Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/348

 326 HISTORY OF GREECE. to occupy Rhium, one of the twc opposite capes which' bound its narrow entrance. To oppose them, the Lacedemonians oil their side were driven to greater maritime effort. More than one naval action seems to have taken place, in those waters where the prowess and skill of the Athenian admiral Phormion had been so signally displayed at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. At length the Lacedaemonian admiral Herippidas, who succeeded to the command of the fleet after his predecessor Polemarchus had been slain hi battle, compelled the Corinthians to abandon Rhium, and gradually recovered his ascendency in the Corinthian Gulf; with his successor Teleutias, brother of Agesilaus, still far- ther completed. 1 While these transactions were going on (seemingly during the last half of 393 B. c. and the full year of 392 B. c.), so as to put an end to the temporary naval preponderance of the Corinthians, the latter were at the same tune bearing the brunt of a desul- tory, but continued, land-warfare against the garrison of Lacedae- monians and Peloponnesians established at Sikyon. Both Corinth and Lechseum were partly defended by the presence of confede- rate troops, Boeotians, Argeians, Athenians, or mercenaries paid by Athens. But this did not protect the Corinthians against suf fering great damage, in their lands and outlying properties, from the incursions of the enemy. The plain between Corinth and Sikyon, fertile and extensive (speaking by comparison with Peloponnesus generally), and con- stituting a large part of the landed property of both cities, was rendered uncultivable during 393 and 392 B. c. ; so that the Co- rinthian proprietors were obliged to withdraw their servants and cattle to Peiraeum a (a portion of the Corinthian territory without the Isthmus properly so called, north-east of the Akrokorinthus, in a line between that eminence and the Megarian harbor of Pegae). Here the Sikyonian assailants could not reach them, be- cause of the Long Walls of Corinth, which connected that city by a continuous fortification of twelve stadia (somewhat less than a mile and a half) with its harbor of Lechaeum. Nevertheless, the loss to the proprietors of the deserted plain was still so great, that two successive seasons of it were quite enough to inspire them 1 Xcn Ilellen. iv, 8, 11. 2 Xcn. Hcllen. iv, 4, 1 ; iv. 5, 1