|
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;[28] 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.[29]
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,[30] 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[31] a month per vessel to be given, whatever number of vessels
the Lacedaemonians might choose to maintain.
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[32] 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.
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.[33] 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.
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.[34]
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.
|
|
