is the decision of the Lacedaemonian government. Throw
down the walls of Peiraeus and the Long Walls. Withdraw from all other
cities and occupy your own land, and then you may have peace, if you
wish for it, allowing likewise your exiles to return. With regard to
the number of the ships, whatever be judged necessary by those on the
spot, that do."

The Athenians accepted these terms, by the advice of Theramenes the
son of Hagnon: and on this occasion it is said that when he was asked
by Kleomenes, one of the younger orators, how he dared to act and
speak against what Themistokles had done, by giving up to the
Lacedaemonians those walls which Themistokles had built in spite of
them, he answered, "My boy, I am doing nothing contrary to
Themistokles; for these same walls he built up to save his countrymen,
and we will throw them down to save them. Indeed, if walls made a city
prosperous, then ought Sparta, which has none, to be the most
miserable of all."

XV. Now Lysander, after taking all the fleet of the Athenians except
twelve ships, and having taken possession of their walls, began to
take measures for the subversion of their political constitution, on
the sixteenth day of the month Munychion, the same day on which they
had defeated the Persians in the sea-fight at Salamis. As they were
greatly grieved at this, and were loth to obey him, he sent word to
the people that the city had broken the terms of its capitulation,
because their walls were standing although the time within which they
ought to have been destroyed had elapsed. He therefore would make an
entirely new decision about their fate, because they had broken the
treaty. Some writers say that he actually consulted the allies about
the advisability of selling the whole population for slaves, in which
debate the Theban Erianthus proposed to destroy the city and make the
site of it a sheep walk. Afterwards, however, when the generals were
drinking together a Phokian sang the first song in the Elektra of
Euripides, which begins with the words--

"Elektra, Agamemnon's child,
I reach thy habitation wild."

At this their hearts were touched, and it appeared to them to be a
shameful deed to destroy so famous a city, and one which had produced
such great men. After this, as the Athenians agreed to everything that
Lysander proposed, he sent for a number of flute-players out of the
city, collected all those in his camp, and destroyed the walls and
burned