Lysander and Sulla both won by breaking the rules their cities liked to claim. Lysander ended the Peloponnesian War at Aegospotami and set oligarchies over Athens and her allies. Sulla marched on Rome, beat Mithridates, and came home to the proscriptions.

Plutarch finds the same ambition in both, and a cruelty in Sulla that goes past Lysander. Lysander wanted Sparta to lead Greece on his terms. Sulla wanted Rome afraid of him. Neither man, once he had won, knew how to stop.