Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/253

Rh nian fleet was parading before their eyes. Amazed at so unexpected a demonstration of strength, they began to feel how much the Mitylenaeans had misled them respecting the exhaustion of Athens, and how incompetent they were, especially without the presence of their allies, to undertake any joint effective movement by sea and land against Attica. They therefore returned home, resolving to send an expedition of forty triremes, under Alkidas, to the relief of Mitylene itself; at the same time transmitting requisitions to their various allies, in order that these triremes might be furnished. Meanwhile, Asôpius, with his thirty triremes, had arrived in Akarnania, from whence all the ships except twelve were sent home. He had been nominated commander as the son of Phormio, who appears either to have died, or to have become unfit for service, since his victories of the preceding year; and the Akarnanians had preferred a special request that a son, or at least some relative of Phormio, should be invested with the command of the squadron; so beloved was his name and character among them. Asôpius, however, accomplished nothing of importance, though he again undertook conjointly with the Akarnanians a fruitless march against Œniadae. Ultimately, he was defeated and slain, in attempting a disembarkation on the territory of Leukas.

The sanguine announcement made by the Mitylenreans at Olympia, that Athens was rendered helpless by the epidemic, had indeed been strikingly contradicted by her recent display ; since, taking numbers and equipment together, the maritime force which she had put forth this summer, manned as it was by a higher class of seamen, surpassed all former years ; although, in point of number only, it was inferior to the two hundred and fifty triremes which she had sent out during the first summer of the war. But the assertion that Athens was impoverished in