And besides all this, their treatment of Athens is of some weight in a comparison of their characters. Sulla, after taking the city, although it had fought against him to support the power and supremacy of Mithridates, restored her to freedom and independence; whereas Lysander, although she had fallen from such a great supremacy and empire, showed her no pity, but took away her democratic form of government, and appointed most savage and lawless men to be her tyrants.