Lysander

But Daimachus, in his treatise On Religion, supports the view of Anaxagoras. He says that before the stone fell, for seventy-five days continually, there was seen in the heavens a fiery body of vast size, as if it had been a flaming cloud, not resting in one place, but moving along with intricate and irregular motions, so that fiery fragments, broken from it by its plunging and erratic course, were carried in all directions and flashed fire, just as shooting stars do.

But when it had fallen in that part of the earth, and the inhabitants, after recovering from their fear and amazement, were assembled about it, no action of fire was seen, nor even so much as a trace thereof, but a stone lying there, of large size, it is true, but one which bore almost no proportion at all to the fiery mass seen in the heavens. Well, then, that Daimachus must needs have indulgent readers, is clear;

but if his story is true, he refutes utterly those who affirm that a rock, which winds and tempests had torn from some mountain top, was caught up and borne along like a spinning top, and that at the point where the whirling impetus given to it first relaxed and ceased, there it plunged, and fell.

Unless, indeed, what was seen in the heavens for many days was really fire, the quenching and extinction of which produced a change in the air resulting in unusually violent winds and agitations, and these brought about the plunge of the stone. However, the minute discussion of this subject belongs to another kind of writing.

Lysander, after the three thousand Athenians whom he had taken prisoners had been condemned to death by the special council of allies, calling Philocles, their general, asked him what punishment he thought should be visited upon him for having given his fellow-citizens such counsel regarding Greeks.[*](See Plut. Lys. 9.5. According to Xenophon (Xen. Hell. 2.1.31 f.), however, the Athenians had passed a decree that, if victorious in the sea-fight, they would cut off the right hand of every prisoner; and the crime of Philocles was that he had ordered the crews of two captured triremes to be thrown over a precipice.)