Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/343

 ASSISTANCE TO TAE ALLIES 321 isthmus fiom Lechaeum to Kenchreae (the two ports of Corinth) was now made good by a defensive system of operations, so as to confine the Lacedaemonians within Peloponnesus ; just as Athens, prior to her great losses in 446 B. c., while possessing both Megara and Pegae, had been able to maintain the inland road midway be- tween them, where it crosses the high and difficult crest of Mount Geraneia, thus occupying the only three roads by which a Lacedae- monian army could march from the isthmus of Corinth into Attica or Bceotia 1 Pharnabazus communicated in the most friendly manner with the allies, assured them of his strenuous support against Sparta, and left with them a considerable sum of money. 2 The appearance of a Persian satrap with a Persian fleet, as master of the Peloponnesian sea and the Saronic Gulf, was a phe- nomenon astounding to Grecian eyes. And if it was not equally offensive to Grecian sentiment, this was in itself a melancholy proof of the degree to which Pan-hellenic patriotism had been stifled by the Peloponnesian war and the Spartan empire. No Persian tiara had been seen near the Saronic Gulf since the battle of Salamis ; nor could anything short of the intense personal wrath of Pharnabazus against the Lacedaemonians, and his desire to re- venge upon them the damage inflicted by Derkyllidas and Agesi- laus, have brought him now so far away from his own satrapy. It was this wrathful feeling of which Konon took advantage to pro- cure from him a still more important boon. Since 404 B. c., a space of eleven years, Athens had continued without any walls around her seaport town Peiraeus, and without any Long Walls to connect her city with Peiraeus. To this state she had been condemned by the sentence of her enemies, in the full knowledge that she could have little trade, few ships either armed or mercantile, poor defence even against pirates, and no defence at all against aggression from the mistress of the sea. Konon now entreated Pharnabazus, who was about to go home, to leave the fleet under his command, and to permit him to use it in rebuilding the fortifications of Peiroeus as well as the Long Walla of Athens. While he engaged to maintain the fleet by contribu- tions from the islan<!% ]>e assured the satrap that no blow could bfl 1 See Sir William Gell's Itinerary of Greece, p. 4. Era ;t Curtius Ps- loponnesos p. 25, 26, and Thueyd. i, 108. s Xen. Ilelltn. iv, 8. 7, 8 ; Diodor. xiv, 84. VOL. ix. 14* 21oc.