Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/387

 AID TO EVAGORAS. 305 The alliance with Evagoras of Cyprus, in his conteii tion against Artaxerxes, was at this moment an unfortunate and perplexing circumstance for Athens, since she was relying upon Persian aid against Sparta, and since Sparta was bidding against her for it. But the alliance was one which she could not lightly throw off. For Evagoras had not only harbored Konon with the remnant of the Athenian fleet after the disaster of JEgospotami, but had earned a grant of citizenship and the honor of a statue at Athens, as a strenuous auxiliary in procuring that Persian aid which gained the battle of Knidus, and as a personal combatant in that battle, before the commencement of his dissension with Artaxerxes. 1 It would have been every way advantageous to Athens at this mo- ment to decline assisting Evagoras, since (not to mention the probability of offending the Persian court) she had more than enough to employ all her maritime force nearer "home and for pur- poses more essential to herself. Yet in spite of these very serious considerations of prudence, the paramount feelings of prior obliga- tion and gratitude, enforced by influential citizens who had formed connections in Cyprus, determined the Athenians to identify them- selves with his gallant struggles 2 (of which I shall speak more fully presently). So little was fickleness, or instability, or the easy oblivion of past feelings, a part of their real nature, though historians have commonly denounced it as among their prominent qualities. The capture of their squadron under Philokrates, however, and the consequent increase of the Lacedaemonian naval force at Rhodes, compelled the Athenians to postpone further aid to Eva- goras, and to arm forty triremes under Thrasybulus for the Asiatic coast ; no inconsiderable effort, when we recollect that four years before there was scarcely a single trireme in Peiraeus, and not even a wall of defence around the place. Though sent immediately for the assistance of Ehodes, Thrasybulus judged it expedient to go sias cannot be certainly made out. It is possible enough that there might be two contemporary Athenians bearing this name, which would ex plain the circumstance that Xenophon here names the father Ephialtes a practice occasional with him, but not common. 1 Isokrates, Or. ix, (Evagoras) a. 67, 68, 82 ; Epistola Philippi ap. D* mosthen. Orot. p. 161, c. 4. 1 Lysias, Orat. xix, (De Bonis Aristoph.) s. 27-44