Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/219

Rh master's authority over the Greek cities in Asia, and his influence in Greece generally. Very early in the Peloponnesian war there had been communications between the Spartans and the Persian court, and now (B.C. 412–411) a regular agreement was come to with Tissaphernes. At first he demanded that the king should recover all that his predecessors had held, but as this might have been interpreted to include the islands, and perhaps all Greece as far south as Boeotia, the Spartans recoiled from such a betrayal, but finally agreed that he should be acknowledged as lord over all the cities in Asia. A large number of these cities had already been instigated to break off from the Athenian confederacy as well as the islands of Euboea, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes; while the border town of Oropus was seized by the Boeotians. It was, in fact, a breaking up of the confederacy which the Spartans were prepared to purchase at the price of the enslavement of the Greek towns in Asia and something more. In return for this Tissaphernes was to supply money for the pay of Peloponnesian soldiers and sailors.

The Athenians, however, were not prepared to submit, in spite of their recent loss and the perpetual irritation and distress caused by the occupation of Decelea. By immense exertions they got a fleet of more than a hundred triremes afloat; and as the democrats in Samos just then revolted and expelled the oligarchs that island became more closely allied than ever to Athens, and was the headquarters of its fleet throughout this period. Detachments of this fleet reduced several of the revolting states on the