Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/357

 GRECIAN CONFEDERACY UNDER ATHENS. 333 Artaxerxes, at the presence of the Athenians in Egypt, that he sent Megabazus with a large sum of money to Sparta, in order to induce the Lacedasmonians to invade Attica. This envoy, how- ever, failed, and an augmented Persian force being sent to Egypt under Megabyzus, son of Zopyi-us,i drove the Athenians and their allies, after an obstinate struggle, out of Memphis into the island of the Nile called Prosopitis. Here they were blocked up for eighteen months, until at length Megabyzus turned the arm of the river, laid the channel dry, and stormed the island by land. A veiy few Athenians escaped by land to Kyrene : the rest were either slain or made captive, and Inaros himself was crucified. And the calamity of Athens was farther aggravated by the arrival of fifty fresh Athenian ships, which, coming after "the defeat, but without being aware of it, sailed into the Mende- sian branch of the Nile, and thus fell unawares into the power of the Persians and Phenicians ; very few either of the ships or men escaping. The whole of Egypt became again subject to the Persians, except Amyi-tasus, who contrived, by retiring into the inaccessible fens, still to maintain his independence. One of the largest armaments ever sent forth by Athens and her confederacy was thus utterly ruined.^ It was about the time of the destruction of the Athenian army in Egypt, and of the circumnavigation of Peloponnesus by Tol- mides, that the internal war, carried on by the Lacedaemonians, against the Helots or Messenians at Ithome, ended. These be- sieged men, no longer able to stand out against a protracted blockade, were forced to abandon this last fortress of ancient Messenian independence, stipulating for a safe retreat from Pel- oponnesus with their wives and families, with the proviso, that if any one of them ever returned to Peloponnesys, he should become the slave of the first person who seized him. They were established by Tolmides at Naupaktus, which had recently been ' Herodot. iii, 160. ' Thucyd. i, 104, 109, 110; Diodor. xi, 77 ; xii, 3. The story of Diodo- ras, in the first of these two passages, — that most of the Athenian forces were allowed to come back under a favorable capitulation granted by the Persian generals, — is contradicted by the total ruin which he himself 8tat« to hivvc befallen tlieni in the latter passages, as well as by Thucydidcs,