the new governor of all the seaboard districts, who was prepared to co-operate with the Lacedaemonians in war. He was the bearer, moreover, of a letter with the royal seal attached. It was addressed to all the populations of Lower Asia, and contained the following words: "I send down Cyrus as 'Karanos'" (1)--that is to say, supreme lord--"over all those who muster at Castolus." The ambassadors of the Athenians, even while listening to this announcement, and indeed after they had seen Cyrus, were still desirous, if possible, to continue their journey to the king, or, failing that, to return home. Cyrus, however, urged upon Pharnabazus either to deliver them up to himself, or to defer sending them home at present; his object being to prevent the Athenians learning what was going on. Pharnabazus, wishing to escape all blame, for the time being detained them, telling them, at one time, that he would presently escort them up country to the king, and at another time that he would send them safe home. But when three years had elapsed, he prayed Cyrus to let them go, declaring that he had taken an oath to bring them back to the sea, in default of escorting them up to the king.
Then at last they received safe conduct to Ariobarzanes, with orders for their further transportation. The latter conducted them a stage further, to Cius in Mysia; and from Cius they set sail to join their main armament.
(1) {Karanos.} Is this a Greek word, a Doric form, {karanos}, akin to {kara} (cf. {karenon}) = chief? or is it not more likely a Persian or native word, Karanos? and might not the title be akin conceivably to the word {korano}, which occurs on many Indo- Bactrian coins (see A. von Sallet, "Die Nachfolger Alexanders des Grossen," p. 57, etc.)? or is {koiranos} the connecting link? The words translated "that is to say, supreme lord," {to de karanon esti kurion}, look very like a commentator's gloss.
Alcibiades, whose chief desire was to return home to Athens with the troops, immediately set sail for Samos; and from that island, taking twenty of the ships, he sailed to the Ceramic Gulf of Caria, where he collected a hundred talents, and so returned to Samos.
Thrasybulus had gone Thrace-wards with thirty ships. In this quarter he reduced various places which had revolted to Lacedaemon, including the island of Thasos, which was in a bad plight, the result of wars, revolutions, and famine.
Thrasylus, with the rest of the army, sailed back straight to Athens.
On his arrival he found that the Athenians had already chosen as their general Alcibiades, who was still in exile, and Thrasybulus, who was also absent, and as a third, from among those at home, Conon.
Meanwhile Alcibiades, with the moneys lately collected and his fleet of twenty ships, left Samos and visited Paros. From Paros he stood out to sea across to Gytheum, (2) to keep an eye on the thirty ships of war which, as he was informed, the Lacedaemonians were equipping in that arsenal. Gytheum would also be a favourable point of observation from which to gauge the disposition of his fellow-countrymen and the prospects of his recall. When at length their good disposition seemed to him established, not only by his election as general, but by the messages of invitation which he received in private from his friends, he sailed home, and entered Piraeus on the very day of the festival of the Plunteria, (3) when the statue of Athena is veiled and screened from public gaze. This was a coincidence, as some thought, of evil omen, and unpropitious alike to himself and the State, for no Athenian would transact serious business on such a day.
(2) Gytheum, the port and arsenal of Sparta, situated near the head of the Laconian Gulf (now Marathonisi).
(3) {ta Plunteria}, or feast of washings, held on the 25th of the month Thargelion, when the image of the goddess Athena was stripped in order that her clothes might be washed by the Praxiergidae; neither assembly nor court was held on that day, and the Temple was closed.
As he sailed into the harbour, two great crowds--one from the Piraeus, the other from the city (4)--flocked to meet the vessels. Wonderment, mixed with a desire to see Alcibiades, was the prevailing sentiment of the multitude. Of him they spoke: some asserting that he was the best of citizens, and that in his sole instance banishment had been ill-deserved. He had been the victim of plots, hatched in the brains of people less able than himself, however much they might excel in pestilent speech; men whose one principle of statecraft was to look to their private gains; whereas this man's policy had ever been to uphold the common weal, as much by his private means as by all the power of the State. His own choice, eight years ago, when the charge of impiety in the matter of the mysteries was still fresh, would have been to submit to trial at once. It was his personal foes, who had succeeded in postponing that undeniably just procedure; who waited till his back was turned, and then robbed him of his fatherland. Then it was that, being made the very slave of circumstance, he was driven to court the men he hated most; and at a time when his own life was in daily peril, he must see his dearest friends and fellow-citizens, nay, the very State itself, bent on a suicidal course, and yet, in the exclusion of exile, be unable to lend a helping hand. "It is not men of this stamp," they averred, "who desire changes in affairs and revolution: had he not already guaranteed to him by the Democracy a position higher than that of his equals in age, and scarcely if at all inferior to his seniors? How different was the position of his enemies. It had been the fortune of these, though they were known to be the same men they had always been, to use their lately acquired power for the destruction in the first instance of the better classes; and then, being alone left surviving, to be accepted by their fellow-citizens in the absence of better men."
(4) Or, "collected to meet the vessels from curiosity and a desire to see Alcibiades."
Others, however, insisted that for all their past miseries and misfortunes Alcibiades alone was responsible: "If more trials were still in store for the State, here was the master mischief-maker ready at his post to precipitate them."
When the vessels came to their moorings, close to the land, Alcibiades, from fear of his enemies, was unwilling to disembark at once. Mounting on the quarterdeck, he scanned the multitude, (5) anxious to make certain of the presence of his friends. Presently his eyes lit upon Euryptolemus, the son of Peisianax, who was his cousin, and then on the rest of his relations and other friends. Upon this he landed, and so, in the midst of an escort ready to put down any attempt upon his person, made his way to the city.
(5) Or, "he looked to see if his friends were there."
In the Senate and Public Assembly (6) he made speeches, defending himself against the charge of impiety, and asserting that he had been the victim of injustice, with other like topics, which in the present temper of the assembly no one ventured to gainsay.
(6) Technically the "Boule" ({Boule}) or Senate, and "Ecclesia" or Popular Assembly.
He was then formally declared leader and chief of the State, with irresponsible powers, as being the sole individual capable of recovering the ancient power and prestige of Athens. Armed with this authority, his first act was to institute anew the processional march to Eleusis; for of late years, owing to the war, the Athenians had been forced to conduct the mysteries by sea. Now, at the head of the troops, he caused them to be conducted once again by land. This done, his next step was to muster an armament of one thousand five hundred heavy infantry, one hundred and fifty cavalry, and one hundred ships; and lastly, within three months of his return, he set sail for Andros, which had revolted from Athens.
The generals chosen to co-operate with him on land were Aristocrates and Adeimantus, the son of Leucophilides. He disembarked his troops on the island of Andros at Gaurium, and routed the Andrian citizens who sallied out from the town to resist the invader; forcing them to return and keep close within their walls, though the number who fell was not large.
This defeat was shared by some Lacedaemonians who were in the place.
Alcibiades erected a trophy, and after a few days set sail himself for Samos, which became his base of operations in the future conduct of the war.
V At a date not much earlier than that of the incidents just described, the Lacedaemonians had sent out Lysander as their admiral, in the place of Cratesippidas, whose period of office had expired. The new admiral first visited Rhodes, where he got some ships, and sailed to Cos and Miletus, and from the latter place to Ephesus. At Ephesus he waited with seventy sail, expecting the advent of Cyrus in Sardis, when he at once went up to pay the prince a visit with the ambassadors from Lacedaemon.
And now an opportunity was given to denounce the proceedings of Tissaphernes, and at the same time to beg Cyrus himself to show as much zeal as possible in the prosecution of the war. Cyrus replied that not only had he received express injunction from his father to the same effect, but that his own views coincided with their wishes, which he was determined to carry out to the letter. He had, he informed them, brought with him five hundred talents; (1) and if that sum failed, he had still the private revenue, which his father allowed him, to fall back upon, and when this resource was in its turn exhausted, he would coin the gold and silver throne on which he sat, into money for their benefit. (2) (1) About 120,000 pounds. One Euboic or Attic talent = sixty minae = six thousand drachmae = 243 pounds 15 shillings of our money.
(2) Cf. the language of Tissaphernes, Thuc. viii. 81.
His audience thanked him for what he said, and further begged him to fix the rate of payment for the seamen at one Attic drachma per man, (3) explaining that should this rate of payment be adopted, the sailors of the Athenians would desert, and in the end there would be a saving of expenditure. Cyrus complimented them on the soundness of their arguments, but said that it was not in his power to exceed the injunctions of the king. The terms of agreement were precise, thirty minae (4) a month per vessel to be given, whatever number of vessels the Lacedaemonians might choose to maintain.
(3) About 9 3/4 pence; a drachma (= six obols) would be very high pay for a sailor--indeed, just double the usual amount. See Thuc. vi.
8 and viii. 29, and Prof. Jowett ad loc. Tissaphernes had, in the winter of 412 B.C., distributed one month's pay among the Peloponnesian ships at this high rate of a drachma a day, "as his envoy had promised at Lacedaemon;" but this he proposed to reduce to half a drachma, "until he had asked the king's leave, promising that if he obtained it, he would pay the entire drachma. On the remonstrance, however, of Hermocrates, the Syracusan general, he promised to each man a payment of somewhat more than three obols."
(4) Nearly 122 pounds; and thirty minae a month to each ship (the crew of each ship being taken at two hundred) = three obols a day to each man. The terms of agreement to which Cyrus refers may have been specified in the convention mentioned above in chap. iv, which Boeotius and the rest were so proud to have obtained. But see Grote, "Hist. of Greece," vol. viii. p. 192 note (2d ed.)
To this rejoinder Lysander at the moment said nothing. But after dinner, when Cyrus drank to his health, asking him "What he could do to gratify him most?" Lysander replied, "Add an obol (5) to the sailors' pay."
After this the pay was raised to four instead of three obols, as it hitherto had been. Nor did the liberality of Cyrus end here; he not only paid up all arrears, but further gave a month's pay in advance, so that, if the enthusiasm of the army had been great before, it was greater than ever now. The Athenians when they heard the news were proportionately depressed, and by help of Tissaphernes despatched ambassadors to Cyrus.
That prince, however, refused to receive them, nor were the prayers of Tissaphernes of any avail, however much he insisted that Cyrus should adopt the policy which he himself, on the advice of Alcibiades, had persistently acted on. This was simply not to suffer any single Hellenic state to grow strong at the expense of the rest, but to keep them all weak alike, distracted by internecine strife.
(5) An obol = one-sixth of a drachma; the Attic obol = rather more than 1 1/2 pence.
Lysander, now that the organisation of his navy was arranged to his satisfaction, beached his squadron of ninety vessels at Ephesus, and sat with hands folded, whilst the vessels dried and underwent repairs.
Alcibiades, being informed that Thrasybulus had come south of the Hellespont and was fortifying Phocaea, sailed across to join him, leaving his own pilot Antiochus in command of the fleet, with orders not to attack Lysander's fleet. Antiochus, however, was tempted to leave Notium and sail into the harbour of Ephesus with a couple of ships, his own and another, past the prows of Lysander's squadron. The Spartan at first contented himself with launching a few of his ships, and started in pursuit of the intruder; but when the Athenians came out with other vessels to assist Antiochus, he formed his whole squadron into line of battle, and bore down upon them, whereupon the Athenians followed suit, and getting their remaining triremes under weigh at Notium, stood out to sea as fast as each vessel could clear the point. (6) Thus it befell in the engagement which ensued, that while the enemy was in due order, the Athenians came up in scattered detachments and without concert, and in the end were put to flight with the loss of fifteen ships of war. Of the crews, indeed, the majority escaped, though a certain number fell into the hands of the enemy. Then Lysander collected his vessels, and having erected a trophy on Cape Notium, sailed across to Ephesus, whilst the Athenians retired to Samos.
(6) {os ekastos enoixen}, for this nautical term see above.
On his return to Samos a little later, Alcibiades put out to sea with the whole squadron in the direction of the harbour of Ephesus. At the mouth of the harbour he marshalled his fleet in battle order, and tried to tempt the enemy to an engagement; but as Lysander, conscious of his inferiority in numbers, refused to accept the challenge, he sailed back again to Samos. Shortly after this the Lacedaemonians captured Delphinium and Eion. (7) (7) This should probably be Teos, in Ionia, in spite of the MSS.
{'Eiona}. The place referred to cannot at any rate be the wellknown Eion at the mouth of the Strymon in Thrace.
But now the news of the late disaster at Notium had reached the Athenians at home, and in their indignation they turned upon Alcibiades, to whose negligence and lack of self-command they attributed the destruction of the ships. Accordingly they chose ten new generals--namely Conon, Diomedon, Leon, Pericles, Erasinides, Aristocrates, Archestratus, Protomachus, Thrasylus, and Aristogenes.
Alcibiades, who was moreover in bad odour in the camp, sailed away with a single trireme to his private fortress in the Chersonese.
After this Conon, in obedience to a decree of the Athenian people, set sail from Andros with the twenty vessels under his command in that island to Samos, and took command of the whole squadron. To fill the place thus vacated by Conon, Phanosthenes was sent to Andros with four ships. That captain was fortunate enough to intercept and capture two Thurian ships of war, crews and all, and these captives were all imprisoned by the Athenians, with the exception of their leader Dorieus.
He was the Rhodian, who some while back had been banished from Athens and from his native city by the Athenians, when sentence of death was passed upon him and his family. This man, who had once enjoyed the right of citizenship among them, they now took pity on and released him without ransom.
When Conon had reached Samos he found the armament in a state of great despondency. Accordingly his first measure was to man seventy ships with their full complement, instead of the former hundred and odd vessels.
With this squadron he put to sea accompanied by the other generals, and confined himself to making descents first at one point and then at another of the enemy's territory, and to collecting plunder.
And so the year drew to its close: a year signalled further by an invasion of Sicily by the Carthaginians, with one hundred and twenty ships of war and a land force of one hundred and twenty thousand men, which resulted in the capture of Agrigentum. The town was finally reduced to famine after a siege of seven months, the invaders having previously been worsted in battle and forced to sit down before its walls for so long a time.
VI B.C. 406. In the following year--the year of the evening eclipse of the moon, and the burning of the old temple of Athena (1) at Athens (2)--the Lacedaemonians sent out Callicratidas to replace Lysander, whose period of office had now expired. (3) Lysander, when surrendering the squadron to his successor, spoke of himself as the winner of a sea fight, which had left him in undisputed mastery of the sea, and with this boast he handed over the ships to Callicratidas, who retorted, "If you will convey the fleet from Ephesus, keeping Samos (4) on your right" (that is, past where the Athenian navy lay), "and hand it over to me at Miletus, I will admit that you are master of the sea." But Lysander had no mind to interfere in the province of another officer. Thus Callicratidas assumed responsibility. He first manned, in addition to the squadron which he received from Lysander, fifty new vessels furnished by the allies from Chios and Rhodes and elsewhere. When all these contingents were assembled, they formed a total of one hundred and forty sail, and with these he began making preparations for engagement with the enemy. But it was impossible for him not to note the strong current of opposition which he encountered from the friends of Lysander.
Not only was there lack of zeal in their service, but they openly disseminated an opinion in the States, that it was the greatest possible blunder on the part of the Lacedaemonians so to change their admirals.
Of course, they must from time to time get officers altogether unfit for the post--men whose nautical knowledge dated from yesterday, and who, moreover, had no notion of dealing with human beings. It would be very odd if this practice of sending out people ignorant of the sea and unknown to the folk of the country did not lead to some catastrophe.
Callicratidas at once summoned the Lacedaemonians there present, and addressed them in the following terms:-- (1) I.e. as some think, the Erechtheion, which was built partly on the site of the old temple of Athena Polias, destroyed by the Persians. According to Dr. Dorpfeld, a quite separate building of the Doric order, the site of which (S. of the Erechtheion) has lately been discovered.
(2) The MSS. here add "in the ephorate of Pityas and the archonship of Callias at Athens;" but though the date is probably correct (cf.
Leake, "Topography of Athens," vol. i. p. 576 foll.), the words are almost certainly a gloss.
(3) Here the MSS. add "with the twenty-fourth year of the war," probably an annotator's gloss; the correct date should be twenty- (4) Lit. on the left (or east) of Samos, looking south from Ephesus.
"For my part," he said, "I am content to stay at home: and if Lysander or any one else claim greater experience in nautical affairs than I possess, I have no desire to block his path. Only, being sent out by the State to take command of this fleet, I do not know what is left to me, save to carry out my instructions to the best of my ability. For yourselves, all I beg of you, in reference to my personal ambitions and the kind of charges brought against our common city, and of which you are as well aware as I am, is to state what you consider to be the best course: am I to stay where I am, or shall I sail back home, and explain the position of affairs out here?"
No one ventured to suggest any other course than that he should obey the authorities, and do what he was sent to do. Callicratidas then went up to the court of Cyrus to ask for further pay for the sailors, but the answer he got from Cyrus was that he should wait for two days.
Callicratidas was annoyed at the rebuff: to dance attendance at the palace gates was little to his taste. In a fit of anger he cried out at the sorry condition of the Hellenes, thus forced to flatter the barbarian for the sake of money. "If ever I get back home," he added, "I will do what in me lies to reconcile the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians." And so he turned and sailed back to Miletus. From Miletus he sent some triremes to Lacedaemon to get money, and convoking the public assembly of the Milesians, addressed them thus:-- "Men of Miletus, necessity is laid upon me to obey the rulers at home; but for yourselves, whose neighbourhood to the barbarians has exposed you to many evils at their hands, I only ask you to let your zeal in the war bear some proportion to your former sufferings. You should set an example to the rest of the allies, and show us how to inflict the sharpest and swiftest injury on our enemy, whilst we await the return from Lacedaemon of my envoys with the necessary funds. Since one of the last acts of Lysander, before he left us, was to hand back to Cyrus the funds already on the spot, as though we could well dispense with them. I was thus forced to turn to Cyrus, but all I got from him was a series of rebuffs; he refused me an audience, and, for my part, I could not induce myself to hang about his gates like a mendicant. But I give you my word, men of Miletus, that in return for any assistance which you can render us while waiting for these aids, I will requite you richly. Only by God's help let us show these barbarians that we do not need to worship them, in order to punish our foes."
The speech was effective; many members of the assembly arose, and not the least eagerly those who were accused of opposing him. These, in some terror, proposed a vote of money, backed by offers of further private contributions. Furnished with these sums, and having procured from Chios a further remittance of five drachmas (5) a piece as outfit for each seaman, he set sail to Methyma in Lesbos, which was in the hands of the enemy. But as the Methymnaeans were not disposed to come over to him (since there was an Athenian garrison in the place, and the men at the head of affairs were partisans of Athens), he assaulted and took the place by storm. All the property within accordingly became the spoil of the soldiers. The prisoners were collected for sale by Callicratidas in the market-place, where, in answer to the demand of the allies, who called upon him to sell the Methymnaeans also, he made answer, that as long as he was in command, not a single Hellene should be enslaved if he could help it. The next day he set at liberty the free-born captives; the Athenian garrison with the captured slaves he sold. (6) To Conon he sent word:--He would put a stop to his strumpeting the sea. (7) And catching sight of him, as he put out to sea, at break of day, he gave chase, hoping to cut him off from his passage to Samos, and prevent his taking refuge there.
(5) About 4d.
(6) Grote, "Hist. of Greece," vol. viii. p. 224 (2d ed.), thinks that Callicratidas did not even sell the Athenian garrison, as if the sense of the passage were: "The next day he set at liberty the free-born captives with the Athenian garrison, contenting himself with selling the captive slaves." But I am afraid that no ingenuity of stopping will extract that meaning from the Greek words, which are, {te d' usteraia tous men eleutherous apheke tous de ton 'Athenaion phrourous kai ta andrapoda ta doula panta apedoto}. To spare the Athenian garrison would have been too extraordinary a proceeding even for Callicratidas. The idea probably never entered his head. It was sufficiently noble for him to refuse to sell the Methymnaeans. See the remarks of Mr. W. L.
Newman, "The Pol. of Aristotle," vol. i. p. 142.
(7) I.e. the sea was Sparta's bride.
But Conon, aided by the sailing qualities of his fleet, the rowers of which were the pick of several ships' companies, concentrated in a few vessels, made good his escape, seeking shelter within the harbour of Mitylene in Lesbos, and with him two of the ten generals, Leon and Erasinides. Callicratidas, pursuing him with one hundred and seventy sail, entered the harbour simultaneously; and Conon thus hindered from further or final escape by the too rapid movements of the enemy, was forced to engage inside the harbour, and lost thirty of his ships, though the crews escaped to land. The remaining, forty in number, he hauled up under the walls of the town. Callicratidas, on his side, came to moorings in the harbour; and, having command of the exit, blocked the Athenian within. His next step was to send for the Methymnaeans in force by land, and to transport his army across from Chios. Money also came to him from Cyrus.
Conon, finding himself besieged by land and sea, without means of providing himself with corn from any quarter, the city crowded with inhabitants, and aid from Athens, whither no news of the late events could be conveyed, impossible, launched two of the fastest sailing vessels of his squadron. These he manned, before daybreak, with the best rowers whom he could pick out of the fleet, stowing away the marines at the same time in the hold of the ships and closing the port shutters.
Every day for four days they held out in this fashion, but at evening as soon as it was dark he disembarked his men, so that the enemy might not suspect what they were after. On the fifth day, having got in a small stock of provisions, when it was already mid-day and the blockaders were paying little or no attention, and some of them even were taking their siesta, the two ships sailed out of the harbour: the one directing her course towards the Hellespont, whilst her companion made for the open sea. Then, on the part of the blockaders, there was a rush to the scene of action, as fast as the several crews could get clear of land, in bustle and confusion, cutting away the anchors, and rousing themselves from sleep, for, as chance would have it, they had been breakfasting on shore. Once on board, however, they were soon in hot pursuit of the ship which had started for the open sea, and ere the sun dipped they overhauled her, and after a successful engagement attached her by cables and towed her back into harbour, crew and all. Her comrade, making for the Hellespont, escaped, and eventually reached Athens with news of the blockade. The first relief was brought to the blockaded fleet by Diomedon, who anchored with twelve vessels in the Mitylenaean Narrows.
(8) But a sudden attack of Callicratidas, who bore down upon him without warning, cost him ten of his vessels, Diomedon himself escaping with his own ship and one other.
(8) Or, "Euripus."
Now that the position of affairs, including the blockade, was fully known at Athens, a vote was passed to send out a reinforcement of one hundred and ten ships. Every man of ripe age, (9) whether slave or free, was impressed for this service, so that within thirty days the whole one hundred and ten vessels were fully manned and weighed anchor. Amongst those who served in this fleet were also many of the knights. (10) The fleet at once stood out across to Samos, and picked up the Samian vessels in that island. The muster-roll was swelled by the addition of more than thirty others from the rest of the allies, to whom the same principle of conscription applied, as also it did to the ships already engaged on foreign service. The actual total, therefore, when all the contingents were collected, was over one hundred and fifty vessels.
(9) I.e. from eighteen to sixty years.
(10) See Boeckh. "P. E. A." Bk. II. chap. xxi. p. 263 (Eng. trans.)
Callicratidas, hearing that the relief squadron had already reached Samos, left fifty ships, under command of Eteonicus, in the harbour of Mitylene, and setting sail with the other one hundred and twenty, hove to for the evening meal off Cape Malea in Lesbos, opposite Mitylene. It so happened that the Athenians on this day were supping on the islands of Arginusae, which lie opposite Lesbos. In the night the Spartan not only saw their watch-fires, but received positive information that "these were the Athenians;" and about midnight he got under weigh, intending to fall upon them suddenly. But a violent downpour of rain with thunder and lightning prevented him putting out to sea. By daybreak it had cleared, and he sailed towards Arginusae. On their side, the Athenian squadron stood out to meet him, with their left wing facing towards the open sea, and drawn up in the following order:--Aristocrates, in command of the left wing, with fifteen ships, led the van; next came Diomedon with fifteen others, and immediately in rear of Aristocrates and Diomedon respectively, as their supports, came Pericles and Erasinides. Parallel with Diomedon were the Samians, with their ten ships drawn up in single line, under the command of a Samian officer named Hippeus. Next to these came the ten vessels of the taxiarchs, also in single line, and supporting them, the three ships of the navarchs, with any other allied vessels in the squadron. The right wing was entrusted to Protomachus with fifteen ships, and next to him (on the extreme right) was Thrasylus with another division of fifteen.
Protomachus was supported by Lysias with an equal number of ships, and Thrasylus by Aristogenes. The object of this formation was to prevent the enemy from manouvring so as to break their line by striking them amidships, (11) since they were inferior in sailing power.
(11) Lit. "by the diekplous." Cf. Thuc. i. 49, and Arnold's note, who says: "The 'diecplus' was a breaking through the enemy's line in order by a rapid turning of the vessel to strike the enemy's ship on the side or stern, where it was most defenceless, and so to sink it." So, it seems, "the superiority of nautical skill has passed," as Grote (viii. p. 234) says, "to the Peloponnesians and their allies." Well may the historian add, "How astonished would the Athenian Admiral Phormion have been, if he could have witnessed the fleets and the order of battle at Arginusae!" See Thuc. iv. 11.
The Lacedaemonians, on the contrary, trusting to their superior seamanship, were formed opposite with their ships all in single line, with the special object of manouvring so as either to break the enemy's line or to wheel round them. Callicratidas commanded the right wing in person. Before the battle the officer who acted as his pilot, the Megarian Hermon, suggested that it might be well to withdraw the fleet as the Athenian ships were far more numerous. But Callicratidas replied that Sparta would be no worse off even if he personally should perish, but to flee would be disgraceful. (12) And now the fleets approached, and for a long space the battle endured. At first the vessels were engaged in crowded masses, and later on in scattered groups. At length Callicratidas, as his vessel dashed her beak into her antagonist, was hurled off into the sea and disappeared. At the same instant Protomachus, with his division on the right, had defeated the enemy's left, and then the flight of the Peloponnesians began towards Chios, though a very considerable body of them made for Phocaea, whilst the Athenians sailed back again to Arginusae. The losses on the side of the Athenians were twenty-five ships, crews and all, with the exception of the few who contrived to reach dry land. On the Peloponnesian side, nine out of the ten Lacedaemonian ships, and more than sixty belonging to the rest of the allied squadron, were lost.
(12) For the common reading, {oikeitai}, which is ungrammatical, various conjectures have been made, e.g.
{oikieitai} = "would be none the worse off for citizens," {oikesetai} = "would be just as well administered without him," but as the readings and their renderings are alike doubtful, I have preferred to leave the matter vague. Cf. Cicero, "De Offic."
After consultation the Athenian generals agreed that two captains of triremes, Theramenes and Thrasybulus, accompanied by some of the taxiarchs, should take forty-seven ships and sail to the assistance of the disabled fleet and of the men on board, whilst the rest of the squadron proceeded to attack the enemy's blockading squadron under Eteonicus at Mitylene. In spite of their desire to carry out this resolution, the wind and a violent storm which arose prevented them. So they set up a trophy, and took up their quarters for the night. As to Etenoicus, the details of the engagement were faithfully reported to him by the express despatch-boat in attendance. On receipt of the news, however, he sent the despatch-boat out again the way she came, with an injunction to those on board of her to sail off quickly without exchanging a word with any one. Then on a sudden they were to return garlanded with wreaths of victory and shouting "Callicratidas has won a great sea fight, and the whole Athenian squadron is destroyed." This they did, and Eteonicus, on his side, as soon as the despatch-boat came sailing in, proceeded to offer sacrifice of thanksgiving in honour of the good news. Meanwhile he gave orders that the troops were to take their evening meal, and that the masters of the trading ships were silently to stow away their goods on board the merchant ships and make sail as fast as the favourable breeze could speed them to Chios. The ships of war were to follow suit with what speed they might. This done, he set fire to his camp, and led off the land forces to Methymna. Conon, finding the enemy had made off, and the wind had grown comparatively mild, (13) got his ships afloat, and so fell in with the Athenian squadron, which had by this time set out from Arginusae. To these he explained the proceedings of Eteonicus. The squadron put into Mitylene, and from Mitylene stood across to Chios, and thence, without effecting anything further, sailed back to Samos.
(13) Or, "had changed to a finer quarter."
VII All the above-named generals, with the exception of Conon, were presently deposed by the home authorities. In addition to Conon two new generals were chosen, Adeimantus and Philocles. Of those concerned in