The Classical Art of Command by Joseph Roisman

Author:Joseph Roisman
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 12 The Athlit ram. A bronze ram of a trireme or a larger ship was found on the coast of Athlit, Israel, and is currently on display at the National Maritime Museum, Haifa. It weighs 465 kilograms and was made in the second century. Three-pronged rams like the one in the picture were already being used at the end of the fifth century. Photograph by Oren Rozen.

Aegospotami made Lysander one of Greece’s most notable generals. His thorough preparation allowed him to win an easy, almost anticlimactic victory. He made excellent use of his military intelligence about the enemy’s strength, its location, and its state of mind (which he skillfully manipulated). At Aegospotami he exploited on a larger and more challenging scale his previously demonstrated ability to surprise the enemy and to combine land and sea attacks. And, unlike his opponents, he was in full control of his men, despite their large numbers. Yet Lysander would not have won this victory without the “cooperation” of an enemy that suffered from poor generalship, organization, and discipline. In this piece of luck, he resembled many other great generals who benefitted from their adversaries’ failings. His victory and the ways he attained it inspired imitation in other commanders, including Dionysius of Syracuse, as we shall see.

After the battle, Lysander addressed two immediate tasks: spreading the word and dealing with the prisoners. As soon as the battle was over, he sent to Sparta a fast ship decked with arms and booty to announce his victory. It arrived three days later. He also celebrated his triumphant return to Lampsacus with hymns and victory songs. His reported treatment of the prisoners was in horrible contrast. He called in his allies and asked them what to do with the Athenian captives. Since his council was made up of Athens’ enemies, he must have had a good idea what the answer would be. They wanted revenge for the Athenians’ drowning of the crews of two enemy ships earlier in the war. They also charged the Athenian general Philocles, now a prisoner, with proposing before the battle to cut off the right hand (or in another version, the thumb) of enemies captured alive. They voted unanimously to execute the prisoners. (Years later, in 335, Alexander the Great would similarly call the enemies of Thebes to decide its fate. They voted to destroy it, and Alexander, like Lysander, pretended to be a mere instrument in executing their verdict.) Late sources report the killing of between 3,000 and 4,000 Athenians, and add that Lysander prevented their burial. There are good reasons to suspect the largely unprecedented figures and (even more strongly) the ban on burial, yet the executions reflect the ugly temperament of the times and Lysander’s cruel streak, revealed earlier in Caria. Philocles was put to the sword, but another Athenian general, Adeimantus, was spared for opposing Philocles’ aforementioned motion. Unwilling to admit their own failings, the Athenians attributed Adeimantus’ survival to an alleged betrayal on his part.31

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