Hellenica (Xenophon)/Book 4/Chapter 8

394 B.C. Such were the land operations in the war. Meanwhile another series of events was being enacted on the sea and within the seaboard cities; and these I will now narrate in detail. But I shall confine my pen to the more memorable incidents, and others of less account I shall pass over.

In the first place, then, Pharnabazus and Conon, after defeating the Lacedaemonians in the naval engagement of Cnidus, commenced a tour of inspection round the islands and the maritime states, expelling from them, as they visited them, one after another the Spartan governors. Everywhere they gave consolatory assurances to the citizens that they had no intention of establishing fortress citadels within their walls, or in any way interfering with their self- government. Such words fell soothingly upon the ears of those to whom they were addressed; the proposals were courteously accepted; all were eager to present Pharnabazus with gifts of friendship and hospitality. The satrap, indeed, was only applying the instructions of his master Conon on these matters--who had taught him that if he acted thus all the states would be friendly to him, whereas, if he showed any intention to enslave them, the smallest of them would, as Conon insisted, be capable of causing a world of trouble, and the chances were, if apprehensions were once excited, he would find himself face to face with a coalition of united Hellas. To these admonitions Pharnabazus lent a willing ear.

Accordingly, when disembarking at Ephesus, he presented Conon with a fleet of forty sail, and having further instructed him to meet him at Sestos, set off himself by land along the coast to visit his own provinces. For here it should be mentioned that his old enemy Dercylidas happened to be in Abydos at the time of the sea-fight; nor had he at a later date suffered eclipse with the other governors, but on the contrary, had kept tight hold of Abydos and still preserved it in attachment to Lacedaemon. The course he had adopted was to summon a meeting of the Abydenians, when he made them a speech as follows: "Sirs, to-day it is possible for you, who have before been friends to my city, to appear as benefactors of the Lacedaemonians. For a man to prove faithful to his friends in the heyday of their good fortune is no great marvel; but to prove steadfast when his friends are in misfortune--that is a service monumental for all time. But do not mistake me. It does not follow that, because we have been defeated in a great sea-fight, we are therefore annihilated. Certainly not. Even in old days, you will admit, when Athens was mistress of the sea, our state was not powerless to benefit friends or chastise enemies. Moreover, in proportion as the rest of the cities have joined hands with fortune to turn their backs upon us, so much the more certainly will the grandeur of your fidelity shine forth. Or, is any one haunted by the fear that we may find ourselves blockaded by land and sea?--let him consider that at present there is no Hellenic navy whatever on the seas, and if the barbarian attempts to clutch the empire of the sea, Hellas will not sit by and suffer it; so that, if only in self-defence, she must inevitably take your side."

To this the Abydenians lent no deaf ears, but rather responded with willingness approaching enthusiasm--extending the hand of fellowship to the ex-governors, some of whom were already flocking to Abydos as a harbour of refuge, whilst others they sent to summon from a distance.

So when a number of efficient and serviceable men had been collected, Dercylidas ventured to cross over to Sestos--lying, as it does, not more than a mile distant, directly facing Abydos. There he not only set about collecting those who held lands in the Chersonese through Lacedaemonian influence, but extended his welcome also to the governors who had been driven out of European states. He insisted that, if they came to think of it, not even was their case desperate, reminding them that even in Asia, which originally belonged to the Persian monarch, places were to be found--such as the little state of Temnos, or Aegae, and others, capable of administering their affairs, unsubjected to the king of Persia. "But," he added, "if you want a strong impregnable position, I cannot conceive what better you can find than Sestos. Why, it would need a combined naval and military force to invest that port." By these and such like arguments he rescued them from the lethargy of despair.

Now when Pharnabazus found Abydos and Sestos so conditioned, he gave them to understand that unless they chose to eject the Lacedaemonians, he would bring war to bear upon them; and when they refused to obey, having first assigned to Conon as his business to keep the sea closed against them, he proceeded in person to ravage the territory of the men of Abydos. Presently, finding himself no nearer the fulfilment of his object--which was their reduction--he set off home himself and left it to Conon the while so to conciliate the Hellespontine states that as large a naval power as possible might be mustered against the coming spring. In his wrath against the Lacedaemonians, in return for the treatment he had received from them, his paramount object was to invade their territory and exact what vengeance he could.

B.C. 393. The winter was thus fully taken up with preparations; but with the approach of spring, Pharnabazus and Conon, with a large fleet fully manned, and a foreign mercenary brigade to boot, threaded their way through the islands to Melos. This island was to serve as a base of operations against Lacedaemon. And in the first instance he sailed down to Pherae and ravaged that district, after which he made successive descents at various other points on the seaboard, and did what injury he could. But in apprehension of the harbourless character of the coast, coupled with the enemy's facility of reinforcement and his own scarcity of supplies, he very soon turned back and sailed away, until finally he came to moorings in the harbour of Phoenicus in Cythera. The occupants of the city of the Cytherians, in terror of being taken by storm, evacuated the walls. To dismiss these under a flag of truce across to Laconia was his first step; his second was to repair the fortress in question and to leave a garrison in the island under an Athenian governor--Nicophemus. After this he set sail to the Isthmus of Corinth, where he delivered an exhortation to the allies begging them to prosecute the war vigorously, and to show themselves faithful to the Great King; and so, having left them all the moneys he had with him, set off on his voyage home.

But Conon had a proposal to make:--If Pharnabazus would allow him to keep the fleet, he would undertake, in the first place, to support it free of expense from the islands; besides which, he would sail to his own country and help his fellow-citizens the Athenians to rebuild their long walls and the fortifications round Piraeus. No heavier blow, he insisted, could well be inflicted on Lacedaemon. "In this way, I can assure you," he added, "you will win the eternal gratitude of the Athenians and wreak consummate vengeance on the Lacedaemonians, since at one stroke you will render null and void that on which they have bestowed their utmost labour." These arguments so far weighed with Pharnabazus that he despatched Conon to Athens with alacrity, and further supplied him with funds for the restoration of the walls. Thus it was that Conon, on his arrival at Athens, was able to rebuild a large portion of the walls--partly by lending his own crews, and partly by giving pay to carpenters and stone-masons, and meeting all the necessary expenses. There were other portions of the walls which the Athenians and Boeotians and other states raised as a joint voluntary undertaking.

Nor must it be forgotten that the Corinthians, with the funds left them by Pharnabazus, manned a fleet--the command of which they entrusted to their admiral Agathinus--and so were undisputed masters of the sea within the gulf round Achaia and Lechaeum.

B.C. 393-391. The Lacedaemonians, in opposition, fitted out a fleet under the command of Podanemus. That officer, in an attack of no great moment, lost his life, and Pollis, his second in command, was presently in his turn obliged to retire, being wounded, whereupon Herippidas took command of the vessels. On the other hand, Proaenus the Corinthian, who had relieved Agathinus, evacuated Rhium, and the Lacedaemonians recovered that post. Subsequently Teleutias succeeded to Herippidas's fleet, and it was then the turn of that admiral to dominate the gulf.

B.C. 392. The Lacedaemonians were well informed of the proceedings of Conon. They knew that he was not only restoring the fortifications of Athens by help of the king's gold, but maintaining a fleet at his expense besides, and conciliating the islands and seaboard cities towards Athens. If, therefore, they could indoctrinate Tiribazus--who was a general of the king--with their sentiments, they believed they could not fail either to draw him aside to their own interests, or, at any rate, to put a stop to his feeding Conon's navy. With this intention they sent Antalcidas to Tiribazus: his orders were to carry out this policy and, if possible, to arrange a peace between Lacedaemon and the king. The Athenians, getting wind of this, sent a counter-embassy, consisting of Hermogenes, Dion, Callisthenes, and Callimedon, with Conon himself. They at the same time invited the attendance of ambassadors from the allies, and there were also present representatives of the Boeotians, of Corinth, and of Argos. When they had arrived at their destination, Antalcidas explained to Tiribazus the object of his visit: he wished, if possible, to cement a peace between the state he represented and the king--a peace, moreover, exactly suited to the aspirations of the king himself; in other words, the Lacedaemonians gave up all claim to the Hellenic cities in Asia as against the king, while for their own part they were content that all the islands and other cities should be independent. "Such being our unbiassed wishes," he continued, "for what earthly reason should [the Hellenes or] the king go to war with us? or why should he expend his money? The king is guaranteed against attack on the part of Hellas, since the Athenians are powerless apart from our hegemony, and we are powerless so long as the separate states are independent." The proposals of Antalcidas sounded very pleasantly in the ears of Tiribazus, but to the opponents of Sparta they were the merest talk. The Athenians were apprehensive of an agreement which provided for the independence of the cities in the islands, whereby they might be deprived of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros. The Thebans, again, were afraid of being compelled to let the Boeotian states go free. The Argives did not see how such treaty contracts and covenants were compatible with the realisation of their own great object--the absorption of Corinth by Argos. And so it came to pass that this peace proved abortive, and the representatives departed each to his own home.

Tiribazus, on his side, thought it hardly consistent with his own safety to adopt the cause of the Lacedaemonians without the concurrence of the king--a scruple which did not prevent him from privately presenting Antalcidas with a sum of money, in hopes that when the Athenians and their allies discovered that the Lacedaemonians had the wherewithal to furnish a fleet, they might perhaps be more disposed to desire peace. Further, accepting the statements of the Lacedaemonians as true, he took on himself to secure the person of Conon, as guilty of wrongdoing towards the king, and shut him up. That done, he set off up country to the king to recount the proposals of Lacedaemon, with his own subsequent capture of Conon as a mischievous man, and to ask for further guidance on all these matters.

On the arrival of Tiribazus at the palace, the king sent down Struthas to take charge of the seaboard district. The latter, however, was a strong partisan of Athens and her allies, since he found it impossible to forget the long list of evils which the king's country had suffered at the hands of Agesilaus; so that the Lacedaemonians, contrasting the hostile disposition of the new satrap towards themselves with his friendliness to the Athenians, sent Thibron to deal with him by force of arms.

B.C. 391. That general crossed over and established his base of operations in Ephesus and the towns in the plain of the Maeander-- Priene, Leucophrys, and Achilleum--and proceeded to harry the king's territory, sparing neither live nor dead chattels. But as time went on, Struthas, who could not but note the disorderly, and indeed recklessly scornful manner in which the Lacedaemonian brought up his supports on each occasion, despatched a body of cavalry into the plain. Their orders were to gallop down and scour the plain, making a clean sweep of all they could lay their hands on. Thibron, as it befell, had just finished breakfast, and was returning to the mess with Thersander the flute-player. The latter was not only a good flute-player, but, as affecting Lacedaemonian manners, laid claim to personal prowess. Struthas, then, seeing the disorderly advance of the supports and the paucity of the vanguard, appeared suddenly at the head of a large body of cavalry, all in orderly array. Thibron and Thersander were the first to be cut down, and when these had fallen the rest of the troops were easily turned. A mere chase ensued, in which man after man was felled to earth, though a remnant contrived to escape into the friendly cities; still larger numbers owed their safety to their late discovery of the business on hand. Nor, indeed, was this the first time the Spartan commander had rushed to the field, without even issuing a general order. So ends the history of these events.

B.C. 390. We pass on to the arrival at Lacedaemon of a party of Rhodian exiles expelled by the popular party. They insisted that it was not equitable to allow the Athenians to subjugate Rhodes and thus build up so vast a power. The Lacedaemonians were alive to the fact that the fate of Rhodes depended on which party in the state prevailed: if the democracy were to dominate, the whole island must fall into the hands of Athens; if the wealthier classes, into their own. Accordingly they fitted out for them a fleet of eight vessels, and put Ecdicus in command of it as admiral.

At the same time they despatched another officer on board these vessels named Diphridas, on a separate mission. His orders were to cross over into Asia and to secure the states which had received Thibron. He was also to pick up the survivors of Thibron's army, and with these troops, aided by a second army which he would collect from any other quarter open to him, he was to prosecute the war against Struthas. Diphridas followed out his instructions, and amongst other achievements was fortunate enough to capture Tigranes, the son-in- law of Struthas, with his wife, on their road to Sardis. The sum paid for their ransom was so large that he at once had the wherewithal to pay his mercenaries. Diphridas was no less attractive than his predecessor Thibron; but he was of a more orderly temperament, steadier, and incomparably more enterprising as a general; the secret of this superiority being that he was a man over whom the pleasures of the body exercised no sway. He became readily absorbed in the business before him--whatever he had to do he did it with a will.

Ecdicus having reached Cnidus, there learned that the democracy in Rhodes were entirely masters of the situation. They were dominant by land and sea; indeed they possessed a fleet twice the size of his own. He was therefore content to keep quiet in Cnidus until the Lacedaemonians, perceiving that his force was too small to allow him to benefit their friends, determined to relieve him. With this view they ordered Teleutias to take the twelve ships which formed his squadron (at present in the gulf adjoining Achaia and Lechaeum), and to feel his way round to Ecdicus: that officer he was to send home. For himself, he was to undertake personally to protect the interests of all who cared to be their friends, whilst injuring the enemy by every possible means.

So then Teleutias, having reached Samos, where he added some vessels to his fleet, set sail to Cnidus. At this point Ecdicus returned home, and Teleutias, continuing his voyage, reached Rhodes, at the head now of seven-and-twenty vessels. It was during this portion of the voyage that he fell in with Philocrates, the son of Ephialtes, who was sailing from Athens to Cyprus with ten triremes, in aid of their ally Evagoras. The whole flotilla fell into the Spartan's hands--a curious instance, it may be added, of cross purposes on the part of both belligerents. Here were the Athenians, supposed to be on friendly terms with the king, engaged in sending an allied force to support Evagoras, who was at open war with him; and here again was Teleutias, the representative of a people at war with Persia, engaged in crippling a fleet which had been despatched on a mission hostile to their adversary. Teleutias put back into Cnidus to dispose of his captives, and so eventually reached Rhodes, where his arrival brought timely aid to the party in favour of Lacedaemon.

B.C. 389. And now the Athenians, fully impressed with the belief that their rivals were laying the basis of a new naval supremacy, despatched Thrasybulus the Steirian to check them, with a fleet of forty sail. That officer set sail, but abstained from bringing aid to Rhodes, and for good reasons. In Rhodes the Lacedaemonian party had hold of the fortress, and would be out of reach of his attack, especially as Teleutias was close at hand to aid them with his fleet. On the other hand, his own friends ran no danger of succumbing to the enemy, as they held the cities and were numerically much stronger, and they had established their superiority in the field. Consequently he made for the Hellespont, where, in the absence of any rival power, he hoped to achieve some stroke of good fortune for his city. Thus, in the first place, having detected the rivalries existing between Medocus, the king of the Odrysians, and Seuthes, the rival ruler of the seaboard, he reconciled them to each other, and made them friends and allies of Athens; in the belief that if he secured their friendship the Hellenic cities on the Thracian coast would show greater proclivity to Athens. Such being the happy state of affairs not only in Europe but as regards the states in Asia also, thanks to the friendly attitude of the king to his fellow-citizens, he sailed into Byzantium and sold the tithe-duty levied on vessels arriving from the Euxine. By another stroke he converted the oligarchy of Byzantium into a democracy. The result of this was that the Byzantine demos were no longer sorry to see as vast a concourse of Athenians in their city as possible. Having so done, and having further won the friendship of the men of Calchedon, he set sail south of the Hellespont. Arrived at Lesbos, he found all the cities devoted to Lacedaemon with the exception of Mytilene. He was therefore loth to attack any of the former until he had organised a force within the latter. This force consisted of four hundred hoplites, furnished from his own vessels, and a corps of exiles from the different cities who had sought shelter in Mytilene; to which he added a stout contingent, the pick of the Mytileneian citizens themselves. He stirred the ardour of the several contingents by suitable appeals: representing to the men of Mytilene that by their capture of the cities they would at once become the chiefs and patrons of Lesbos; to the exiles he made it appear that if they would but unite to attack each several city in turn, they might all reckon on their particular restoration; while he needed only to remind his own warriors that the acquisition of Lesbos meant not only the attachment of a friendly city, but the discovery of a mine of wealth. The exhortations ended and the contingents organised, he advanced against Methymna.

Therimachus, who chanced to be the Lacedaemonian governor at the time, on hearing of the meditated attack of Thrasybulus, had taken a body of marines from his vessels, and, aided by the citizens of Methymna themselves, along with all the Mytileneian exiles to be found in that place, advanced to meet the enemy on their borders. A battle was fought and Therimachus was slain, a fate shared by several of the exiles of his party.

As a result of his victory the Athenian general succeeded in winning the adhesion of some of the states; or, where adhesion was refused, he could at least raise supplies for his soldiers by freebooting expeditions, and so hastened to reach his goal, which was the island of Rhodes. His chief concern was to support as powerful an army as possible in those parts, and with this object he proceeded to levy money aids, visiting various cities, until he finally reached Aspendus, and came to moorings in the river Eurymedon. The money was safely collected from the Aspendians, and the work completed, when, taking occasion of some depredations of the soldiers on the farmsteads, the people of the place in a fit of irritation burst into the general's quarters at night and butchered him in his tent.

So perished Thrasybulus, a good and great man by all admission. In room of him the Athenians chose Agyrrhius, who was despatched to take command of the fleet. And now the Lacedaemonians--alive to the fact that the sale of the Euxine tithe-dues had been negotiated in Byzantium by Athens; aware also that as long as the Athenians kept hold on Calchedon the loyalty of the other Hellespontine cities was secured to them (at any rate while Pharnabazus remained their friend) --felt that the state of affairs demanded their serious attention. They attached no blame indeed to Dercylidas. Anaxibius, however, through the friendship of the ephors, contrived to get himself appointed as governor, on a mission to Abydos. With the requisite funds and ships, he promised to exert such hostile pressure upon Athens that at least her prospects in the Hellespont would cease to be so sunny. His friends the ephors granted him in return for these promises three ships of war and funds to support a thousand mercenaries, and so they despatched him on his mission. Reaching Abydos, he set about improving his naval and military position. First he collected a foreign brigade, by help of which he drew off some of the Aeolid cities from Pharnabazus. Next he set on foot a series of retaliatory expeditions against the states which attacked Abydos, marching upon them and ravaging their territories; and lastly, manning three vessels besides those which he already held in the harbour of Abydos, he intercepted and brought into port all the merchant ships of Athens or of her allies which he could lay hands on.

Getting wind of these proceedings, the Athenians, fearing lest the fair foundation laid for them by Thrasybulus in the Hellespont should be ruined, sent out Iphicrates with eight vessels and twelve hundred peltasts. The majority of them consisted of troops which he had commanded at Corinth. In explanation it may be stated that the Argives, when once they had appropriated Corinth and incorporated it with Argos, gave out they had no further need of Iphicrates and his troops; the real fact being that he had put to death some of the partisans of Argos. And so it was he turned his back on Corinth and found himself at home in Athens at the present crisis.

B.C. 389-388. When Iphicrates first reached the Chersonese he and Anaxibius carried on war against each other by the despatch of guerilla or piratic bands across the straits. But as time wore on, information reached him of the departure of Anaxibius to Antandrus, accompanied by his mercenaries and his own bodyguard of Laconians and two hundred Abydenian hoplites. Hearing further that Anaxibius had won the friendly adhesion of Antandrus, Iphicrates conjectured that after establishing a garrison in that place he would make the best of his way back, if only to bring the Abydenians home again. He therefore crossed in the night, selecting a desert point on the Abydene coast, from which he scaled the hills above the town and planted himself in ambuscade within their folds. The triremes which brought him across had orders at break of day to coast up northwards along the Chersonese, which would suggest the notion that he was only out on one of his customary voyages to collect money. The sequel more than fulfilled his expectations. Anaxibius began his return march, and if report speaks truly, he did so notwithstanding that the victims were against his marching that day; contemptuously disregarding the warning, and satisfied that his march lay all along through a friendly country and was directed to a friendly city. Besides which, those whom he met assured him that Iphicrates was off on a voyage to Proconnesus: hence the unusual absence of precaution on the march. On his side Iphicrates saw the chance, but, so long as the troops of Anaxibius lingered on the level bottoms, refused to spring from his lair, waiting for the moment when the Abydenian division in the van was safely landed in the plain of Cremaste, at the point where the gold mines stand; the main column following on the downward slope, and Anaxibius with his Laconians just beginning the descent. At that instant Iphicrates set his ambuscade in motion, and dashed against the Spartan at full speed. The latter quickly discerned that there was no hope of escape as he scanned the long straggling line of his attenuated column. The troops in advance, he was persuaded, would never be able to come back to his aid up the face of that acclivity; besides which, he observed the utter bewilderment of the whole body at sight of the ambuscade. He therefore turned to those next him, and spoke as follows: "Sirs, it is good for me to die on this spot, where honour bids me; but for you, sirs, yonder your path lies, haste and save yourselves before the enemy can close with us." As the words died on his lips he took from the hands of his attendant shield-bearer his heavy shield, and there, at his post, unflinchingly fought and fell; not quite alone, for by his side faithfully lingered a favourite youth, and of the Lacedaemonian governors who had rallied to Abydos from their several cities yet other twelve fought and fell beside the pair. The rest fled, dropping down one by one as the army pursued them to the walls of the city. The death-roll amounted to something like fifty hoplites of the Abydenians, and of the rest two hundred. After this exploit Iphicrates returned to the Chersonese.

Ελληνικά (Ξενοφών)/Δ'/VIII