Plutarch closes the paired Lives of Lysander and Sulla with a formal synkrisis judging the Spartan admiral more restrained and law-abiding, the Roman dictator more successful in war but ruinously tyrannical at home.
This short comparison essay is the formal pendant to Plutarch's paired biographies of the Spartan admiral Lysander and the Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Rather than narrate new events, Plutarch weighs the two men point by point against each other: how each rose to power, how each treated his own city's laws, how each handled money and pleasure, and how each performed in war. He grants that both began their ascents from ordinary starting points, but insists the manner of their rise differed sharply — Lysander held office through lawful consent in a still-healthy Sparta, while Sulla's dominance was a symptom of a Rome already diseased by civil strife.
The comparison unfolds as a series of contrasts. On politics, Plutarch credits Lysander with seeking to reform Sparta's kingship by persuasion rather than force, and faults Sulla for ten years of unbroken armed rule as consul and dictator alike. On personal conduct, he finds Lysander abstemious with money and pleasure even as he indulged his friends' ambitions to the point of murder, while Sulla legislated public morality while indulging his own adulteries and squandered Rome's treasury on flatterers. On generalship, the balance tips the other way: Sulla's battlefield record — against Marius, Mithridates, and the Italian rebels — dwarfs Lysander's two naval victories and the siege of Athens, and Plutarch singles out Lysander's reckless, undignified death outside the walls of Haliartus as unworthy of a Spartan king. The essay closes by praising Sulla's refusal to treat with Mithridates until Rome's interests were secured, and his decision to spare a free Athens, against Lysander's harsher settlement that installed the Thirty Tyrants.
Historically, this synkrisis matters because it is Plutarch's own key to reading the preceding Lives: not neutral narrative but moral pedagogy, built to make Greek and Roman readers measure their own civic virtues against each other. It captures, in miniature, the essential program of the Parallel Lives — character revealed through paired action — and it preserves Plutarch's own verdict, stated almost as an axiom, that the two men should be ranked separately: Sulla first for achievement and self-command over adversity, Lysander for having done comparatively less wrong.
“It was common to both of them that they rose to greatness beginning from themselves; but it was peculiar to Lysander that he received all the offices he held with the consent and while the citizens were of sound mind, and that he used no force against unwilling men nor exerted power contrary to the laws.”
— Comparison Of Lysander With Sylla
“I do not blame the man who managed to gain the greatest power amid such conditions, but I do not take it as a sign of being the best man that one became first when the city was faring so wickedly; whereas the other, sent out from Sparta at a time when she was most law-abiding and most sound of mind, to the greatest commands and enterprises, was judged, one might almost say, best of the best and first of the first.”
— Comparison Of Lysander With Sylla
“Lysander appears to have done nothing licentious or boyish amid so great a scope of power and authority, but, if any man ever did, escaped that proverb turned about, "lions at home, but foxes abroad"”
— Comparison Of Lysander With Sylla
“In the contests of war, in generalship, in the number of trophies and the greatness of the dangers, Sylla is beyond comparison.”
— Comparison Of Lysander With Sylla
“It is time, then, to consider whether we do not stray far from the truth in declaring that Sylla achieved more successes and Lysander committed fewer wrongs, and in assigning to the one the first place for self-control and moderation, to the other for generalship and courage.”
— Comparison Of Lysander With Sylla
A synkrisis is a formal comparison essay Plutarch appends to most paired biographies, weighing the two subjects against each other point by point on politics, character, and achievement. This one closes the Lysander-Sulla pair by explicitly ranking the two men on separate axes rather than declaring a single overall winner.
Plutarch refuses a single verdict. He assigns Lysander "the first place for self-control and moderation" and Sulla the first place "for generalship and courage," explicitly framing the comparison's final question as whether that split judgment is fair rather than settling on one winner.
Plutarch says Lysander was cut down by ordinary men sallying out from the walls of Haliartus, having pushed forward recklessly out of anger and ambition rather than waiting for reinforcements — a death he contrasts unfavorably with the deaths of true kings like Cleombrotus at Leuctra.
Plutarch argues Sulla's dominance was a symptom of a Rome already diseased by civil strife, where power was seized by force and bribery generally, so gaining supreme power there is not proof of being the best man, even if Sulla is not blamed for taking advantage of the conditions.
Lysander is credited with returning gifts to Sparta and living a disciplined, unacquisitive life, while Sulla emptied Rome's treasury lavishing wealth on flatterers and drinking-companions even as he passed laws demanding moderation from ordinary citizens.
Sulla took Athens by hard fighting and, despite the city having fought against him, released it free and self-governing. Lysander took Athens by starving it into surrender and instead abolished its democracy, installing what Plutarch calls "the most savage and lawless of tyrants," the Thirty.
No. He notes both men committed injustices connected to friends, but draws a distinction: Lysander's wrongs were mostly committed on behalf of companions seeking power, while Sulla's included destroying his own friends and allies out of jealousy, such as ordering Lucretius Ofella killed before his eyes.
It shows Plutarch's method in miniature: pairing a Greek and Roman figure not to declare a champion but to isolate distinct virtues and vices, using the two lives as mirrors that make each subject's character more legible than either would be alone.
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