Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/332

 308 fflSTORY OF GREECE. blood. The fleet, chiefly Phenician, seems to have consisted of two hundred ships, but a farther reinforcement of eighty Pheni- cian ships was expected, and was actually near at hand, and the commanders Avere unwilling to hazard a battle before its arrival. Kimon, anxious for the same reason to hasten on the combat, attacked them vigorously : partly from their inferiority of num- bers, partly from discouragement at the absence of the reinforce- ment, they seem to have made no strenuous resistance. They were put to flight and driven ashore ; so speedily, and with so little loss to the Greeks, that Kimon was enabled to disembark his men forthwith, and attack the land-force which was drawn up on shore to protect them. The battle on land was long and gal- lantly contested, but Kimon at length gained a complete victory, dispersed the army with the capture of many prisoners, and either took or destroyed the entire fleet. As soon as his victory and his prisoners were secured, he sailed to Cyprus for the pur- pose of intercepting the reinforcement of eighty Phenician ships in their way, and was fortunate enough to attack them while yet they were ignorant of the victories of the Eurymedon. These ships too were all destroyed, though most of the crews appear to have escaped ashore on the island. Two great victories, one at sea and the other on land, gained on the same day by the same armament, counted with reason among the most glorious of all Grecian exploits, and were extolled as such in the inscription on the commemorative offering to Apollo, set up out of the tithe of the spoils.i The number of prisoners, as well as the booty takeq by the victors, was immense. 1 For the battles of the Eurymedon, see Thucyd. i, 100 ; Diodor. xi, 60-62; Plutarch, Kimon, 12, 13. The accounts of the two latter appear chiefly borrowed from Ephorus and Kallisthenes, authors of the following century ; and from Phanodemus, an author later still. I borrow sparingly from them, and only so far as con- sists with the brief statement of Thucydides. The narrative of Diodorus is exceedingly confused, indeed hardly intelligible. Phanodemus stated the number of the Persian fleet at six hundred ships Ephorus, at three hundred and fifty. Diodorus, following the latter, giveJ three hundred and fort}'. Plutarch mentions the expected reinforcement of eighty Phenician ships ; v.'hich appears to me a very credible circum- stance, explaining the easy nautical victoiy of Kimon at the Eurj-medon. From Thucydides, we know that tbe vanquished fleet at the Eun'nxedon