a Spartan admiral and statesman who was very influential during the final years of the Peloponnesian War and for the decade following. He was thought to be the son of a helot mother and a Spartan father. It is not known how he rose to eminence: he first appears as admiral of the Spartan navy in 407 B.C., and two years later, he led the Spartans to a decisive victory at Aegospotami, and then blockaded the harbor at Athens until their surrender a year later. By 404 B.C. he was the most powerful man in the Greek world and set about completing the task of building up a Spartan empire. He was very influential in the replacement of democratic governments throughout Greece, with oligarchies under the control of Spartan governors.
But Lysander’s boundless influence, and the honours paid him, roused the jealousy of the kings and the ephors, and, on being accused by the Persian satrap Pharnabazus, he was recalled to Sparta. Soon afterwards he was sent to Athens with an army to aid the oligarchs, but Pausanias, one of the kings, followed him and brought about a restoration of democracy. On the death of Agis II., Lysander secured the succession of Agesilaus, whom he hoped to find amenable to his influence. But in this he was disappointed. Though chosen to accompany the king to Asia as one of his thirty advisers, he was kept inactive and his influence was broken by studied affronts, and finally he was sent at his own request as envoy to the Hellespont. He soon returned to Sparta to mature plans for overthrowing the hereditary kingship and substituting an elective monarchy, but his efforts were fruitless, and his schemes were cut short by the outbreak of war with Thebes. In 395 B.C., Lysander invaded Boeotia from the west, receiving the submission of Orchomenus and sacking Lebadea, but the enemy intercepted his despatch to Pausanias, who had meanwhile entered Boeotia from the south, containing plans for a joint attack upon Haliartus. The town was at once strongly garrisoned, and when Lysander marched against it he was defeated and slain. He was buried in the territory of Panopeus, the nearest Phocian city. An able commander and an adroit diplomatist, Lysander was fired by the ambition to make Sparta supreme in Greece and himself in Sparta. To this end he shrank from no treachery or cruelty; yet, like Agesilaus, he was totally free from the characteristic Spartan vice of avarice, and died, as he had lived, a poor man.
—Adapted from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.
A History of Warfare 