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 these days of breech-loading rifles. Battering engines and the missiles which they hurled could do but little against a resolute and disciplined garrison. On this occasion the defence was under the direction of a Spartan commander, Clearchus, at the head of some Spartan troops, and it seems to have been conducted with a spirit and obstinacy equal to that with which Osman Pasha held his lines at Plevna. All the attacks of the besieging army were successfully repelled, as might have been expected, by Spartan skill and valour. It became evident that the work which the Athenian general had undertaken would be slow and arduous, and that the only mode of accomplishing it would be by means of a close and strict blockade. The Byzantines were cut off from the sea by the enemy's fleet. If they could be closed in on land, their surrender must be only a question of time. So Alcibiades simply converted the siege into a blockade, and waited patiently the pressure of famine which sooner or later would drive the populous city to desperation. As it was, the Byzantines bore their misery till they could bear it no longer. It seems that the Spartan commander did not care much for their sufferings, but coolly saw the unhappy people die in the streets, as long as he could feed his own soldiers. He was a man with all the Spartan hardness and tenacity, and he may have been as much a hero as Leonidas, though, as he failed, he has not won for himself equal glory. He kept the provision stores under lock and key, and persisted in the defence till he felt that if he was to hold Byzantium for Sparta, he must seek succour from