Book 8
1 When the news reached Athens, for a long time they would not believe it, even from the very soldiers who had escaped from the action itself and reported it plainly; they would not believe that the destruction had been so utterly complete. When they did realize it, they turned on those of the public speakers who had joined in urging the expedition, as though they had not voted for it themselves, and they were angry too with the oracle-mongers and seers and all who had at that time, by some claim of divine inspiration, raised their hopes that they would take Sicily. Everything on every side distressed them, and after what had happened fear and the greatest consternation beset them. For they were weighed down, each man in his own household and the city as a whole, at the loss of many hoplites and horsemen and of a body of young men such as they saw no other to replace; and at the same time, seeing that they had not enough ships in the docks, nor money in the treasury, nor crews for the ships, they had no hope for the moment of coming through. They thought that the enemy in Sicily would sail straight against the Piraeus with their fleet, especially after so great a victory, and that their enemies at home, now doubly prepared in every respect, would press them with all their strength by land and sea at once, and that their own allies would revolt and join them. Nevertheless they decided that, as far as their means allowed, they must not give in, but must equip a fleet, procuring timber wherever they could, and money, and make sure of their allies, above all Euboea; they must also bring some restraint and economy into the affairs of the city, and choose a board of older men who would deliberate in advance on the business at hand as occasion required.1 In the fear of the moment, as a democracy is apt to do, they were ready to submit to discipline in everything. And as they decided, so they acted; and the summer ended.
2 The following winter, in view of the great Athenian disaster in Sicily, all the Hellenes were at once roused against Athens. Those who were allies of neither side thought that, even if no one called on them, they must no longer stay out of the war but should go against the Athenians of their own accord; each of them supposed that the Athenians would have come against them too if they had succeeded in Sicily, and that the rest of the war would be short and it would be honorable to have a share in it. The allies of the Lacedaemonians, for their part, were more eager than before to be quickly rid of their long hardship. Most of all the subjects of the Athenians were ready to revolt, even beyond their strength, because they judged the situation in anger and would not admit even the argument that the Athenians would be able to hold out through the coming summer. The city of the Lacedaemonians was encouraged by all of this, and most of all because their allies from Sicily, with a great force, their navy having now been added to them by necessity, would in all likelihood be with them at the beginning of spring. Hopeful on every side, they resolved to throw themselves into the war without reservation, reckoning that if it ended well they would be free for the future from such danger as the Athenians would have posed to them if they had acquired Sicily, and that once they had overthrown them they would themselves lead all Hellas securely from then on.
3 At once, then, in this winter, their king Agis set out from Decelea with an army and levied money from the allies for the fleet. Turning toward the Malian Gulf, he carried off most of the plunder of the Oetaeans, in keeping with the old enmity, and exacted money from them; and from the Achaeans of Phthiotis and the other subjects of the Thessalians in those parts, over the complaints and against the will of the Thessalians, he forced hostages and money, deposited the hostages at Corinth, and tried to bring these peoples into the alliance. The Lacedaemonians assigned to the cities the building of a hundred ships: to themselves and to the Boeotians they assigned twenty-five each, to the Phocians and Locrians fifteen, to the Corinthians fifteen, to the Arcadians, Pellenians, and Sicyonians ten, and to the Megarians, Troezenians, Epidaurians, and Hermionians ten; and they made all their other preparations with the intention of taking up the war at once at the beginning of spring.
4 The Athenians too made their preparations in this same winter, as they had resolved. They pushed on the shipbuilding, after procuring timber, and fortified Sunium, so that their grain ships might have safe passage around it; they abandoned the fort in Laconia that they had built on their voyage past it to Sicily; and in other matters, wherever any expense seemed useless, they cut back for economy. Above all they kept a close watch on their allies, so that they would not revolt from them.
5 While both sides were doing these things, and were in fact preparing for war just as though they were beginning it, the Euboeans were the first to send envoys to Agis in this winter about revolting from the Athenians. He accepted their proposals and sent for Alcamenes son of Sthenelaidas and Melanthus from Lacedaemon to command in Euboea. They came with about three hundred of the Neodamodes,2 and he began preparing their crossing for them. Meanwhile the Lesbians also came, wishing to revolt as well; and since the Boeotians supported them, Agis was persuaded to hold off on Euboea and began to prepare the revolt of the Lesbians, giving them Alcamenes, who was to have sailed to Euboea, as their harmost; the Boeotians promised ten ships and Agis ten. All this was done without the city of the Lacedaemonians. For Agis, as long as he was at Decelea with the force under him, had authority to send an army wherever he wished, to raise troops, and to levy money. And at this time, one might say, the allies obeyed him much more than they obeyed the Lacedaemonians at home; for since he had a force of his own, he could appear formidable at once anywhere. So he was acting for the Lesbians; but the Chians and the Erythraeans, who were also ready to revolt, did not turn to Agis but to Lacedaemon. With them came an envoy from Tissaphernes, who was general of the coastal provinces for King Darius son of Artaxerxes.3 For Tissaphernes too was inviting the Peloponnesians in and promising to provide maintenance. He had recently been pressed by the King for the tribute from his province, which he owed in arrears because he had been unable to collect it from the Hellenic cities on account of the Athenians. He thought, then, that by doing harm to the Athenians he would be better able to collect the tribute, and at the same time would make the Lacedaemonians allies of the King, and would either bring in alive or kill Amorges, the bastard son of Pissuthnes, who was in revolt in Caria, as the King had ordered him.
6 The Chians, then, and Tissaphernes were acting jointly to the same end. At about the same time Calligeitus son of Laophon, a Megarian, and Timagoras son of Athenagoras, a Cyzicene, both exiles from their own cities living with Pharnabazus son of Pharnaces, arrived at Lacedaemon, sent by Pharnabazus to bring ships to the Hellespont. He himself wished, if he could, to do what Tissaphernes was eager to do: to make the cities in his own province revolt from the Athenians, for the sake of the tribute, and to win the alliance of the Lacedaemonians for the King through his own efforts. Since the two parties, the agents of Pharnabazus and those of Tissaphernes, were negotiating separately, there was a great rivalry at Lacedaemon, the one side trying to persuade them to send ships and an army first to Ionia and Chios, the other first to the Hellespont. The Lacedaemonians, however, received the proposals of the Chians and Tissaphernes by far the more favorably; for they had the help of Alcibiades as well, who was a hereditary guest-friend, and a very close one, of Endius, then ephor. It was from this guest-friendship, in fact, that their family had acquired its Laconian name, for Endius was called “son of Alcibiades.” Still, the Lacedaemonians first sent Phrynis, one of the Perioeci, to Chios as an observer, to see whether they had as many ships as they said and whether the city in other respects was equal to its reputation. When he reported that what they had heard was true, they at once made the Chians and Erythraeans allies and voted to send them forty ships, since there were not fewer than sixty already there, according to what the Chians said. At first they themselves intended to send ten of these, with Melanchridas, who was their admiral; but then an earthquake occurred, and instead of Melanchridas they sent Chalcideus, and instead of ten ships they began preparing five in Laconia. So the winter ended, and with it the nineteenth year of this war, which Thucydides recorded.
7 At the very beginning of spring in the following summer, since the Chians were pressing for the ships to be sent and were afraid that the Athenians would learn of what was going on (for all their embassies were sent in secret from them), the Lacedaemonians sent three Spartiates to Corinth, to have the ships hauled across the Isthmus as quickly as possible from the other sea to the sea facing Athens, and to order them all to sail to Chios, both those which Agis was preparing for Lesbos and the rest. The ships of the allies there numbered thirty-nine in all.
8 Calligeitus and Timagoras, acting for Pharnabazus, took no part in the expedition to Chios and did not give the money they had brought for the dispatch, twenty-five talents, but planned to sail later on their own with another expedition. Agis, when he saw that the Lacedaemonians were set on Chios first, did not himself think otherwise either. The allies met at Corinth and deliberated, and decided to sail first to Chios, under the command of Chalcideus, who was preparing the five ships in Laconia; then to Lesbos, under the command of Alcamenes, the man Agis also had in mind; and last to go to the Hellespont (Clearchus son of Ramphias had been appointed commander there). They decided to carry half the ships across the Isthmus first and have them sail off at once, so that the Athenians would pay attention to those setting out rather than to those carried across afterward. For they were making this voyage openly, despising the weakness of the Athenians, since no fleet of theirs worth mentioning was yet to be seen. As they decided, so they did, and at once carried twenty-one ships across.
9 But while the others were pressing for the voyage, the Corinthians were not willing to sail with them until they had celebrated the Isthmian festival, which was then being held. Agis was ready to let them keep the Isthmian truce intact and to make the expedition his own. The Corinthians would not agree, and time was lost; meanwhile the Athenians became more aware of what was afoot at Chios. They sent Aristocrates, one of their generals, and charged the Chians with it; and when the Chians denied it, they ordered them to send ships with them to the allied fleet as a pledge of good faith. They sent seven. The reason the ships were sent was that the many among the Chians did not know what was being negotiated, while the few who were in the secret did not yet wish to have the people hostile to them before they had acquired some strength, and they no longer expected the Peloponnesians to come, since they were delaying.
10 Meanwhile the Isthmian Games were held, and the Athenians, who had been notified of them, sent delegates to them, and the affairs of the Chians became still more evident to them. When they returned, they at once made preparations so that the ships setting out from Cenchreae should not slip past them. After the festival the Peloponnesians put out for Chios with twenty-one ships, under the command of Alcamenes. The Athenians at first sailed against them with an equal number of ships and drew back toward the open sea. When the Peloponnesians did not follow them far but turned back, the Athenians withdrew too, for they had the seven Chian ships among their number and did not consider them reliable. But later they manned others and, with thirty-seven ships in all, chased the enemy as they sailed along the coast into Spiraeum in the territory of Corinth. This is a deserted harbor, the last one toward the border of Epidaurus. The Peloponnesians lost one ship at sea, but collected the rest and brought them to anchor. The Athenians attacked both by sea with their ships and by landing on shore; there was great confusion and disorder, and the Athenians disabled most of the ships on the beach and killed the commander Alcamenes. Some of their own men were killed too.
11 After the two sides separated, the Athenians posted enough ships to blockade the enemy’s ships, and with the rest anchored at the islet not far off, where they encamped, and sent to Athens for reinforcements. For the Corinthians came to the aid of the Peloponnesians at the ships on the next day, and not long afterward the other people of the neighborhood as well. The Peloponnesians, seeing that guarding the ships in a deserted place was laborious, were at a loss, and at first thought of burning the ships; but then they decided to haul them up on shore and keep guard, sitting by them with the infantry, until some suitable means of escape should present itself. Agis too, when he learned of this, sent them Thermon, a Spartiate. The Lacedaemonians had first received word that the ships had put out from the Isthmus (for the ephors had told Alcamenes to send a horseman when this happened), and they at once wanted to send their own five ships under the command of Chalcideus, with Alcibiades accompanying him. Then, when they were already on the point of starting, came the news of the ships’ flight into Spiraeum; and disheartened because they had stumbled at the very first step of the Ionian war, they no longer intended to send the ships from their own country, but even to recall some that had already put out.
12 When Alcibiades learned of this, he again persuaded Endius and the other ephors not to shrink from the voyage. He told them that they would arrive before the Chians learned of the disaster to the ships, and that he himself, once he reached Ionia, would easily persuade the cities to revolt by describing the weakness of the Athenians and the zeal of the Lacedaemonians, for he would be believed more readily than others. To Endius in private he said that it would be a fine thing for Endius if through his agency Ionia were brought to revolt and the King made an ally of the Lacedaemonians, and this achievement did not become Agis’s; for he himself happened to be at odds with Agis. Having persuaded the other ephors and Endius, he put out with the five ships, together with Chalcideus the Lacedaemonian, and they made the voyage at speed.
13 At about this same time the sixteen Peloponnesian ships that had fought through the war in Sicily with Gylippus were also returning home. They were intercepted off Leucas and roughly handled by twenty-seven Attic ships under the command of Hippocles son of Menippus, who was on watch for the ships from Sicily; but all except one escaped the Athenians and sailed into Corinth.
14 Chalcideus and Alcibiades, as they sailed, seized everyone they fell in with, so that no report of them would go ahead. They put in first at Corycus on the mainland and released them there. Then, after a preliminary meeting with some of the Chians who were in the plot, who urged them to sail into the city without announcing themselves in advance, they arrived unexpectedly at Chios. The many were amazed and dismayed; but the few had arranged things so that the council happened to be in session. Chalcideus and Alcibiades spoke, saying that many other ships were sailing to join them, and making no mention of the blockade of the ships at Spiraeum; and the Chians revolted from the Athenians, and the Erythraeans after them. After this they sailed with three ships and brought Clazomenae to revolt as well. The Clazomenians at once crossed to the mainland and began fortifying Polichne, as a refuge for themselves if needed from the islet on which they live. All those who had revolted were busy building fortifications and preparing for war.
15 News of Chios quickly reached Athens. The Athenians thought that the danger surrounding them was now great and plain, and that the rest of the allies would not be willing to keep quiet when the greatest city had gone over. In the alarm of the moment they at once repealed the penalties laid on anyone who should propose or put to the vote the use of the thousand talents, which they had been so anxious not to touch throughout the whole war,4 and they voted to draw on them and to man a large number of ships. Of the ships blockading at Spiraeum they voted to send at once the eight which had left the blockade to chase the ships with Chalcideus and had returned without catching them (Strombichides son of Diotimus commanded them), and twelve others under Thrasycles to follow to the rescue not long after, these also leaving the blockade. They brought back the seven Chian ships which had been helping them blockade the ships at Spiraeum, freed the slaves aboard them, and put the free men in irons. In place of all the ships that had left they quickly manned ten others and sent them to blockade the Peloponnesians, and they intended to man thirty more. Their zeal was great, and nothing they did for the relief of Chios was done on a small scale.
16 Meanwhile Strombichides arrived at Samos with his eight ships. He added one Samian ship, sailed to Teos, and asked the Teians to remain quiet. But Chalcideus was also sailing from Chios to Teos with twenty-three ships, and at the same time the land force of the Clazomenians and Erythraeans was marching along the coast. Strombichides learned of it in advance and put out; and when, out in the open sea, he saw how many ships there were from Chios, he fled toward Samos, and they pursued him. The Teians at first would not admit the land force, but when the Athenians fled they let it in. The infantry held back, waiting for Chalcideus to return from the pursuit; and when he was slow in coming, they began on their own to pull down the wall that the Athenians had built on the landward side of the city of Teos, and a few of the barbarians who came up helped them, under the command of Stages, a lieutenant of Tissaphernes.
17 Chalcideus and Alcibiades, after chasing Strombichides into Samos, armed the sailors from the ships from the Peloponnese and left them at Chios. They manned these ships afresh from Chios, added twenty others, and sailed to Miletus to bring it to revolt. For Alcibiades, who was on intimate terms with the leading men of the Milesians, wanted to win them over before the ships from the Peloponnese arrived, and so to secure the achievement for the Chians, for himself, for Chalcideus, and for Endius, who had sent him out, as he had promised: that he would bring as many of the cities as possible to revolt with the Chian forces and Chalcideus. So, having escaped notice for most of the voyage and arriving not long before Strombichides and Thrasycles, who had just come from Athens with twelve ships and joined in the pursuit, they brought Miletus to revolt. The Athenians, sailing up close on their heels with nineteen ships, were not admitted by the Milesians and took up a blockading station at Lade, the island lying off the city. Directly after the revolt of the Milesians the first alliance of the Lacedaemonians with the King was concluded, through Tissaphernes and Chalcideus, as follows:
18 “On these terms the Lacedaemonians and their allies have made an alliance with the King and Tissaphernes. Whatever territory and cities the King holds, and the forefathers of the King held, shall be the King’s. And whatever money or anything else came in to the Athenians from these cities, the King and the Lacedaemonians and their allies shall jointly prevent, so that the Athenians receive neither money nor anything else. And the King and the Lacedaemonians and their allies shall jointly wage the war against the Athenians. And it shall not be permitted to make an end of the war against the Athenians unless it is resolved by both parties, the King and the Lacedaemonians and their allies. And if any revolt from the King, they shall be enemies to the Lacedaemonians and their allies; and if any revolt from the Lacedaemonians and their allies, they shall be enemies to the King in the same way.”
19 Such was this alliance. After this the Chians at once manned ten more ships and sailed to Anaea, wishing to get news of affairs at Miletus and at the same time to bring the cities to revolt. When word came to them from Chalcideus to sail back again, and that Amorges would be there by land with an army, they sailed to the sanctuary of Zeus, and there sighted sixteen ships which Diomedon was bringing up from Athens, sailing still later than Thrasycles. When they saw them, they fled, one ship to Ephesus and the rest toward Teos. The Athenians took four of them empty, the men having reached the shore first; the others took refuge in the city of Teos. The Athenians sailed off toward Samos, while the Chians put out with their remaining ships, and with the land force accompanying them brought Lebedus to revolt, and then Erae. After this they all went home, both the land force and the ships.
20 At about the same time the twenty Peloponnesian ships at Spiraeum, which had been chased there earlier and were being blockaded by an equal number of Athenian ships, made a sudden sortie, won a sea battle, and took four Athenian ships. They sailed back to Cenchreae and again began preparing for the voyage to Chios and Ionia. Astyochus came to them from Lacedaemon as admiral, and to him the whole command at sea now passed. When the land force had withdrawn from Teos, Tissaphernes too came there in person with an army, demolished whatever was left of the wall at Teos, and withdrew. Not long after he had gone, Diomedon arrived with ten Athenian ships and made an agreement with the Teians that they should admit the Athenians as well. He then sailed along the coast to Erae and attacked it, and when he failed to take the city he sailed away.
21 At this time too the rising of the people at Samos against the powerful took place, with the help of the Athenians, who happened to be there with three ships. The Samian people put to death some two hundred in all of the most powerful men, punished four hundred with exile, and divided their land and houses among themselves. After this the Athenians voted them autonomy, since they were now considered reliable, and they ran the affairs of the city thereafter. They gave the landowners no share in anything else, and no one of the people was any longer permitted to give a daughter in marriage to them or take a wife from them.
22 After this, in the same summer, the Chians, keeping up the zeal with which they had begun, and being present in force to bring the cities to revolt even without the Peloponnesians, and wishing at the same time to have as many as possible share the danger with them, made an expedition themselves with thirteen ships against Lesbos, as the Lacedaemonians had directed that they go there second and from there to the Hellespont. At the same time the land force, made up of the Peloponnesians who were present and the allies from there, marched along the coast toward Clazomenae and Cyme; Evalas, a Spartiate, commanded it, and Deiniadas, one of the Perioeci, the ships. The ships sailed in and first brought Methymna to revolt, and four ships were left there; then the rest brought Mytilene to revolt.
23 Astyochus, the Lacedaemonian admiral, sailed from Cenchreae with four ships, as he had set out to do, and arrived at Chios. On the third day after his arrival twenty-five Attic ships sailed to Lesbos under the command of Leon and Diomedon; for Leon had later come out from Athens with ten ships as reinforcement. Astyochus too put out late on the same day and, taking one Chian ship with him, sailed to Lesbos to give what help he could. He reached Pyrrha, and from there on the next day Eresus, where he learned that Mytilene had been taken by the Athenians at the first assault. For the Athenians, sailing in unexpectedly just as they were, had put into the harbor, overcome the Chian ships, landed, defeated those who resisted them in battle, and taken the city. Astyochus learned this from the Eresians and from the Chian ships with Eubulus from Methymna, which had been left there earlier and had fled when Mytilene was taken; three of them fell in with him, for one had been captured by the Athenians. He no longer made for Mytilene, but brought Eresus to revolt and armed its people. He sent the hoplites from his own ships along by land to Antissa and Methymna, appointing Eteonicus to command them, and he himself sailed along the coast with his own ships and the three Chian ones, hoping that the Methymnaeans would take courage at the sight of them and hold to their revolt. But when everything in Lesbos went against him, he took his own land force on board and sailed back to Chios. The land force of the allies, which was to have gone to the Hellespont, was also taken back to the various cities. After this six of the allied Peloponnesian ships at Cenchreae came to them at Chios. The Athenians restored order again in Lesbos, and sailing from there took Polichne, the place the Clazomenians were fortifying on the mainland, and moved the people back to their city on the island, except those responsible for the revolt; these went off to Daphnus. And Clazomenae came over to the Athenians again.
24 In the same summer the Athenians at Miletus, who were blockading from Lade with their twenty ships, made a landing at Panormus in Milesian territory and killed Chalcideus, the Lacedaemonian commander, who had come out against them with a few men. On the third day afterward they sailed across and set up a trophy, which the Milesians pulled down, on the ground that it had been set up without command of the land. Leon and Diomedon, with the Athenian ships from Lesbos, operating from the Oenussae islands off Chios, from Sidussa and Pteleum, forts they held in Erythraean territory, and from Lesbos, carried on the war against the Chians from their ships. They had hoplites from the muster roll on board as marines, men pressed into service. They landed at Cardamyle and at Bolissus, defeated in battle the Chians who came out against them, killed many, and laid waste the places in that region; they won another battle at Phanae, and a third at Leuconium. After this the Chians no longer came out against them, and the Athenians ravaged a country that was finely cultivated and had suffered no harm from the Persian Wars until then. For the Chians, alone of any people I know of after the Lacedaemonians, were prosperous and prudent at the same time, and the more their city grew, the more securely they ordered it. Nor did they venture on this revolt itself, if it is thought that in this they acted against their own safety, until they were going to share the danger with many good allies, and until they saw that the Athenians themselves no longer denied, after the disaster in Sicily, that their situation was very bad. And if they were tripped up by one of the surprises of human life, they made their mistake together with many who thought as they did, that the power of the Athenians would quickly be destroyed. Now that they were shut off from the sea and their land was being ravaged, some of them attempted to bring the city over to the Athenians. The magistrates learned of it and took no action themselves, but brought Astyochus the admiral from Erythrae with the four ships he had with him, and considered how they might put an end to the plot as moderately as possible, by taking hostages or in some other way. That was what they were doing.
25 At the end of the same summer a thousand Athenian hoplites, fifteen hundred Argives (the Athenians had armed five hundred of the Argives, who were light-armed troops), and a thousand of the allies sailed from Athens to Samos on forty-eight ships, some of which were troop transports, under the generals Phrynichus, Onomacles, and Scironides. They crossed to Miletus and encamped. The Milesians came out, eight hundred hoplites of their own, together with the Peloponnesians who had come with Chalcideus and a body of mercenaries of Tissaphernes, Tissaphernes himself being present with his cavalry, and engaged the Athenians and their allies. The Argives on their own wing dashed out ahead and, despising the enemy as Ionians who would not stand up to them, advanced in some disorder; they were defeated by the Milesians, and a little fewer than three hundred of them were killed. The Athenians first defeated the Peloponnesians and pushed back the barbarians and the rest of the crowd; they did not engage the Milesians, who after routing the Argives had withdrawn into the city when they saw the rest of their side beaten, and as victors they grounded their arms right up against the city of the Milesians. In this battle it happened that on both sides the Ionians defeated the Dorians: the Athenians beat the Peloponnesians opposed to them, and the Milesians the Argives. The Athenians set up a trophy and began preparing to wall the city off, since the site is like an isthmus, thinking that if they won over Miletus the other places too would readily come over to them.
26 Meanwhile, late in the afternoon, news reached them that the fifty-five ships from the Peloponnese and Sicily were all but there. For of the Sicilian Greeks, with Hermocrates the Syracusan pressing most of all for them to join in completing the destruction of what was left of the Athenians, twenty Syracusan ships had come and two Selinuntian, and the ships from the Peloponnese which they had been preparing were now ready. Both squadrons were entrusted to Therimenes the Lacedaemonian to take to Astyochus the admiral, and they put in first at Leros, the island off Miletus. From there, learning that the Athenians were at Miletus, they sailed first into the Iasian Gulf, wishing to find out how things stood at Miletus. Alcibiades came on horseback to Teichiussa in Milesian territory, the place on the gulf where they had sailed and bivouacked, and from him they learned about the battle (for Alcibiades had been present and had fought on the side of the Milesians and Tissaphernes). He urged them, unless they wished to ruin affairs in Ionia and the whole cause, to go to the aid of Miletus as quickly as possible and not let it be walled off.
27 They intended to go to its aid at dawn. But Phrynichus, the Athenian general, when he had clear information from Leros about the ships, and his colleagues wished to stay and fight it out at sea, said that he himself would not do it and would not allow them or anyone else to do it, as far as it lay in his power. Where it would be possible to fight later, when they knew clearly how many enemy ships they faced and how many of their own they could set against them, after preparing adequately and at leisure, he would never yield to the reproach of disgrace and take a reckless risk. It was no disgrace for Athenians to withdraw with a fleet when the moment required it; it would be a worse disgrace, whatever the circumstances, if they were defeated. And the city would be exposed not only to disgrace but to the greatest danger; after the disasters that had befallen it, it could scarcely afford to take the offensive anywhere of its own will even with a secure force, except under absolute necessity, much less go into dangers of its own choosing when nothing compelled it. He ordered them as quickly as possible to take up the wounded and the land force and the equipment they had brought with them, to leave behind what they had taken from the enemy’s country so that the ships might be light, and to sail back to Samos; and from there, once all the ships were assembled, to make their attacks when an opportunity arose. As he persuaded them, so he acted. And not then so much as afterward, not in this matter only but in all the others in which Phrynichus was involved, he was judged to be a man of no small intelligence. So the Athenians at once, that very evening, departed from Miletus in this way with their victory unfinished; and the Argives, in haste and in anger at their defeat, sailed home from Samos.
28 At dawn the Peloponnesians set out from Teichiussa and put in at Miletus. They waited one day, and on the next, taking with them the Chian ships that had first been chased in with Chalcideus, they wanted to sail back for the gear they had unloaded at Teichiussa. When they arrived there, Tissaphernes came up with his land force and persuaded them to sail against Iasus, which Amorges, an enemy, was holding. They attacked Iasus suddenly, when the people there expected nothing but that the ships were Attic, and took it; the Syracusans won most praise in the action. They took Amorges alive, the bastard son of Pissuthnes and a rebel from the King, and the Peloponnesians handed him over to Tissaphernes to take to the King if he wished, as the King had ordered him. They sacked Iasus, and the army took a very great deal of money, for the place had long been wealthy. The mercenaries who had been with Amorges they took over to their own side and, without harming them, enrolled them in their ranks, since most of them were from the Peloponnese. They handed over the town to Tissaphernes, and all the captives, slave and free, for each of whom they agreed to receive from him one Daric stater; then they withdrew to Miletus. The Lacedaemonians had sent Pedaritus son of Leon to Chios as governor, and they dispatched him by land as far as Erythrae with the mercenary force from Amorges, and appointed Philip there at Miletus. And the summer ended.
29 The following winter, after Tissaphernes had put Iasus in a state of defense, he went to Miletus and distributed a month’s pay to all the ships at the rate of an Attic drachma a day for each man, as he had promised at Lacedaemon. For the rest of the time he wished to give three obols, until he could consult the King; and if the King ordered it, he said, he would give the full drachma. But Hermocrates, the Syracusan general, objected (for Therimenes, who was not admiral but was sailing with them only to hand over the ships to Astyochus, was slack about the pay), and so they came to an agreement under which, by the margin of five ships, each man got more than three obols. For he gave thirty talents a month for fifty-five ships; and to the rest, for as many ships as there were beyond that number, pay was given at the same rate.
30 In the same winter the Athenians at Samos, since thirty-five more ships had come out to them from home, with the generals Charminus, Strombichides, and Euctemon, gathered in the ships from Chios and all the rest, and wished to divide their duties by lot, blockading Miletus with the fleet and sending a fleet and a land force against Chios. They did so. Strombichides, Onomacles, and Euctemon, to whom the lot fell, sailed against Chios with thirty ships, taking a part of the thousand hoplites who had come to Miletus on troop transports; the others stayed at Samos with seventy-four ships, commanded the sea, and made descents on Miletus.
31 Astyochus, who happened to be at Chios at that time collecting hostages because of the plot of betrayal, stopped doing so when he learned that the ships with Therimenes had arrived and that the affairs of the alliance were in a better state. He took ten Peloponnesian ships and ten Chian and put out to sea. He attacked Pteleum without taking it, then sailed along the coast to Clazomenae and ordered those there who were of the Athenian party to move up to Daphnus and come over to his side; Tamos, the lieutenant governor of Ionia, joined him in this demand. When they would not listen, he attacked the city, which was unwalled, and, unable to take it, sailed off in a strong wind, himself to Phocaea and Cyme, while the rest of the ships put in at the islands lying off Clazomenae: Marathussa, Pele, and Drymussa. Whatever property the Clazomenians had stored there for safety they partly plundered and consumed during the eight days they were kept there by the winds, and partly took on board, and then sailed to Phocaea and Cyme to join Astyochus.
32 While he was there, envoys came from the Lesbians wishing to revolt again. They persuaded him; but since the Corinthians and the other allies were unenthusiastic because of the earlier failure, he weighed anchor and sailed for Chios. His ships were caught in a storm and arrived at Chios later, from different directions. After this Pedaritus, who was then marching along the coast from Miletus, reached Erythrae and crossed over with his army to Chios. He also had there some five hundred soldiers with their arms, from the five ships, left behind by Chalcideus. When some Lesbians announced that they were ready to revolt, Astyochus proposed to Pedaritus and the Chians that they should go with their ships and bring Lesbos to revolt: they would either gain more allies, or, if they failed, would do harm to the Athenians. But they would not listen, and Pedaritus said that he would not hand over the Chian ships to him.
33 So Astyochus took the five Corinthian ships, a sixth from Megara, one from Hermione, and the Laconian ships he had brought with him, and sailed for Miletus to take up his command as admiral, with many threats to the Chians that he would certainly not come to their aid if they needed anything. He put in at Corycus in Erythraean territory and bivouacked there. The Athenians from Samos, sailing with their army against Chios, had put in on the other side of the hill that separated them and had anchored there, and neither side knew of the other. During the night a letter came from Pedaritus saying that some Erythraean prisoners released from Samos had come to Erythrae to betray it, and Astyochus at once put out back to Erythrae; by so narrow a margin did he escape running into the Athenians. Pedaritus also sailed across to him, and they investigated the case of those who were thought to be traitors; and when they found that the whole thing had been a pretext devised by the men to secure their release from Samos, they acquitted them of the charge and sailed off, Pedaritus to Chios and Astyochus to Miletus, as he had intended.
34 Meanwhile the Athenian force, sailing around from Corycus with its ships, fell in off Arginus with three Chian warships and, on seeing them, gave chase. A great storm came on; the Chian ships barely escaped into the harbor, but of the Athenian ships the three that had pressed hardest were wrecked and cast ashore near the city of Chios, and of their crews some were captured and some killed. The rest took refuge in the harbor called Phoenicus, under Mimas. From there they later put in at Lesbos and began preparing for the work of fortification.
35 In the same winter Hippocrates the Lacedaemonian sailed out from the Peloponnese with ten Thurian ships, under the command of Dorieus son of Diagoras with two colleagues, one Laconian ship, and one Syracusan, and put in at Cnidus, which had already revolted at the instigation of Tissaphernes. When the men at Miletus learned of it, they ordered them to guard Cnidus with half their ships, and with those stationed at Triopium to seize the merchant ships putting in from Egypt. Triopium is a projecting cape of Cnidian territory, with a sanctuary of Apollo. The Athenians learned of this, sailed from Samos, and captured the six ships keeping guard at Triopium, though the men escaped from them. After this they sailed into Cnidus, attacked the city, which was unwalled, and very nearly took it. On the next day they attacked again; but since the inhabitants had fenced themselves in better during the night, and the men who had escaped from the ships at Triopium had come in to join them, they no longer did as much damage, and they went off, ravaged the land of the Cnidians, and sailed back to Samos.
36 At about the same time Astyochus came to Miletus to take over the fleet. The Peloponnesians were still well provided with everything in their camp: the pay was being given in sufficient amount, the soldiers still had the large sums they had plundered from Iasus, and the Milesians bore the burdens of the war with zeal. Still, the Peloponnesians thought that the first agreement with Tissaphernes, the one made by Chalcideus, was defective and not to their advantage, and they made another while Therimenes was still there. It is as follows:
37 “Agreement of the Lacedaemonians and their allies with King Darius, the sons of the King, and Tissaphernes: that there shall be a treaty and friendship on the following terms. Whatever territory and cities belong to King Darius, or belonged to his father or his ancestors, against these neither the Lacedaemonians nor the allies of the Lacedaemonians shall go for war or for any harm, nor shall either the Lacedaemonians or the allies of the Lacedaemonians exact tribute from these cities. Nor shall King Darius, nor any of those whom the King rules, go against the Lacedaemonians or their allies for war or for any harm. If the Lacedaemonians or their allies have need of anything from the King, or the King from the Lacedaemonians or their allies, whatever they agree upon with each other, that they shall do and it shall stand. The war against the Athenians and their allies both parties shall wage jointly; and if they make an end of it, both shall make it jointly. Whatever army is in the King’s territory at the King’s summons, the King shall bear its expense. If any of the cities that have made this agreement with the King goes against the King’s territory, the rest shall prevent it and defend the King to the best of their power; and if any of those in the King’s territory, or in the territory the King rules, goes against the territory of the Lacedaemonians or their allies, the King shall prevent it and defend them to the best of his power.”
38 After this agreement Therimenes handed over the ships to Astyochus, sailed away in a small boat, and disappeared. The Athenians from Lesbos, who had by now crossed over to Chios with their army and controlled both land and sea, began fortifying Delphinium, a place strong in other respects on the landward side, provided with harbors, and not far from the city of the Chians. The Chians, having been beaten in many earlier battles, and being in other respects not at all on good terms among themselves, kept quiet: Tydeus son of Ion and his associates had already been put to death by Pedaritus for Atticism, and the rest of the city had been brought by force into the hands of a few, so that they were suspicious of one another. For these reasons neither they themselves nor the mercenaries with Pedaritus seemed a match for the enemy. They did, however, send to Miletus urging Astyochus to come to their aid; and when he would not listen, Pedaritus wrote to Lacedaemon about him, accusing him of wrongdoing. That was how things stood for the Athenians at Chios. Their ships from Samos kept sailing out against the ships at Miletus, and when the enemy did not put out against them, they withdrew to Samos again and kept quiet.
39 In the same winter the twenty-seven ships that the Lacedaemonians had fitted out for Pharnabazus, through the efforts of Calligeitus the Megarian and Timagoras the Cyzicene, set sail from the Peloponnese for Ionia about the time of the solstice, with Antisthenes, a Spartiate, sailing as their commander. With them the Lacedaemonians also sent eleven Spartiates as advisers to Astyochus, one of whom was Lichas son of Arcesilaus. They had been instructed, on arriving at Miletus, to help direct affairs in general as would best serve, and to send these ships, either the same number or more or fewer, to Pharnabazus at the Hellespont if they thought fit, appointing as commander Clearchus son of Ramphias, who was sailing with them; and, if the eleven thought fit, to remove Astyochus from his command as admiral and appoint Antisthenes in his place, for in consequence of Pedaritus’s letters they were suspicious of him. The ships, then, sailing from Malea across the open sea, put in at Melos, and falling in with ten Athenian ships they took three of them empty and burned them. After this, fearing that the Athenian ships that had escaped from Melos would report their approach to the men at Samos, as in fact happened, they sailed toward Crete and, lengthening their voyage as a precaution, put in at Caunus in Asia. From there, thinking themselves safe, they sent a message to the ships at Miletus to come and escort them along the coast.
40 At the same time the Chians and Pedaritus, no less than before, kept sending messengers to Astyochus, though he kept delaying, and demanded that he come to their aid with all his ships now that they were under siege, and not stand by while the greatest of the allied cities in Ionia was shut off from the sea and ravaged by raiding on land. For the Chians had many slaves, more than any one city except the Lacedaemonians, and because of their numbers they were punished the more harshly for their offenses; so as soon as the Athenian army seemed to be firmly established behind a fortification, most of them at once deserted to it, and since they knew the country they did it the greatest damage. The Chians therefore said that he must come to their aid while there was still hope and it was possible to stop it, while Delphinium was being fortified and was unfinished and a larger defensive wall was being thrown around the camp and the ships. Astyochus, although he had not intended to, because of the threat he had made earlier, set out to go to their aid when he saw that the allies too were eager for it.
41 Meanwhile word arrived from Caunus that the twenty-seven ships and the Lacedaemonian advisers had come. He thought that everything else came second to escorting so many ships, so that they might command the sea more securely, and to bringing safely across the Lacedaemonians who had come to keep watch on him; so he at once gave up going to Chios and sailed for Caunus. On the way along the coast he landed at Cos Meropis, and sacked the city, which was unwalled and had been laid in ruins by an earthquake, the greatest in fact of any we remember; the people had fled to the mountains. He overran the countryside and took it as plunder, except for the free persons, whom he released. From Cos he arrived at Cnidus by night and was compelled by the urging of the Cnidians not to disembark his sailors, but to sail straight on, just as he was, against the twenty Athenian ships with which Charminus, one of the generals from Samos, was on watch for these twenty-seven ships approaching from the Peloponnese, the very ships Astyochus was sailing to meet. The men at Samos had learned from Melos of their approach, and Charminus’s watch was being kept around Syme, Chalce, and Rhodes, and off Lycia; for he had by now learned that they were at Caunus.
42 So Astyochus sailed on to Syme just as he was, before word of him could get out, in the hope of catching the ships somewhere out at sea. But rain and a heavily clouded sky caused his ships to stray in the darkness and fall into confusion. At dawn, with his fleet scattered and the left wing already in view of the Athenians while the rest was still straying about the island, Charminus and the Athenians put out in haste with fewer than their twenty ships, thinking these were the ships from Caunus that they were watching for. They fell on them at once, sank three, disabled others, and had the better of the action until, contrary to their expectation, the greater part of the enemy ships came into view and they were being cut off on every side. Then they took to flight and lost six ships; with the rest they escaped to the island of Teutlussa, and from there to Halicarnassus. After this the Peloponnesians put in at Cnidus, were joined by the twenty-seven ships from Caunus, sailed with the whole fleet to set up a trophy on Syme, and then anchored again at Cnidus.
43 When the Athenians learned of the sea battle, they sailed to Syme with all the ships from Samos. They did not move against the fleet at Cnidus, nor did the enemy move against them; but they took up the ships’ gear that was at Syme, attacked Loryma on the mainland, and sailed back to Samos. All the Peloponnesian ships, now together at Cnidus, were being refitted where needed, and the eleven Lacedaemonians held discussions with Tissaphernes, who had come there, about what had already been done, in case anything did not satisfy them, and about the conduct of the war to come, how it might be waged best and most to the advantage of both. Lichas above all scrutinized what was being done. He said that neither of the treaties, neither Chalcideus’s nor Therimenes’s, had been properly drawn up, and that it was outrageous if the King was to claim even now to rule all the territory that he and his ancestors had ruled before; for that would mean that all the islands would be enslaved again, and Thessaly and Locris and everything as far as Boeotia, and that instead of freedom the Lacedaemonians would be putting the Hellenes under the rule of the Medes. He therefore demanded that they make another and better treaty, or at least that they not abide by these; nor did they want any maintenance on such terms. Tissaphernes, indignant, went away from them in anger and with nothing settled.
44 They decided to sail to Rhodes, since the most powerful men there had been sending them proposals. They hoped to win over an island that was not without strength, both in the number of its seamen and in its land forces, and at the same time they thought that from their existing alliance they would be able to maintain their ships themselves without asking Tissaphernes for money. They sailed at once, in the same winter, from Cnidus, and attacking Camirus first, in Rhodian territory, with ninety-four ships, they frightened the many, who did not know what was being negotiated; and these fled, all the more since the city was unwalled. Then the Lacedaemonians called together these and the people of the two other cities, Lindus and Ialysus, and persuaded the Rhodians to revolt from the Athenians; and Rhodes went over to the Peloponnesians. At this moment the Athenians learned of it and sailed with the ships from Samos, hoping to forestall them, and appeared out at sea; but arriving a little too late, they sailed off for the time being to Chalce, and from there to Samos. Later they carried on the war against Rhodes by making attacks from Chalce, Cos, and Samos. The Peloponnesians collected about thirty-two talents from the Rhodians, and for the rest stayed quiet for eighty days, having hauled up their ships.
45 Meanwhile, and even earlier, before they moved to Rhodes, the following intrigues were going on. After the death of Chalcideus and the battle at Miletus, Alcibiades was suspected by the Peloponnesians, and a letter came from them at Lacedaemon to Astyochus ordering him to be put to death; for he was an enemy of Agis and in other respects seemed untrustworthy. First, in fear, he withdrew to Tissaphernes, and then he did as much harm as he could to the Peloponnesian cause with him. Becoming his instructor in everything, he cut down their pay, so that instead of an Attic drachma three obols were given, and these not regularly. He told Tissaphernes to say to them that the Athenians, who had longer experience of naval matters, gave their own men three obols, not so much from poverty as to keep their sailors from growing insolent through having too much: some would ruin their bodies by spending on the kinds of things that cause weakness, and others would desert their ships, leaving behind no arrears of pay as security. He also instructed him to win over the trierarchs and the generals of the cities by giving them money, so that they would agree to this; and they did, except the Syracusans. Of these Hermocrates alone opposed it, on behalf of the whole alliance. Alcibiades himself sent away the cities that asked for money, answering them on behalf of Tissaphernes: the Chians, he said, were shameless, being the richest of the Hellenes and yet, though saved by outside help, expecting others to risk their bodies and their money for the Chians’ freedom; as for the other cities, he said they were in the wrong if, having spent money on the Athenians before they revolted, they were not willing now to contribute as much and even more on their own behalf. And he represented Tissaphernes as being sparing, for the present, with good reason, since he was waging the war with his own money; but if maintenance ever came down from the King, he would pay them their wages in full and give the cities fitting help.
46 He also advised Tissaphernes not to be in too great a hurry to end the war, and not to wish to give the same people command of both land and sea, either by bringing in the Phoenician ships he was preparing or by providing pay for more Hellenes; but to let each side keep its own half of the empire, so that the King could always bring the one against whichever of them was troublesome to him. If command by land and sea were united in one power, he would be at a loss whom to join in pulling down the victors, unless he were willing to rise himself, at great expense and risk, and fight it out at some time. This way was cheaper: at a small fraction of the expense, and with safety for himself, to let the Hellenes wear one another down. He said, too, that the Athenians would be more suitable partners in empire for him; for they were less eager for dominion on land, and the principle and the practice by which they waged war were most convenient for him. They would join in subjugating the maritime part for themselves and, for him, all the Hellenes who lived in the King’s territory; whereas the others, on the contrary, had come to set them free. It was not to be expected that the Lacedaemonians, who were now freeing the Hellenes from Hellenes, would fail to free them from barbarians as well, unless at some point the barbarians got rid of them first. He urged him, therefore, first to wear both sides down, and then, after paring away as much as possible from the Athenians, to rid the country of the Peloponnesians. And Tissaphernes was in general inclined this way, as far at least as one could guess from what he did. For on this account, regarding Alcibiades as a good adviser on these matters, he gave him his confidence; he provided the Peloponnesians with their maintenance poorly and would not let them fight at sea. By claiming that the Phoenician ships would come and that they would then fight with a superior force, he ruined their affairs and robbed their fleet of its prime, which had been very strong; and in other respects he took part in the war without zeal, too plainly to escape notice.
47 Alcibiades gave this advice to Tissaphernes and the King, with whom he now was, because he thought it best for them, but at the same time he was working for his own return to his country, knowing that if he did not destroy it there would come a time when he could persuade them to recall him. And he thought he could persuade them best in this way, if it was seen that Tissaphernes was his friend; which is what happened. For when the Athenian soldiers at Samos learned that he had influence with Tissaphernes, partly because Alcibiades himself had sent word to their most powerful men to mention him to the best people among them, saying that he wished to return under an oligarchy, and not under the villainy of the democracy that had banished him, and to provide Tissaphernes as their friend and share in the government with them, but still more on their own initiative, the trierarchs and the most powerful of the Athenians at Samos set to work to overthrow the democracy.
48 This movement began first in the camp, and from there it later came to the city. Some men crossed over from Samos to Alcibiades and had discussions with him. He held out the prospect of making Tissaphernes their friend first, and then the King as well, if they were not governed as a democracy (for in that way the King would trust them more); and the most powerful of the citizens, who also bore the heaviest burdens, had high hopes of getting the government into their own hands and of overcoming the enemy. When they came back to Samos, they banded together those who were suitable into a conspiracy, and openly told the many that the King would be their friend and would provide money if Alcibiades were restored and they were not governed as a democracy. The crowd, even if they were for the moment annoyed at what was being done, kept quiet because of the easy hope of pay from the King. Those who were forming the oligarchy, after they had communicated the plan to the multitude, again considered Alcibiades’s proposals among themselves and with most of the members of their political club.5 To the others the proposals seemed practicable and trustworthy; but Phrynichus, who was still general, was not at all pleased with them. Alcibiades, he thought, and so it was, had no more desire for an oligarchy than for a democracy, nor was he considering anything except how to change the city from its existing order and return at the invitation of his associates; and their own chief concern must be to avoid civil strife. Nor was it in the King’s interest, now that the Peloponnesians were as much at home on the sea as they were and held cities in his own dominion, and not the least of them, to join the Athenians, whom he did not trust, and take on trouble, when he could make friends of the Peloponnesians, from whom he had as yet suffered no harm. As for the allied cities, to whom they were supposedly promising oligarchy because they themselves would no longer be a democracy, he said he knew well that this would not make the cities that had revolted come back to them any sooner, nor those still in hand become more loyal. For they would not wish to be slaves under an oligarchy or a democracy rather than to be free under whichever of the two they happened to have. The cities thought that those called the gentlemen, the “fine and good,” would give them no less trouble than the people did, since these were the ones who devised and proposed the evil measures for the people, from which they themselves drew most of the benefit. Under them, so far as it lay with them, the allies would be put to death without trial and more violently; whereas the people were their refuge and a check on those men. He said he knew for certain that the cities thought so, having learned it from experience itself. For his own part, therefore, nothing in Alcibiades’s proposals or in the present negotiations pleased him.
49 Those who had joined the conspiracy met together and, as they had first resolved, accepted the proposals before them, and prepared to send Peisander and others as envoys to Athens to negotiate for the return of Alcibiades and the overthrow of the democracy there, and to make Tissaphernes a friend of the Athenians.
50 Phrynichus, knowing that there would be a proposal for the return of Alcibiades and that the Athenians would accept it, was afraid that, because of the opposition he had expressed, Alcibiades, if he returned, would do him harm as the man who had tried to prevent it; and he resorted to the following device. He sent secretly to Astyochus, the Lacedaemonian admiral, who was then still in the neighborhood of Miletus, and wrote to him that Alcibiades was ruining their cause by making Tissaphernes a friend of the Athenians, setting down all the rest clearly as well; he himself, he said, should be pardoned for plotting harm against a personal enemy, even to the disadvantage of his city. Astyochus had no intention of punishing Alcibiades, especially since Alcibiades no longer came within his reach as before; instead he went up to him and Tissaphernes at Magnesia, told them what had been written to him from Samos, and became an informer himself. He had attached himself to Tissaphernes, it was said, for private gain, in this and in other matters, and this was also why he was so mild in his complaints about the pay when it was not given in full. Alcibiades at once sent a letter against Phrynichus to the men in authority at Samos, telling what he had done and demanding that he be put to death. Phrynichus was thrown into confusion and was in the greatest danger because of this disclosure, and he sent again to Astyochus. He reproached him for not having kept the earlier message secret, and now offered to put the whole Athenian army at Samos into their hands to destroy, writing down in detail how he would bring it about, since Samos was unwalled; and he said that, since his life was in danger because of them, he could no longer be blamed for doing this or anything else rather than be destroyed by his worst enemies. Astyochus revealed this too to Alcibiades.
51 Phrynichus learned beforehand that Astyochus was betraying him and that a letter from Alcibiades about these matters was all but there. He got in first and himself announced to the army that the enemy intended to attack the camp, since Samos was unwalled and not all the ships were anchored inside the harbor, that he had sure information of this, and that they must fortify Samos as quickly as possible and keep everything else under guard. He was general and had authority to do this himself. They set about the fortification, and in consequence Samos, which would have been fortified in any case, was fortified the faster. Not long afterward the letters from Alcibiades arrived, saying that the army was being betrayed by Phrynichus and that the enemy were about to attack. But Alcibiades was not thought trustworthy; it seemed that he had learned in advance the enemy’s plans and was attributing them out of enmity to Phrynichus as an accomplice. So he did him no harm, but rather bore witness on his side by reporting the same thing.
52 After this Alcibiades worked on Tissaphernes and tried to persuade him to become a friend of the Athenians. Tissaphernes was afraid of the Peloponnesians, because they had more ships there than the Athenians, but nevertheless wished to be persuaded if he somehow could, especially after he learned of the dispute at Cnidus about the treaty of Therimenes. (It had already taken place by this time, for the Peloponnesians were at Rhodes then.) In that dispute Lichas had confirmed the argument Alcibiades had made earlier, that the Lacedaemonians were freeing all the cities, when he declared it intolerable that the King should by treaty rule over cities that he or his fathers had once ruled before. And Alcibiades, since great things were at stake for him, kept at it, zealously courting Tissaphernes.
53 The envoys of the Athenians who had been sent from Samos with Peisander arrived at Athens and made speeches before the people, summarizing much, but chiefly saying that if they restored Alcibiades and were not governed as a democracy in the same way, they could have the King as their ally and overcome the Peloponnesians. Many others spoke against them on behalf of the democracy, and the enemies of Alcibiades cried out that it would be outrageous if he were to return by violating the laws; and the Eumolpidae and the Ceryces bore witness about the Mysteries, for which he had gone into exile, and called on the gods against his recall.6 Peisander came forward in the face of this strong opposition and these protests and, calling forward his opponents one by one, asked each of them whether he had any hope of safety for the city, now that the Peloponnesians had at sea no fewer ships than they did facing them, and more allied cities, and the King and Tissaphernes were providing them with money, while they themselves had no more money, unless someone could persuade the King to come over to their side. When those he questioned said they had none, he then told them plainly: “This, then, cannot happen for us unless we govern ourselves more prudently and put the offices in the hands of fewer men, so that the King may trust us, and unless at present we take counsel less about the constitution than about our safety (for later we can change it back again, if anything does not please us), and unless we restore Alcibiades, who alone of men living is able to bring this about.”
54 When the people first heard about oligarchy, they took it badly; but when Peisander showed them plainly that there was no other way to safety, they were afraid, and at the same time hoped that they could change it back again, and they gave way. They voted that Peisander and ten men with him should sail and negotiate with Tissaphernes and Alcibiades as seemed best to them. At the same time, since Peisander also accused Phrynichus, the people removed him from his command, together with his colleague Scironides, and sent out Diomedon and Leon in their place as generals with the fleet. Peisander accused Phrynichus of having betrayed Iasus and Amorges, because he did not think him suitable for the negotiations with Alcibiades. Peisander also went around to all the sworn clubs that already existed in the city for help in lawsuits and elections, and urged them to unite and, taking counsel together, to overthrow the democracy. When he had made his other arrangements to suit the present situation, so that there would be no more delay, he himself, with the ten men, made the voyage to Tissaphernes.
55 In the same winter Leon and Diomedon, who had by now arrived to take command of the Athenian ships, made an attack on Rhodes. They found the Peloponnesian ships hauled up on shore, made a landing, defeated in battle the Rhodians who came out against them, and withdrew to Chalce, and they carried on the war from there rather than from Cos, for it was easier for them to keep watch from there in case the Peloponnesian fleet put out anywhere. Xenophantidas, a Laconian, also came to Rhodes from Pedaritus at Chios, saying that the Athenian wall was now complete, and that unless they came to the rescue with all their ships, the cause at Chios would be lost. They intended to go. Meanwhile Pedaritus, with the mercenaries he had with him and the Chians in full force, attacked the Athenian fortification around the ships, took part of it, and seized some of the ships that were hauled up. But the Athenians came out to the rescue and routed the Chians first, and then the rest of the force around Pedaritus was defeated as well; Pedaritus himself was killed, with many of the Chians, and many arms were captured.
56 After this the Chians were besieged by land and sea even more closely than before, and the famine there was great. Meanwhile the Athenian envoys with Peisander came to Tissaphernes and held discussions about an agreement. But Alcibiades was not altogether sure of Tissaphernes, who feared the Peloponnesians more and still wished, as Alcibiades himself had taught him, to wear both sides down. So he resorted to the following scheme: that Tissaphernes should make the greatest possible demands on the Athenians and so not come to terms. It seems to me that Tissaphernes too wished the same thing, he himself out of fear; while Alcibiades, when he saw that Tissaphernes would not come to terms in any case, wished the Athenians to think, not that he was unable to persuade him, but that Tissaphernes had been persuaded and wished to come over to them, and that the Athenians were not offering enough. For Alcibiades, speaking himself on behalf of Tissaphernes, who was present, demanded such excessive terms that the responsibility fell on the Athenian side, even though they had conceded most of what he asked. He demanded that all Ionia be given up, and then the islands lying off it, and other things; and when the Athenians did not oppose these, finally, at the third meeting, fearing that he would be exposed as quite powerless, he demanded that they allow the King to build ships and sail along his own coast wherever and with as many ships as he wished. At that point the Athenians no longer …7 but, considering the terms impossible and that they had been deceived by Alcibiades, they went away in anger and returned to Samos.
57 Immediately after this, in the same winter, Tissaphernes went to Caunus. He wished to bring the Peloponnesians back to Miletus, and after making yet another agreement, whatever he could, to provide them with maintenance and not to be driven into outright war with them. He was afraid that if they lacked maintenance for so many ships, they would either be forced to fight the Athenians at sea and be defeated, or their ships would be emptied of men and the Athenians would get what they wanted without him. Still more he feared that in search of maintenance they would ravage the mainland. With all this in his calculation and foresight, in keeping with his wish to keep the Hellenes balanced against one another, he sent for the Peloponnesians, gave them maintenance, and concluded with them this third treaty:
58 “In the thirteenth year of the reign of Darius, Alexippidas being ephor at Lacedaemon, an agreement was made in the plain of the Maeander by the Lacedaemonians and their allies with Tissaphernes, Hieramenes, and the sons of Pharnaces, concerning the affairs of the King and of the Lacedaemonians and their allies. The King’s territory, as much of it as is in Asia, shall be the King’s; and concerning his own territory the King shall decide as he wishes. The Lacedaemonians and their allies shall not go against the King’s territory for any harm, nor shall the King go against the territory of the Lacedaemonians or of their allies for any harm. If any of the Lacedaemonians or their allies goes against the King’s territory for harm, the Lacedaemonians and their allies shall prevent it; and if anyone from the King’s territory goes against the Lacedaemonians or their allies for harm, the King shall prevent it. Tissaphernes shall provide maintenance for the ships now present, according to the terms agreed, until the King’s ships arrive. The Lacedaemonians and their allies, when the King’s ships have arrived, may maintain their own ships at their own expense if they wish. If they wish to receive their maintenance from Tissaphernes, Tissaphernes shall provide it, and the Lacedaemonians and their allies, at the end of the war, shall repay to Tissaphernes whatever money they have received. When the King’s ships have arrived, the ships of the Lacedaemonians and of their allies and those of the King shall wage the war jointly, in whatever way seems good to Tissaphernes and to the Lacedaemonians and their allies. And if they wish to make an end of the war with the Athenians, they shall make an end of it jointly, on the same footing.”
59 Such was this treaty. After this Tissaphernes began preparing to bring the Phoenician ships, as had been agreed, and everything else he had promised, and wished at any rate to be seen preparing.
60 At the very end of the winter the Boeotians took Oropus by betrayal, though it was held by an Athenian garrison. Some men of Eretria and of Oropus itself had a hand in it, plotting the revolt of Euboea; for since the place lies opposite Eretria, it was impossible, while the Athenians held it, for it not to do great harm to Eretria and the rest of Euboea. Now that they held Oropus, the Eretrians came to Rhodes, calling the Peloponnesians to Euboea. But the Peloponnesians were bent rather on relieving Chios, which was in distress, and they put out from Rhodes with all their ships and sailed. When they were off Triopium, they sighted the Athenian ships out at sea sailing from Chalce; and since neither side sailed against the other, the one fleet reached Samos and the other Miletus, and the Peloponnesians saw that it was no longer possible to relieve Chios without a sea battle. So this winter ended, and with it the twentieth year of this war, which Thucydides recorded.
61 In the following summer, at the very beginning of spring, Dercylidas, a Spartiate, was sent with a small army by land to the Hellespont to bring Abydos to revolt (the Abydenes are colonists of the Milesians); and the Chians, while Astyochus was at a loss how to help them, were forced by the pressure of the siege to fight at sea. While Astyochus was still at Rhodes, they had happened to receive from Miletus a commander to replace Pedaritus, Leon, a Spartiate, who had come out with Antisthenes as a marine, and with him twelve ships that had been guarding Miletus: five Thurian, four Syracusan, one from Anaea, one Milesian, and one of Leon’s own. The Chians came out in full force and seized a strong position, and at the same time their ships, thirty-six of them, put out against the thirty-two Athenian ships, and they fought. The battle was hard fought; the Chians and their allies had not the worse of the action, but since it was now late, they withdrew into the city.
62 Immediately after this, when Dercylidas had gone along the coast by land from Miletus, Abydos on the Hellespont revolted to Dercylidas and Pharnabazus, and Lampsacus two days later. Strombichides heard of it at Chios and hurried to the rescue with twenty-four Athenian ships, some of them transports carrying hoplites. The Lampsacenes came out against him; he defeated them in battle, took Lampsacus, which was unwalled, at the first assault, and after plundering the goods and the slaves he resettled the free inhabitants there and went on to Abydos. When the Abydenes would not come over and he could not take the place by assault, he sailed across to the opposite shore from Abydos, to Sestus, a city of the Chersonese once held by the Medes, and set it up as a fort and a guard post for the whole Hellespont.
63 Meanwhile the Chians gained a greater command of the sea; and the men at Miletus and Astyochus, learning of the sea battle and that Strombichides and his ships had gone, took courage. Astyochus sailed along the coast to Chios with two ships, brought away the ships from there, and with the whole fleet now made an advance against Samos. When the Athenians did not put out against him, because they were suspicious of one another, he sailed back again to Miletus. For about this time, and even earlier, the democracy at Athens had been overthrown. When Peisander and the envoys came back from Tissaphernes to Samos, they secured their position in the army itself still more firmly, and urged the most powerful of the Samians themselves to try to establish an oligarchy together with them, although these had risen up against one another precisely so as not to be ruled by an oligarchy. At the same time the Athenians at Samos conferred among themselves and decided to let Alcibiades be, since he was unwilling (and in any case he was not a suitable man to come into an oligarchy). They themselves, on their own, since they were already in danger, would see to it that the movement was not dropped, and at the same time would keep up the war and contribute money and whatever else was needed from their own households with zeal, since it was no longer for others but for themselves that they were toiling.
64 Having encouraged one another in this way, they at once sent Peisander and half of the envoys home to carry out the business there, with instructions to establish oligarchy in the subject cities at which they touched. The other half they sent off, some to one place and some to another, to the rest of the subject territories. Diitrephes, who was in the neighborhood of Chios and had been elected to command in the Thraceward region, they sent off to his command. When he reached Thasos, he overthrew the democracy. But in the second month or so after he had left, the Thasians began fortifying their city, since they no longer had any need of an aristocracy with the Athenians and were expecting freedom from the Lacedaemonians any day. For there was in fact a party of their exiles, banished by the Athenians, living among the Peloponnesians, and these, with their friends in the city, were working with all their strength to bring ships and make Thasos revolt. So it turned out exactly as they wished: the city was set right without risk, and the people who would have opposed them had been put down. At Thasos, then, the result was the opposite of what the Athenians who were establishing the oligarchy intended, and so it was, I think, in many other places among the subjects. For once the cities had acquired a moderate government and freedom to act without fear, they went on to outright freedom, setting no value on the specious good order offered by the Athenians.
65 Peisander and his colleagues, as had been decided, put down the democracies in the cities as they sailed along the coast, and at the same time took hoplites from some places as auxiliaries for themselves, and came to Athens. They found most of the work already done by their associates. For some of the younger men had banded together and secretly murdered one Androcles, the leading champion of the people, who had also been chiefly responsible for driving out Alcibiades. They killed him for both reasons, because of his popular leadership and because they thought they would gratify Alcibiades, who was going to return and make Tissaphernes their friend; and in the same way they secretly did away with certain others who were inconvenient to them. A program had also been put about by them openly, that no one should draw pay except those serving in the field, and that no more than five thousand should share in the government, and these the ones best able to serve the state with their money and their persons.
66 This was a plausible pretext for the majority, since in fact those who were changing the constitution were going to hold the city. The people, however, and the council chosen by the bean8 still met. But they discussed nothing that the conspirators did not approve; the speakers were from among them, and what was to be said had been examined by them in advance. None of the others spoke against them any longer, out of fear and because they saw how large the conspiracy was. If anyone did speak against them, he was at once put to death in some convenient way, and there was no search for those who had done it, nor, if they were suspected, any prosecution. The people kept quiet and were in such a state of dismay that anyone who suffered no violence, even if he kept silent, counted himself lucky. Thinking the conspiracy much larger than it really was, they were defeated in spirit, and they were unable to find out the truth because of the size of the city and because they did not know one another. For the same reason it was impossible for anyone who was indignant to lament his wrongs to another, so as to defend himself by plotting in return; for he would have found either a stranger to speak to, or an acquaintance whom he could not trust. All the members of the popular party approached one another with suspicion, each thinking the other had a hand in what was going on. For there were among the conspirators men whom no one would ever have thought would turn to oligarchy; and it was these who caused the greatest distrust among the many and did most to secure the safety of the few, by making sure that the people could not trust one another.
67 At this juncture, then, Peisander and his colleagues arrived and at once took up the remaining work. First they called the people together and proposed a motion to elect ten men as commissioners with full powers to draft proposals, and that these, after drafting them, should bring before the people on a fixed day a motion on how the city might best be governed. Then, when the day came, they shut the assembly up in Colonus (a sanctuary of Poseidon outside the city, about ten stades away), and the commissioners brought forward nothing but this one thing: that any Athenian should be permitted with impunity to propose whatever motion he wished; and they laid heavy penalties on anyone who should indict the proposer for an illegal proposal or harm him in any other way. Then at last it was said openly that no one should hold any office any longer under the existing order or draw pay, and that they should elect five men as presidents; these should elect a hundred men, and each of the hundred should co-opt three more; and these, being four hundred, should enter the council chamber and govern with full powers as they judged best, and should convene the Five Thousand whenever they saw fit.
68 The man who proposed this motion was Peisander, who in other respects too was openly the most zealous in helping to overthrow the democracy. But the man who had contrived the whole affair, how it should be brought to this point, and who had given it the longest attention, was Antiphon, an Athenian second to none of his time in excellence, and the ablest both at thinking out a plan and at expressing what he had thought. He did not come forward before the people, or into any other public contest if he could help it, but was regarded with suspicion by the multitude because of his reputation for cleverness; yet for those who were contending in the courts or before the people, he was the one man best able to help anyone who consulted him. And he himself, when the government of the Four Hundred was later overturned and was being harshly dealt with by the people,9 was accused on these very charges, of having helped to set it up, and of all men down to my time he is known to have made the best defense in a capital case. Phrynichus too showed himself the most zealous of all for the oligarchy, beyond everyone else, because he feared Alcibiades and knew that Alcibiades was aware of all his dealings with Astyochus at Samos, and he thought that in all likelihood Alcibiades would never return under an oligarchy; and once he had committed himself, he proved by far the most dependable in the face of danger. Theramenes son of Hagnon was also a leader among those who overthrew the democracy, a man not without ability in speaking or in judgment. So it was not surprising that the undertaking, carried out by many able men, succeeded, great as it was. For it was a hard thing to deprive the Athenian people of their freedom about a hundred years after the tyrants had been put down, a people not only unused to being subject but accustomed for more than half of that time to rule over others.
69 When the assembly had ratified these measures, without anyone speaking against them, and had been dissolved, they then brought the Four Hundred into the council chamber in the following way. All the Athenians were constantly under arms, some on the walls and others in the ranks, because of the enemy at Decelea. On that day, then, they let those who were not in the secret go off as usual, while those in the conspiracy had been told to wait quietly, not at the arms themselves but some distance away, and if anyone opposed what was being done, to take up their arms and not allow it. There were also Andrians and Tenians, three hundred Carystians, and some of the settlers at Aegina whom the Athenians had sent to live there, who had come for this very purpose with their own arms and had received the same instructions. When these dispositions had been made, the Four Hundred came, each with a dagger concealed on him, and with them the hundred and twenty young men whom they used whenever there was any violent work to be done. They confronted the councilors chosen by the bean in the council chamber and told them to take their pay and get out. They had brought them the pay for the whole of their remaining term themselves, and handed it to them as they went out.
70 When the council had withdrawn in this way without a word of protest, and the rest of the citizens made no move but kept quiet, the Four Hundred entered the council chamber. For the time being they chose presiding officers, the prytaneis, from among themselves by lot and performed all the customary prayers and sacrifices to the gods on entering office. Later they made great changes in the democratic administration (except that they did not recall the exiles, because of Alcibiades), and in general they governed the city by force. They put to death a few men, not many, whom they thought it convenient to have out of the way, and imprisoned others, and banished some. They also sent heralds to Agis, the king of the Lacedaemonians, who was at Decelea, saying that they wished to make peace and that it was reasonable for him to come to terms with them, rather than with the untrustworthy people.
71 But he thought that the city was not quiet and that the people would not so quickly surrender their ancient freedom; that if they saw a large army of the Lacedaemonians they would not stay quiet; and he did not at all trust that, even now, there would be no more disturbances among them. So he gave the envoys from the Four Hundred no conciliatory answer, but sent for a large army from the Peloponnese in addition, and not long afterward himself went down, with the garrison from Decelea and the troops who had come, to the very walls of Athens. He hoped that in their confusion they would either submit more readily on whatever terms the Lacedaemonians wished, or even be taken at the first assault in the tumult that would probably arise both inside and outside the city; for he thought he could not fail to take the Long Walls, since they were undermanned. But when he came close, the Athenians made not the slightest movement inside the city; they sent out their cavalry and a part of their hoplites, light-armed troops, and archers, struck down some of his men who had come too near, and got possession of some arms and bodies. Then, realizing how things were, he led his army back again. He himself and his own men stayed where they were at Decelea, while the troops who had come out he sent home after they had stayed a few days in the country. After this the Four Hundred continued to send envoys to Agis no less than before; and now that he was more receptive and encouraged them, they sent envoys to Lacedaemon as well to negotiate an agreement, wishing to make peace.
72 They also sent ten men to Samos to reassure the army and to explain that the oligarchy had not been established to harm the city or the citizens, but for the safety of the whole state; that there were five thousand, and not only four hundred, who were in charge; and yet, they said, never before had the Athenians, because of their campaigns and their occupations abroad, come together to deliberate on any matter so important that five thousand of them assembled. They gave them other suitable instructions as to what to say, and sent them off immediately after they themselves had taken power, fearing what in fact happened: that the naval crowd would not themselves be willing to remain under the oligarchic order, and that, the trouble beginning there, they would remove the Four Hundred.
73 For at Samos there was already a revolution under way concerning the oligarchy, and the following events took place at the very time when the Four Hundred were being set up. Those of the Samians who had earlier risen against the powerful and who were the popular party changed sides once again; persuaded by Peisander when he came, and by the Athenians at Samos who were in the conspiracy, they formed a sworn band of about three hundred and were about to attack the rest as being the democracy. They put to death one Hyperbolus, an Athenian, a worthless man who had been ostracized, not from fear of his power and prestige, but for his villainy and because he was a disgrace to the city;10 this they did together with Charminus, one of the generals, and some of the Athenians who were with them, giving them a pledge of their good faith. They also took part with them in other acts of the same kind, and were set on attacking the majority. But the majority learned of it and informed two of the generals, Leon and Diomedon (who did not willingly accept the oligarchy, because they were honored by the people), of what was coming, as well as Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus, the one a trierarch and the other serving as a hoplite, and others who were thought to have always been most strongly opposed to the conspirators. They asked them not to stand by and see themselves destroyed and Samos alienated from the Athenians, the one place through which alone their empire had held together until now. When these men heard this, they went to the soldiers one by one and urged them not to permit it, and above all the crew of the Paralus, Athenians all and free men who sailed on that ship, and who had always been hostile to oligarchy even when there was none. Leon and Diomedon, whenever they sailed anywhere, left some ships behind to guard them. So when the three hundred attacked them, all these came to the rescue, the crew of the Paralus most of all, and the Samian majority prevailed. They put to death some thirty of the three hundred and punished three of the most guilty with exile; the rest they did not hold to account for past wrongs, and they lived together thereafter as fellow citizens under a democracy.
74 The Samians and the soldiers at once sent the Paralus to Athens, with Chaereas son of Archestratus on board, an Athenian who had been zealous for the change, to report what had happened; for they did not yet know that the Four Hundred were in power. When they sailed in, the Four Hundred at once imprisoned two or three of the Paralians, took the ship away from the rest, transferred them to another ship, a troopship, and ordered them to stand guard around Euboea. Chaereas, when he saw how matters stood, somehow escaped notice at once and went back to Samos. He reported to the soldiers everything at Athens, exaggerating it all for the worse: that they were punishing everyone with beatings, that it was impossible to say a word against those who held the government, that the soldiers’ wives and children were being outraged, and that the Four Hundred intended to seize and imprison the relatives of all those serving at Samos who were not of their way of thinking, so that the relatives would be put to death if the men at Samos did not obey. And he told many other lies besides.
75 When they heard this, their first impulse was to stone the men chiefly responsible for the oligarchy and those of the rest who had taken part in it. But they were stopped by those who held a middle position, and were warned not to ruin everything while the enemy lay at anchor close by, prows facing them; and they desisted. After this Thrasybulus son of Lycus and Thrasyllus, who were the chief leaders of the change, now wishing openly to bring affairs at Samos over to democracy, bound all the soldiers by the most solemn oaths, and the members of the oligarchic party most of all, that they would truly be governed as a democracy and live in concord, carry on the war against the Peloponnesians with zeal, be enemies to the Four Hundred, and hold no negotiations with them by herald. All the Samians of military age swore the same oath with them, and the soldiers made the Samians partners in everything, and in whatever the outcome of their dangers might be, thinking that neither for the Samians nor for themselves was there any other path to safety, but that if either the Four Hundred or the enemy at Miletus prevailed, they would be destroyed.
76 So at this time they had come into a contest of wills, the one side trying to force the city to be a democracy, the other trying to force the army to be an oligarchy. The soldiers at once held an assembly, in which they deposed their former generals and any of the trierarchs whom they suspected, and elected others in their place as trierarchs and generals, among them Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus. They stood up among themselves and gave each other encouragement on many points, and in particular that they should not lose heart because the city had revolted from them. For it was the minority that had broken away from them, the majority, who were also better provided in every respect. Since they held the whole fleet, they would compel the other cities over which they ruled to pay their money just the same as if they were operating from Athens (for they had a city, Samos, which was not weak but had come within a very little of taking command of the sea away from the Athenians when it was at war with them, and they would defend themselves against the enemy from the same base as before); and since they had the ships, they were better able to procure their supplies than those in the city. It was because of them, stationed in advance at Samos, that the men in the city had controlled the entrance to the Piraeus even before; and now, if those men were not willing to give them back their constitution, they would be in a position where they were better able to shut them out of the sea than to be shut out by them. What the city had contributed to help them overcome the enemy was a small thing and worth nothing, and they had lost nothing in losing it, since the men at home had neither money left to send (the soldiers were providing for themselves) nor good counsel, which is the reason a city commands its armies. On the contrary, in this too the men at home had gone wrong, by overthrowing the ancestral laws, while they themselves were preserving them and would try to force the others to do the same; so that those among them who might give good counsel would be no worse than the men at home. And Alcibiades, if they secured for him immunity and recall, would gladly provide them with the King’s alliance. Most important of all, if they failed in everything, they had so great a fleet that there were many places to withdraw to where they would find both cities and land.
77 After holding this assembly among themselves and encouraging one another, they went on with their preparations for the war no less than before. The ten envoys sent to Samos by the Four Hundred learned of these things when they had already reached Delos, and stayed there quietly.
78 About this same time the soldiers in the Peloponnesian fleet at Miletus were crying out among themselves that their cause was being ruined by Astyochus and Tissaphernes. Astyochus, they said, had not been willing to fight at sea before, while they themselves were still stronger and the Athenian fleet was small, nor was he willing now, when the Athenians were said to be in civil strife and their ships were not yet together; instead, waiting for the Phoenician ships from Tissaphernes, a mere name and no reality, they ran the risk of being worn away. And Tissaphernes, for his part, was not bringing these ships, and was ruining the fleet by giving maintenance neither regularly nor in full. They therefore said that they must delay no longer, but fight it out at sea.
79 The Syracusans above all urged this. The allies and Astyochus, aware of the murmuring, decided in council to fight a decisive battle, especially since news had come to them of the disturbance at Samos. They set out with all their ships, a hundred and twelve, and ordering the Milesians to go along the coast by land toward Mycale, they sailed for Mycale. The Athenians, with eighty-two ships from Samos that happened to be anchored at Glauce in Mycale (at that point Samos is only a short distance from the mainland at Mycale), when they saw the Peloponnesian ships sailing toward them, withdrew to Samos, not thinking themselves strong enough in numbers to risk everything on a battle. At the same time, since they had learned in advance that the enemy at Miletus were eager for a sea battle, they were expecting Strombichides to come to their aid from the Hellespont with the ships that had gone from Chios to Abydos; for a messenger had been sent ahead to him. So the Athenians withdrew to Samos in this way, while the Peloponnesians put in at Mycale and encamped there, together with the land force of the Milesians and their neighbors. On the next day, when they were about to sail against Samos, news came that Strombichides had arrived with the ships from the Hellespont, and they at once sailed back again to Miletus. The Athenians, now reinforced by these ships, themselves made an advance on Miletus with a hundred and eight ships, wishing to fight a decisive battle; and when no one put out against them, they sailed back to Samos.
80 Immediately after this, in the same summer, the Peloponnesians, who had not put out against the enemy because they thought themselves no match for them with their whole fleet together, were at a loss where to get money for so many ships, especially since Tissaphernes paid badly. They therefore sent Clearchus son of Ramphias with forty ships to Pharnabazus, as had originally been ordered from the Peloponnese. For Pharnabazus was inviting them and was ready to provide maintenance, and at the same time Byzantium was sending them messages about revolting. These Peloponnesian ships put out into the open sea, so as to escape the notice of the Athenians on their voyage, and were caught in a storm. Most of them, with Clearchus, made Delos and later returned to Miletus (Clearchus went by land to the Hellespont again and took up his command there); but ten of them, under Helixus the Megarian general, got through safely to the Hellespont and brought Byzantium to revolt. After this the Athenians at Samos, learning of it, sent ships to the Hellespont as reinforcement and guard, and a short sea battle took place off Byzantium, eight ships against eight.
81 The leaders at Samos, and above all Thrasybulus, who held always to the same policy once he had brought about the change, that they should recall Alcibiades, at last persuaded the mass of the soldiers in an assembly. They voted Alcibiades recall and immunity, and Thrasybulus sailed to Tissaphernes and brought Alcibiades back to Samos, thinking that their only safety lay in his bringing Tissaphernes over to their side from the Peloponnesians. An assembly was held, and Alcibiades complained of and lamented the private misfortune of his exile. He spoke at length about public affairs and raised in them no small hopes for the future, and he exaggerated beyond measure his own influence with Tissaphernes. His purpose was that those who held the oligarchy at home should fear him and the sworn clubs be the more readily broken up, that those at Samos should hold him in greater honor and themselves take more courage, and that the enemy should be discredited with Tissaphernes as much as possible and fall from the hopes they now had. So Alcibiades made these promises, boasting to the utmost: that Tissaphernes had assured him that, if he could only trust the Athenians, they would never lack maintenance as long as he had anything left, not even if in the end he had to turn his own bedding into silver; and that he would bring the Phoenician ships, which were already at Aspendus, to the Athenians and not to the Peloponnesians; but that he could trust the Athenians only if Alcibiades were safely restored and gave his guarantee for them.
82 When they heard this and much else besides, they at once elected him general together with the former generals and entrusted everything to him. Not one of them would have given up for anything his present hope of safety and of revenge on the Four Hundred; and on the strength of what had been said they were now ready to despise the enemy before them and to sail against the Piraeus. But Alcibiades firmly prevented them from sailing against the Piraeus and leaving behind the enemy who were nearer, though many were pressing for it. He said that, since he had been elected general, he would first sail to Tissaphernes and arrange the conduct of the war with him. And he went off directly from this assembly, so that he might seem to share everything with Tissaphernes, and at the same time wishing to stand higher in his esteem and to show him that he had now been elected general and was able to do him good or harm. So it fell out that Alcibiades frightened Tissaphernes with the Athenians, and the Athenians with Tissaphernes.
83 When the Peloponnesians at Miletus learned of Alcibiades’s recall, their distrust of Tissaphernes, which existed already, turned into far stronger hostility. For it had happened that, at the time of the Athenian advance on Miletus, when they would not put out and fight, Tissaphernes had become much slacker in his payments, and their hatred of him, which existed even before this because of Alcibiades, had grown greater still. The soldiers gathered in groups, as they had before, and went over their grievances, and not only the soldiers but some of the other men of standing as well: that they had never yet received their pay in full, that what was given was small and not even that regular, and that unless someone either fought a decisive battle or moved them to a place where they could get maintenance, the men would desert the ships. And Astyochus, they said, was to blame for everything, humoring Tissaphernes for his own private gain.
84 While they were in this frame of mind, a disturbance broke out around Astyochus of the following kind. The sailors of the Syracusans and Thurians, who were the boldest because most of them were free men, came at him and demanded their pay. He answered them somewhat arrogantly and threatened them, and he even raised his staff against Dorieus, who was speaking up for his own sailors. When the mass of the soldiers saw it, they broke out, sailors that they were, and rushed at Astyochus to stone him. But he saw them coming and took refuge at an altar. He was not hit, however, and they separated. The Milesians also fell on the fort that Tissaphernes had built in Miletus, took it by surprise, and drove out the garrison inside it; and the other allies approved of this, the Syracusans not least. Lichas, however, was displeased with it and said that the Milesians and the others in the King’s territory ought to submit to Tissaphernes within reasonable limits and court his favor until they had settled the war well. The Milesians were angry with him for this and for other things of the same kind, and when he later died of illness they would not allow the Lacedaemonians who were there to bury him where they wished.
85 While their affairs with Astyochus and Tissaphernes were at this point of discord, Mindarus arrived from Lacedaemon as successor to Astyochus in the command of the fleet and took over; and Astyochus sailed for home. Tissaphernes sent with him one of his own people as an envoy, a bilingual Carian named Gaulites, to complain of the Milesians about the fort and at the same time to defend himself. He knew that the Milesians were going chiefly to cry out against him, and that Hermocrates was going with them, who meant to show that Tissaphernes was ruining the cause of the Peloponnesians together with Alcibiades and was playing a double game. There had always been enmity between them over the payment of wages; and at last, when Hermocrates was banished from Syracuse and other generals of the Syracusans, Potamis, Myscon, and Demarchus, had come to Miletus to take over the ships, Tissaphernes pressed still harder against Hermocrates, now an exile, and among other things accused him of having once asked him for money and, when he did not get it, of having declared his enmity toward him. So Astyochus and the Milesians and Hermocrates sailed off to Lacedaemon. Alcibiades had by now crossed back from Tissaphernes to Samos.
86 The envoys from the Four Hundred who had been sent earlier to soothe and instruct the men at Samos now arrived from Delos while Alcibiades was present, and when an assembly was held they tried to speak. At first the soldiers would not listen, but shouted that those who were overthrowing the democracy should be put to death; then, however, with difficulty, they quieted down and heard them. The envoys reported that the change had been made not to destroy the city but to save it, and not so that it might be handed over to the enemy (for they could have done that when the enemy invaded while they were already in power); that all the Five Thousand would share in the government in turn; and that the soldiers’ families were neither being outraged, as Chaereas had slanderously reported, nor suffering any harm, but each of them was staying where he was in possession of his own property. They said much else besides, but the soldiers listened no better; they grew angry and proposed various courses, above all to sail against the Piraeus. And it seems that Alcibiades then for the first time did the city a service, and as great a service as anyone ever did. For when the Athenians at Samos were set on sailing against their own countrymen, in which case the enemy would most certainly have gained Ionia and the Hellespont at once, he was the one who prevented it. At that moment no one else would have been able to restrain the crowd; but he stopped them from sailing, and turned aside, by rebuking them, those who were angry with the envoys on their own account. He himself gave the envoys their answer and sent them away: he did not object to the Five Thousand governing, but he told them to get rid of the Four Hundred and to restore the council as it had been before, the Five Hundred; and if any cuts had been made for economy, so that the men in the field might be better provided with maintenance, he heartily approved. In other respects he told them to hold out and not give in to the enemy at all; for if the city was preserved, there was much hope that they would also come to terms with one another, but if once either side failed, either the army at Samos or the men at home, there would no longer be anyone left to be reconciled with. Envoys from Argos were also there, offering help to the Athenian democracy at Samos; Alcibiades praised them, told them to come when they were called, and so sent them away. The Argives had come with the Paralians, who had been assigned by the Four Hundred to cruise around Euboea in the troopship. These had been carrying Athenian envoys sent by the Four Hundred to Lacedaemon, Laespodias, Aristophon, and Melesias; and when on their voyage they came off Argos, they seized the envoys and handed them over to the Argives, as men among the foremost in overthrowing the democracy. They themselves did not go on to Athens, but took the Argive envoys from Argos and came to Samos in the trireme they had.
87 In the same summer, at the time when the Peloponnesians were most indignant with Tissaphernes, for other reasons and especially because of Alcibiades’s recall, regarding him as now openly favoring the Athenians, Tissaphernes, wishing, so it seemed, to clear himself of their accusations, prepared to go to Aspendus to fetch the Phoenician ships, and asked Lichas to go with him. He said he would appoint Tamos, his lieutenant, to the army, to provide maintenance while he himself was away. Accounts differ, and it is not easy to know with what intention he went to Aspendus and, having gone there, did not bring the ships. That the Phoenician ships, a hundred and forty-seven of them, came as far as Aspendus is clear; why they did not come on is the subject of many guesses. Some say it was so that by going away he might wear down the Peloponnesian cause, as he had in fact intended (Tamos, at any rate, who had been charged with it, provided maintenance no better, but even worse); others, that he brought the Phoenicians to Aspendus in order to extort money from them for their discharge (for in any case he was not going to use them); others again, that it was because of the outcry at Lacedaemon, so that it might be said that he was doing no wrong, but had plainly gone after ships that were really manned. To me, however, it seems quite clear that his purpose in not bringing the fleet was to wear down and hold in check the forces of the Hellenes: wearing them down while he went there and delayed, and keeping them even, so as not to make either side stronger by joining it. For if he had wished, he could surely have brought the war to an end by appearing on the scene, beyond any doubt; by bringing the ships he would in all likelihood have given the Lacedaemonians the victory, since even as it was they lay at anchor facing the enemy as an equal rather than an inferior fleet. And what convicts him most of all is the excuse he gave for not bringing the ships. He said that fewer had been assembled than the King had ordered; yet surely he would have won still greater favor in this way, by not spending much of the King’s money and accomplishing the same things with fewer ships. In any case, with whatever intention, Tissaphernes reached Aspendus and met the Phoenicians; and the Peloponnesians, at his request, sent Philip, a Lacedaemonian, with two triremes, to fetch the ships.
88 When Alcibiades learned that Tissaphernes was going to Aspendus, he too sailed there, taking thirteen ships, and promised the men at Samos a safe and great service: that he would either himself bring the Phoenician ships to the Athenians or at least prevent them from coming to the Peloponnesians. He probably knew from long acquaintance Tissaphernes’s intention not to bring them, and he wished to discredit him as much as possible with the Peloponnesians for his friendship with Alcibiades and the Athenians, so that he might be the more compelled to come over to their side. So he set out and sailed directly toward Phaselis and Caunus, eastward along the coast.
89 The envoys sent by the Four Hundred, on reaching Athens from Samos, reported Alcibiades’s message: that he urged them to hold out and not give in to the enemy at all, and that he had great hopes of reconciling the army with them and of overcoming the Peloponnesians. Many of those who shared in the oligarchy had already been dissatisfied, and would gladly have got out of the business in any way that was safe; and this message gave them much more confidence. They now began to form a party and to find fault with the conduct of affairs, having as their leaders some of the very foremost men in the oligarchy and in office, such as Theramenes son of Hagnon, Aristocrates son of Scellias, and others. These had been among the first to take part in affairs; but they were afraid, so they said, of the army at Samos and of Alcibiades in earnest, and also of the envoys being sent to Lacedaemon, lest they do the city some harm without the authority of the majority. They did not openly propose to give up the narrow oligarchy itself,11 but said that the Five Thousand must be appointed in fact and not in name only, and the constitution made more equal. This was the political form their argument took; but most of them pursued it out of private ambition, the very thing by which an oligarchy that arises out of a democracy is most surely destroyed. For all of them claim from the very first day not merely to be equal but each to be by far the first himself; whereas under a democracy, when an election takes place, a man bears the outcome more easily, as he is not being worsted by his equals. What most plainly encouraged them was the strength of Alcibiades’s position at Samos, and the fact that they did not think the oligarchy would last. Each of them, then, was striving to become himself the first champion of the people.
90 The members of the Four Hundred who were most opposed to this kind of movement, and who were their leaders, were Phrynichus, who had been general at Samos and had then quarreled with Alcibiades; Aristarchus, a man who was among the most bitter and longest-standing opponents of the people; Peisander; Antiphon; and others of the most powerful. Earlier, as soon as they had established themselves, and again when the army at Samos broke away from them to democracy, they had been sending envoys of their own to Lacedaemon, were eager for an agreement, and were building the wall in the place called Eetionea; and they did so much more still after their envoys came back from Samos, as they saw that the many, and even those of their own number who had seemed reliable before, were changing sides. They sent Antiphon and Phrynichus and ten others in haste, being afraid both of the situation at home and of that at Samos, with instructions to come to terms with the Lacedaemonians in any way whatever that was at all tolerable; and they went on building the wall at Eetionea more eagerly than ever. The purpose of the wall, according to Theramenes and his party, was not to keep out of the Piraeus the men at Samos if they sailed against it by force, but rather to let in the enemy, whenever they wished, with ships and infantry. For Eetionea is a mole of the Piraeus, and the entrance to the harbor runs right beside it. It was being fortified, together with the wall that already existed on the landward side, in such a way that a few men stationed in it could control the entrance. For both the old wall on the landward side and the new inner wall being built on the seaward side ended at one of the two towers at the mouth of the harbor, which is narrow. They also walled off a colonnade, the largest in the Piraeus and immediately adjoining this wall, and kept it in their own control; and they compelled everyone to store in it both the grain that was on hand and the grain that came in by sea, and to take it out from there for sale.
91 Theramenes had long been spreading talk of all this, and when the envoys came back from Lacedaemon without having arranged any agreement for the whole people, he declared that this wall was likely to destroy the city. For at this same time, as it happened, forty-two ships from the Peloponnese, among them some Italian ships from Tarentum and Locri and some Sicilian ones, were already at anchor at Las in Laconia and preparing for the voyage to Euboea, at the invitation of the Euboeans; Agesandridas son of Agesander, a Spartiate, commanded them. Theramenes said that they were sailing not so much to Euboea as to those who were fortifying Eetionea, and that unless they took precautions now, they would be destroyed before they knew it. And there was in fact something of the kind on the part of those he accused; it was not merely slander. For their first wish was to keep the oligarchy and rule over the allies as well; failing that, to hold the ships and the walls and be independent; and if they were shut out from that too, at least not to be destroyed themselves first of all by the people once it was restored, but to bring in the enemy and come to terms, without walls or ships, and keep the city’s affairs on any terms whatever, so long as their own persons were safe.
92 For this reason they were eagerly building this wall, with small gates and entrances and ways to let the enemy in, and they wished to finish it in time. Before this, the talk against them had been among a few and rather secret. But Phrynichus, returning from the embassy to Lacedaemon, was struck down by design, by one of the frontier guards,12 in the crowded marketplace, not far from the council chamber after he had left it, and died on the spot. The man who struck him escaped, but his accomplice, an Argive, was caught and put to torture by the Four Hundred, and he gave the name of no one who had ordered it, nor anything else except that he knew of many men who met at the house of the commander of the frontier guards and in other houses. When no reprisals followed from this, then at last Theramenes, Aristocrates, and all the others, members of the Four Hundred or outside it, who were of the same mind, set about the business more boldly. For at the same time the ships from Las had by now sailed around and anchored at Epidaurus, and had overrun Aegina; and Theramenes said it was not to be expected that ships sailing for Euboea would turn into the gulf as far as Aegina and then go back to anchor at Epidaurus, unless they had come on the invitation he had always been charging; it was therefore no longer possible to stay quiet. At last, after much factious talk and suspicion, they set about it in deed. The hoplites in the Piraeus who were building the wall at Eetionea, among whom was Aristocrates, a taxiarch at the head of his own tribe, seized Alexicles, a general of the oligarchy and one most devoted to the clubs, and took him into a house and locked him up. Others joined them in this, among them one Hermon, commander of the frontier guards stationed at Munychia; and, most important, the main body of the hoplites wanted it. When this was reported to the Four Hundred (who happened to be sitting together in the council chamber), they were at once ready, all except those who were secretly glad of it, to go to arms, and they threatened Theramenes and his party. He defended himself and said he was ready to go at once and help rescue Alexicles. He took with him one of the generals who was of his mind and went down to the Piraeus; Aristarchus also went to the rescue, with some of the young horsemen. There was a great and alarming uproar. For those in the city thought that the Piraeus had already been seized and the man arrested had been killed, and those in the Piraeus that the men from the city were all but upon them. With difficulty the older men stopped those in the city who were running about and rushing for their arms; and Thucydides of Pharsalus, the city’s proxenus (the citizen who represented Athens in his own city), who was there, zealously put himself in the way of each group and cried out to them not to destroy their country while the enemy lay in wait close by. So they quieted down and kept their hands off one another. Theramenes, on reaching the Piraeus (he was himself a general), made a show of being angry with the hoplites, as far as shouting went; but Aristarchus and those opposed to the hoplites were truly angry. Most of the hoplites went at the work with a will and had no regrets, and they asked Theramenes whether he thought the wall was being built for any good purpose and whether it would not be better pulled down. He said that if they thought it should be pulled down, he thought so too. At that the hoplites and many of the people of the Piraeus at once climbed up and began demolishing the fortification. The appeal to the crowd was that whoever wished the Five Thousand to govern instead of the Four Hundred should join in the work. For they still screened themselves behind the name of the Five Thousand, not saying outright “whoever wishes the people to govern,” for fear that the Five Thousand really existed and a man speaking to someone might stumble through ignorance. For this reason the Four Hundred were unwilling either to let the Five Thousand exist or to make it plain that they did not exist: to establish so many partners in power they thought would be outright democracy, while the uncertainty would make men afraid of one another.
93 On the next day the Four Hundred, though in disarray, nevertheless met in the council chamber. The hoplites in the Piraeus released Alexicles, whom they had seized, and after demolishing the fortification went to the theater of Dionysus near Munychia, grounded their arms, and held an assembly. They decided at once to march to the city, and grounded their arms again at the Anaceum. Some men chosen by the Four Hundred came to them and talked with them man to man, trying to persuade those they saw to be reasonable to keep quiet themselves and to restrain the others. They said that they would make known the Five Thousand, and that the Four Hundred would be chosen from these in turn, as the Five Thousand should decide, and meanwhile urged them in no way to ruin the city or drive it into the arms of the enemy. The whole body of the hoplites, after much talk from many speakers to many listeners, became calmer than before, and their chief fear was for the state as a whole. They agreed that on a fixed day an assembly should be held in the theater of Dionysus to restore concord.
94 When the day of the assembly in the theater of Dionysus came and they had all but gathered, news arrived that the forty-two ships under Agesandridas were sailing from Megara along the coast of Salamis. Every one of the hoplites thought this was exactly what Theramenes and his party had long been saying, that the ships were sailing for the fortification, and it seemed a good thing that it had been pulled down. Agesandridas may perhaps have been cruising in the neighborhood of Epidaurus and those waters by some prior arrangement; but it is likely too that he was lingering there because of the present civil strife among the Athenians, in the hope that he might arrive at the right moment. The Athenians, for their part, as soon as the news reached them, at once ran down to the Piraeus in full force, thinking that a war greater than their own private war was upon them from the enemy, not far off but at the harbor itself. Some went on board the ships that were ready, others launched more, and others hurried to man the walls and the mouth of the harbor.
95 But the Peloponnesian ships sailed past, rounded Sunium, and anchored between Thoricus and Prasiae, and later arrived at Oropus. The Athenians, in haste, were forced to use untrained crews, as was to be expected in a city torn by faction that wished to send help quickly where the greatest interest was at stake (for, with Attica shut off from them, Euboea was everything to them). They sent Thymochares as general, with ships, to Eretria; and when these arrived, together with the ships already in Euboea, there were thirty-six of them. They were at once forced to fight at sea. For Agesandridas, after his men had had their midday meal, put out from Oropus; Oropus is about sixty stades from the city of the Eretrians by sea. As he sailed up, the Athenians at once began manning their ships, thinking that their soldiers were near the ships. But it happened that the soldiers were getting provisions for their meal not from the marketplace (for, by the design of the Eretrians, nothing was being sold there), but from houses on the outskirts of the town, so that, while the ships were being manned slowly, the enemy might fall on them first and force the Athenians to put out just as they were. A signal was also raised for the enemy from Eretria to Oropus to tell them when to put out. Putting out with such preparation as this, the Athenians fought off the harbor of Eretria and nevertheless held out for a short time; then they turned to flight and were chased to the shore. Those who took refuge in the city of the Eretrians, as a friendly place, fared worst of all, being slaughtered by the Eretrians; those who reached the fort in Eretrian territory which the Athenians themselves held survived, as did the ships that reached Chalcis. The Peloponnesians captured twenty-two Athenian ships, killed some of the men and took others prisoner, and set up a trophy. Not long afterward they brought all Euboea to revolt, except Oreus (which the Athenians themselves held), and settled affairs there in general.
96 When the news of what had happened in Euboea reached the Athenians, the greatest consternation of any yet came over them. Neither the disaster in Sicily, great as it had seemed at the time, nor anything else had ever yet frightened them so much. The army at Samos had revolted; there were no other ships, nor men to man them; they were in civil strife among themselves, and no one could tell when they would come to blows; and on top of all this so great a disaster had befallen them, in which they had lost their ships and, most important, Euboea, from which they drew more than from Attica. How could they not lose heart? What alarmed them most, and most immediately, was the thought that the enemy, after their victory, would dare to sail straight against the Piraeus, now empty of ships; and they thought they were all but there already. If they had been more daring, they could easily have done it, and either, by lying off the city, would have divided it further, or, if they had stayed and besieged it, would have forced the fleet from Ionia, though hostile to the oligarchy, to come to the rescue of their own kinsmen and of the whole city; and in that case the Hellespont would have been theirs, and Ionia, and the islands, and everything as far as Euboea, and, one might say, the whole Athenian empire. Not on this occasion only but on many others too, the Lacedaemonians proved the most convenient of all enemies for the Athenians to fight. For the two peoples were utterly different in temperament, the one quick, the other slow, the one enterprising, the other lacking in daring; and this was of the greatest service to the Athenians, especially in a naval empire. The Syracusans showed it: being most like the Athenians in temperament, they fought them best.
97 Upon this news, then, the Athenians nevertheless manned twenty ships and called an assembly, the first one at once in the place called the Pnyx, where they had been accustomed to meet in the past. In it they deposed the Four Hundred and voted to hand over affairs to the Five Thousand (and that all those who furnished arms should belong to them), and that no one should receive pay for any office, under pain of a curse. Many other assemblies were also held later, in which they voted to appoint lawgivers and passed the other measures for the constitution. And in the first period of this government, in my time at least, the Athenians appear to have been governed better than ever; for there was a moderate blending of the few and the many, and this was what first raised the city up out of the bad state its affairs had fallen into. They also voted to recall Alcibiades and others with him, and sending to him and to the army at Samos, they urged them to take up the conduct of affairs.
98 At the moment of this change Peisander, Alexicles, and the others who were most deeply involved in the oligarchy at once slipped away to Decelea. Aristarchus alone of them (for he happened also to be a general) quickly took some archers of the most barbarian kind and marched to Oenoe. This was an Athenian fort on the Boeotian border, and the Corinthians were besieging it of their own accord, having called in the Boeotians to help, because of a disaster that had befallen them from Oenoe, when some of their men returning from Decelea had been destroyed. Aristarchus came to an understanding with them and deceived the men in Oenoe, telling them that the people in the city had made a general settlement with the Lacedaemonians and that they too must hand over the place to the Boeotians, for these were the terms of the agreement. They believed him, as he was a general, and, knowing nothing because they were under siege, came out under a truce. In this way the Boeotians took possession of Oenoe after its surrender, and the oligarchy and the civil strife at Athens came to an end.
99 About the same time in this summer the Peloponnesians at Miletus were receiving maintenance from none of those to whom Tissaphernes had assigned the task when he went to Aspendus, and neither the Phoenician ships nor Tissaphernes himself had yet come. Philip, who had been sent with him, had written to Mindarus the admiral, and so had another man, Hippocrates, a Spartiate, who was at Phaselis, that the ships would not come and that they were being wronged by Tissaphernes in every way. Pharnabazus was inviting them and was eager, if he got the fleet, to bring the remaining cities of his province to revolt from the Athenians, as Tissaphernes had also done, hoping to gain something by it. So at last Mindarus, in good order and on a sudden word of command, so as to escape the notice of the men at Samos, set out from Miletus with seventy-three ships and sailed for the Hellespont (earlier in this same summer sixteen ships had sailed into it and overrun a part of the Chersonese). But he was caught by a storm and forced to put in at Icarus, and after staying there five or six days because of bad weather for sailing, he reached Chios.
100 Thrasyllus, when he learned at Samos that Mindarus had set out from Miletus, at once sailed too, with fifty-five ships, hurrying so that Mindarus should not get into the Hellespont before him. When he learned that he was at Chios, and thought that he would stay there, he posted lookouts both on Lesbos and on the mainland opposite, so that the ships might not move anywhere without his knowing; he himself sailed along the coast to Methymna and ordered barley meal and other provisions to be got ready, intending, if more time passed, to make his attacks on Chios from Lesbos. At the same time, since Eresus on Lesbos had revolted, he wished to sail against it and take it if he could. For some of the Methymnaean exiles, and not the least influential of them, had brought over from Cyme about fifty hoplites who were bound to them by friendship, and had hired others from the mainland, some three hundred in all, with Anaxander, a Theban, in command by reason of kinship. They first attacked Methymna; and when they were beaten back in the attempt because of the Athenian garrison troops who came out from Mytilene, and were again driven off in a battle outside the walls, they made their way across the mountain and brought Eresus to revolt. Thrasyllus therefore sailed against it with all his ships and intended to make an assault. Thrasybulus too had arrived there before him with five ships from Samos, when they learned of this crossing of the exiles; but coming too late, he lay at anchor off Eresus on his arrival. They were also joined by two ships that were returning home from the Hellespont, and by five Methymnaean ships; and in all there were sixty-seven ships present, and with their crews they began preparing to take Eresus by storm, with siege engines and by every other means, if they could.
101 Meanwhile Mindarus and the Peloponnesian ships at Chios spent two days taking on provisions, and each man received from the Chians three Chian fortieths;13 then on the third day they set out from Chios in haste, not by the open sea, so as not to fall in with the ships at Eresus, but keeping Lesbos on their left they sailed toward the mainland. They put in at the harbor of Carteria in the territory of Phocaea and took their midday meal, sailed along the coast of Cyme, and had their evening meal at Arginusae on the mainland, opposite Mytilene. From there they sailed along the coast while it was still deep night and reached Harmatus on the mainland, opposite Methymna; and after a hasty midday meal they sailed quickly past Lectum, Larisa, Hamaxitus, and the places in that region, and arrived at Rhoeteum, now within the Hellespont, before midnight. Some of the ships also put in at Sigeum and other places in that region.
102 The Athenians at Sestus, with eighteen ships, learned that the Peloponnesians were sailing in when their beacon watchers signaled to them and they saw many fires suddenly appear in the enemy’s territory. That same night, with all the speed they could, they stole along close to the Chersonese and sailed toward Elaeus, wishing to get out into the open sea and away from the enemy’s ships. They slipped past the sixteen ships at Abydos, though the friendly fleet that was approaching had sent word to these in advance to keep a careful watch in case the Athenians sailed out; but at dawn they were sighted by the ships with Mindarus, who at once gave chase, and they did not all get away. Most of them escaped toward Imbros and Lemnos, but four of the ships sailing last were overtaken off Elaeus. One, which ran aground by the sanctuary of Protesilaus, the enemy took with its crew, and two others without their crews; the fourth they burned, empty, off Imbros.
103 After this, with the ships from Abydos that had joined them and all the rest, eighty-six in all, they besieged Elaeus that day, and when it did not come over to them they sailed back to Abydos. The Athenians had been misled by their scouts and had not supposed that the enemy fleet could sail past without their knowledge, but were attacking the wall at their leisure. When they learned of it, they at once abandoned Eresus and hurried to the defense of the Hellespont. They took two of the Peloponnesian ships, which had ventured out too boldly into the open sea during the pursuit and fell in with them; and a day later they arrived and anchored at Elaeus, brought in from Imbros the ships that had fled there, and spent five days preparing for the battle.
104 After this they fought at sea in the following way. The Athenians sailed in column along the shore toward Sestus; the Peloponnesians, seeing this from Abydos, put out against them in turn. When they knew there was going to be a battle, the Athenians extended their line along the Chersonese from Idacus to Arrhiani, seventy-six ships; the Peloponnesians, opposite them, from Abydos to Dardanus, eighty-six ships. On the Peloponnesian side the Syracusans held the right wing, and Mindarus himself the other, with the fastest ships; on the Athenian side Thrasyllus held the left and Thrasybulus the right, while the other generals were posted each in his place. The Peloponnesians were eager to engage first, and with their left to outflank the Athenian right and so, if they could, shut them out from sailing out of the strait, and to force their center back against the shore, which was not far off. The Athenians saw this, and where the enemy wished to cut them off they extended their own line to meet them and outsailed them; their left had by now passed beyond the headland called Cynossema. As a result their center was left with ships that were weak and strung out, especially since they had fewer in number and the coast around Cynossema runs out to a sharp angle, so that what was happening on the other side of it could not be seen.
105 The Peloponnesians, then, fell on the center, drove the Athenian ships onto dry land, and landed after them, having much the better of the action. Neither could Thrasybulus and his men help the center from the right, because of the number of ships pressing them, nor Thrasyllus and his from the left (for Cynossema hid the center from view, and at the same time the Syracusans and the others drawn up against them, no fewer in number, held them in check), until the Peloponnesians, in the confidence of victory, began chasing one ship here and another there, and a part of their force fell into some disorder. Then Thrasybulus and his men, seeing this, stopped extending their wing, turned about, at once engaged the ships opposite them and routed them; and falling on the ships of the victorious part of the Peloponnesian fleet, which were scattered, they cut them up and threw most of them into panic without a fight. The Syracusans too, as it happened, had by now given way before Thrasyllus and his men, and were all the more inclined to flight when they saw the others fleeing.
106 When the rout had taken place and the Peloponnesians had fled, first toward the river Meidius and afterward to Abydos, the Athenians took only a few ships (for the Hellespont, being narrow, gave the enemy short distances to safety); yet this victory at sea came at the most opportune moment possible. For until then they had feared the Peloponnesian fleet, because of their losses one after another and because of the disaster in Sicily; but now they were freed from blaming themselves and from thinking the enemy still of any account at sea. They took from the enemy eight Chian ships, five Corinthian, two Ambraciot and two Boeotian, and one each of the Leucadians, Lacedaemonians, Syracusans, and Pellenians; they themselves lost fifteen ships. They set up a trophy on the headland where Cynossema is, collected the wrecks, gave back the enemy’s dead under a truce, and sent a trireme to Athens to announce the victory. When the ship arrived and the Athenians heard of this unexpected good fortune, after the recent disasters in Euboea and during the civil strife, they took great heart, and thought that their cause could still prevail if they set themselves to it with zeal.
107 On the fourth day after the battle the Athenians at Sestus, having hastily refitted their ships, sailed against Cyzicus, which had revolted. Off Harpagium and Priapus they sighted the eight ships from Byzantium lying at anchor; they sailed against them, defeated the men on shore in battle, and took the ships. Arriving at Cyzicus, which was unwalled, they brought it back to their side and exacted money from it. Meanwhile the Peloponnesians also sailed from Abydos to Elaeus and recovered those of their own captured ships that were still sound (the people of Elaeus had burned the rest), and sent Hippocrates and Epicles to Euboea to bring the ships from there.
108 About this same time Alcibiades also sailed back to Samos with his thirteen ships from Caunus and Phaselis, announcing that he had turned the Phoenician ships away from the Peloponnesians so that they would not come, and that he had made Tissaphernes more friendly to the Athenians than before. He manned nine ships in addition to those he had, exacted large sums of money from the Halicarnassians, and fortified Cos. After doing this and appointing a governor at Cos, he sailed back to Samos, autumn now approaching. Tissaphernes, when he learned at Aspendus that the Peloponnesian ships had sailed from Miletus to the Hellespont, broke camp and marched back toward Ionia. While the Peloponnesians were in the Hellespont, the Antandrians, who are Aeolians, brought over hoplites from Abydos by land across Mount Ida and let them into their city. They were being wronged by Arsaces the Persian, a lieutenant of Tissaphernes. This was the man who, when the Delians who had settled at Atramyttium after being removed by the Athenians for the purification of Delos, pretended a quarrel whose cause he did not disclose and called on the best men among them to serve in an expedition; he led them out as friends and allies, watched for them while they were at their midday meal, surrounded them with his own men, and shot them down with javelins. Because of this deed the Antandrians were afraid that he might at some time do something lawless to them as well; and since he was also laying other burdens on them that they could not bear, they drove his garrison out of their acropolis.
109 Tissaphernes learned of this deed too of the Peloponnesians, in addition to what they had done at Miletus and Cnidus (for there too his garrisons had been driven out). He thought that he had been badly discredited with them and feared that they might do him still further harm; and at the same time he was vexed at the thought that Pharnabazus, having received them in less time and at less expense, would achieve more against the Athenians. So he resolved to go to them at the Hellespont, to complain of what had been done at Antandrus and to answer the accusations about the Phoenician ships and the rest as plausibly as he could. And arriving first at Ephesus, he offered a sacrifice to Artemis. [When the winter that follows this summer ends, the twenty-first year will be complete.]14
Notes
1. The probouloi, a board of ten elderly “preliminary councilors” created after the Sicilian disaster (413 BC).
2. Helots who had been freed by the Spartans, often in return for military service.
3. Darius II, King of Persia 424–404 BC. Tissaphernes was satrap of Sardis and the western coastal provinces; Pharnabazus (8.6) held the satrapy of Hellespontine Phrygia.
4. A reserve of a thousand talents set aside on the Acropolis in 431 BC, to be used only if an enemy fleet attacked Athens (2.24).
5. The hetaireiai, private political clubs of upper-class Athenians, bound by oath, which organized support in lawsuits and elections (compare 8.54).
6. The Eumolpidae and Ceryces were the two priestly families of the Eleusinian Mysteries; Alcibiades had been condemned in 415 BC for profaning the Mysteries (6.28, 6.61).
7. The manuscripts have a gap here; some words are lost.
8. The regular democratic Council of Five Hundred, whose members were chosen by lot (literally “by the bean”).
9. The Greek of this sentence is corrupt in the manuscripts; the sense given is the one generally accepted.
10. Hyperbolus was ostracized about 417/416 BC; he was the last Athenian to be ostracized.
11. The Greek of this clause is corrupt; the sense given is the one generally accepted.
12. The peripoloi, young Athenians who patrolled the borders of Attica.
13. The “fortieth” was a Chian coin; its exact value is uncertain.
14. This bracketed sentence is regarded by editors as a later addition. Thucydides’ History breaks off here, unfinished, in the summer of 411 BC; the narrative of the war’s last years was continued by Xenophon in the Hellenica.