moral influence scarcely less than that which the victory of Mantineia had exercised over the Spartans. The trireme sent home with the tidings was received with unbounded delight. The depression which had so long hung about them as with the darkness of death was suddenly dispelled; and they felt that the hope of a successful issue to the war was no longer an unreasonable delusion.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PELOPONNESIAN (DEKELEIAN OR IONIAN) WAR, FROM THE

BATTLE OF KYNOSSEMA TO THE BATTLE OFF THE ISLANDS OF ARGENNOUSSAI.

THE departure of Mindaros for the Hellespont convinced Tissaphernes that he had overdone his part: and he resolved to go in person to the Hellespont to make an effort for recovering the influence which was fast slipping away from him.

For the present the schemes of Tissaphernes told in favour of Alkibiades. The homeward return of the Phenician fleet enabled that crafty schemer to go back to Samos and say not only that this part of his promise was fulfilled but that the satrap was better inclined to the Athenian cause than he had ever been. Sailing from Kos he reached the Hellespont just in time to decide a battle which had begun in the early morning by the defeat of Dorieus in the bay of Dardanos, and which had been continued during the day by the fleet of Mindaros. Thirty ships fell into the hands of the Athenians who, having recovered their own captured triremes, sailed away to their station at Sestos.

Twenty years earlier a victory even such as this might have changed the face of the war. All that Thrasylos could now do was to go to Athens to ask for more help both in ships and men. A force of thirty triremes was immediately sent out under Theramenes who sailed to help the Makedonian chief Archelaos in his siege of Pydna. The city was reduced at last but before its fall Theramenes had been compelled to sail away to the Athenian naval station which had been transferred from Sestos to Kardia on the northern side of the Chersonesos. To this place Alkibiades had found his way, no longer as a friend

of Tissaphernes, but as a fugitive from his power, for the satrap, professing to have received orders from the king to carry on war vigorously against the Athenians, had thrown him into prison.

The tidings that Mindaros was engaged in the siege of Kyzikos made the Athenian generals resolve upon attacking him at once with their whole fleet (410 B.C.). Having contrived by sailing past Abydos at night to evade the notice of the Peloponnesian guard-ships, they rested at the island of Prokonnesos, a few miles to the northwest of the peninsula of Kyzikos. On the next day Alkibiades told the men that they must undertake simultaneously the tasks of a sea-fight, a land-battle, and a siege. According to Diodoros the issue of the day was decided by a trick of Alkibiades, who by a pretended flight lured the squadron of Mindaros to some distance from the rest of the fleet and then turned fiercely round on the hoisting of a signal. Mindaros was slain, bravely fighting on shore. All the Peloponnesian ships fell into the hands of the Athenians with the exception of the Syracusan triremes which the crews themselves set on fire; and still more important was the enormous plunder in slaves and other booty taken in the camps of the Spartans and the Persians.

A few hours after the battle of Kyzikos, Hippokrates, the admiral's secretary, addressed to the ephors the following letter: 'Our glory is gone: Mindaros is dead: the men are hungry: we know not what to do.' The dispatch was intercepted and carried to Athens, where the people received the tidings with a tumult of joy which found expression in magnificent religious processions and displays. What may have been the precise effect produced upon the Spartans, we cannot say with certainty. The propositions of the envoy whom they now sent to Athens were confined, we are told, to a mere exchange of prisoners and the withdrawal of hostile garrisons on either side,-in other words, to the plan that the Athenians should abandon Pylos and the Spartans quit Dekeleia. But even if the Athenians had been willing to listen to these terms they knew by bitter experience that Sparta, even if willing, was unable to coerce her allies, They knew further that at the present time the Spartans were under covenant with the Persian king not to make peace without his consent; and they had no reason for thinking that the necessities of Sparta would

R

be to him a constraining motive for coming to terms with her enemy and his own.

At Dekeleia the effects of the victory of Kyzikos were more visible than at Sparta. From this lofty stronghold Agis could see the corn-ships from the Euxine sailing into the Peiraieus and felt that, until this stream could be cut off, his occupation of Athenian soil was to little purpose. An inroad to the very walls of Athens had been tried and had failed; and Agis thought it best to dispatch Klearchos with fifteen ships from Megara and other allied cities to the Hellespont. Of these vessels three were taken and destroyed by the Athenian guardships: the rest made their way first to Abydos, then to Byzantion.

The events of the following year (409 B.C.) made no essential change in the position of the combatants in this weary war. On the coast of Attica Thorikos was fortified for the protection of the corn-ships sailing to Peiraieus from the Hellespont; and Thrasylos at the beginning of summer set out with his fleet of fifty triremes for Samos. At Ephesos the Athenians sustained a serious reverse. But this defeat, again, was compensated, when not long afterwards Thrasylos, from his station at Methymna, espied the Syracusan squadron sailing out from Ephesos, to which he drove it back with the exception of four ships which were taken with their crews.

But in spite of all fluctuations the tide was running strongly against Athens. The vigorous efforts which the Athenians were making to restore their shattered empire in the East led the Spartans to think that a determined attack on Pylos might be successful; and the tidings soon reached Athens that the Messenian allies were being both blockaded and besieged. In spite of the drain both of men, ships, and money in the direction of the Hellespont, the Athenians managed to send out thirty ships under Anytos, the future accuser of Sokrates. He was sent to no purpose. Stormy weather, he said, had prevented him from doubling cape Malea, and the ships came back to Athens. Indignant at his failure, the people brought him to trial; but Anytos was acquitted. Thus deserted by their ancient friends, the Messenians of Pylos could only so far maintain their ground as to secure their safe departure from a land which, if the Spartans could have had their will, they would never have left alive.

During the following year (408 B.C.) the course of events

seemed to point more clearly to a good issue for Athens from the troubles which had well-nigh crushed her. The whole Athenian fleet took up its position off Byzantion and Chalkedon, while the land force besieged the latter city. The satrap was anxious to break the Athenian lines, while Hippokrates, who was then harmost within the city, made a vehement sally from the gates; Hippokrates himself was slain, and his men pushed back within the walls. On the advice of Pharnabazos the Chalkedonians now agreed to surrender under covenant that they should become, as they had been, tribute-paying allies of Athens, making up all arrears for the time during which they had been in revolt against her. But the satrap seemed now to be convinced that Athens was not so easily to be put down as he had hoped that she would be, and that he had made a mistake in assuming towards her so determinately hostile an attitude. He therefore agreed to send up Athenian envoys to Sousa to arrange a treaty with the king, while the Athenians pledged themselves to do no mischief during their absence in the territories of the satrap.

At Byzantion popular feeling still ran in favour of Athens. Alkibiades and his men were admitted to the quarter called the Thrakion, and the garrison was compelled to surrender. Athens was thus once more mistress of the great high road which brought to her harbours the wealth of the corn-growing districts bordering on the Black Sea.

Had the Athenian envoys been allowed to make their journey to Sousa, the issue of the war would, it is more than likely, have been in favour of Athens. Unhappily the ambassadors were met on their way to Sousa by Spartan envoys bearing a letter with the royal seal, which declared that Cyrus, the younger son of Dareios and his cruel wife Parysatis, was sent down as lord of all the armies gathered at Kastolos.

Before Cyrus reached the coast, the Spartan admiral Kratesippidas had been succeeded (407 B.C.) by Lysandros, a man to whom the shaping of governments in the interests of oligarchy was a task thoroughly congenial. In the Persian prince now sent down to the coast Lysandros found not merely an ally but a friend. The troops received a month's pay in advance. This generosity excited in the army an enthusiasm which Lysandros directed to the refitting and strengthening of a fleet now seriously out of condition. But while he was thus repairing his ships at Ephesos, he took care to send for the

chiefs of the oligarchical factions in the several cities allied with Athens and form them into clubs pledged to act by his orders, under the assurance that so soon as Athens should be put down they should be placed in power. He thus became the centre of a wide conspiracy, which he alone was capable of directing.

Meanwhile Alkibiades had been working for his return to Athens. He was still hesitating as to his future course, when he received the tidings that the Athenians had elected him Strategos with Thrasyboulos and Konon among his colleagues. With twenty triremes he arrived at Peiraieus, still doubting whether he might trust himself among his countrymen; nor did he venture to land until he saw his cousin Euryptolemos with other friends waiting to greet him and to guard him on his way to the city. He had chosen, some said, an ill-omened day for his return. It was the festival of Plynteria, when the statue of Athênê was veiled from sight and reverently washed. His mind was perhaps too much occupied with weightier things to think of this coincidence. His friends could scarcely conceal from him the fact that some denounced him as the cause of all the disasters which Athens had undergone since his departure and of all the dangers which still threatened her. But they would dwell with more satisfaction on the sophistry and falsehood which had half-convinced the majority that during his years of exile he had been the unwilling slave of men at whose hands his life was in danger, and that through the whole of this weary time his one grief arose from his inability to do for Athens the good which he would gladly have achieved for her. But however black the crimes of Alkibiades may have been, the fact could not be denied that he had been suffered by the Athenian people at Samos to take part not only in the war as one of their generals but in the suppression of the Four Hundred, and that for a year or two his efforts had been for the welfare and not for the mischief of Athens. It was true that his past career afforded no guarantee for his future conduct; but unless he was still to be treated as an enemy, that career must not be thrown in his teeth. Such, we cannot doubt, was the temper of a large body of moderate and sober-minded men; but for the present the majority was carried away by a weak sympathy with the sufferings which he took care to parade in his speeches. So well did he play his part and so well was he