand to Asia Minor, he found he could
do nothing without the consent of the Spartan governors. Moreover, the
rule of Sparta was hostile to all democratic governments. She sought to
establish oligarchal institutions everywhere. Perhaps this difference
between Athens and Sparta respecting government was one great cause of tho
Peloponnesian war.

(M601) But the same envy which had once existed among the Grecian States
of the prosperity of Athens, was now turned upon Sparta. Her rule was
arrogant and hard and she in turn had to experience the humiliation of
revolt from her domination. "The allies of Sparta," says Grote,
"especially Corinth and Thebes, not only relented in their hatred of
Athens, now she had lost her power, but even sympathized with her
suffering exiles, and became disgusted with the self-willed encroachments
of Sparta; while the Spartan king, Pausanias, together with some of the
ephors, were also jealous of the arbitrary and oppressive conduct of
Lysander. He refused to prevent the revival of the democracy. It was in
this manner that Athens, rescued from that sanguinary and rapacious
_regime_ of the Thirty Tyrants, was enabled to reappear as a humble and
dependent member of the Spartan alliance--with nothing but the recollection
of her former power, yet with her democracy again in vigorous action for
internal government."

(M602) The victory of AEgospotami, which annihilated the Athenian navy,
ushered in the supremacy of Sparta, both on the land and sea, and all
Greece made submission to the ascendant power. Lysander established in
most of the cities an oligarchy of ten citizens, as well as a Spartan
harmost, or governor. Everywhere the Lysandrian dekarchy superseded the
previous governments, and ruled oppressively, like the Thirty at Athens,
with Critias at their head. And no justice could be obtained at Sparta
against the bad conduct of the harmosts who now domineered in every city.
Sparta had embroiled Greece in war to put down the