XXV. First then he proposed to endeavour to win over his countrymen to his views by his own powers of persuasion, and with this object studied an oration written for him by Kleon of Halikarnassus. Soon, however, he perceived that so new and important a scheme of reform would require more violent means to carry it into effect, and, just as in plays supernatural machinery is resorted to where ordinary human means would fail to produce the wished-for termination, even so did Lysander invent oracular responses and prophecies and bring them to bear on the minds of his countrymen, feeling that he would gain but little by pronouncing Kleon's oration, unless the Spartans had previously, by superstition and religious terrors, been brought into a state of feeling suitable for its reception. Ephorus relates in his history that Lysander endeavoured by means of one Pherekles to bribe the priestess at Delphi, and afterwards those of Dodona; and that, as this attempt failed, he himself went to the oracle of Ammon and had an interview with the priests there, to whom he offered a large sum of money. They also indignantly refused to aid his schemes, and sent an embassy to Sparta to charge him with having attempted to corrupt them. He was tried and acquitted, upon which the Libyans, as they were leaving the country, said:--"We at any rate, O Spartans, will give more righteous judgments when you come to dwell amongst us"--for there is an ancient oracle which says that the Lacedæmonians shall some day settle in Libya. Now as to the whole framework of Lysander's plot, which was of no ordinary kind, and did not take its rise from accidental circumstances, but consisted, like a mathematical demonstration, of many complicated intrigues all tending to one fixed point, I will give a short abstract of it extracted from the works of Ephorus, who was both an historian and a philosopher.