Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/414

396 396 HISTORY OF GREECE. Lacedsemonians or their allies, the king shall hinder them, and lend his best defensive aid." Looked at with the eyes of Pan-Hellenic patriotism, this second treaty of Astyochus and Theramenes was less disgraceful than the first treaty of Chalkideus. It did not formally proclaim that all those Grecian cities which had ever belonged to the king or to his ancestors, should still be considered as his subjects, nor did it pledge the Lacedaemonians to aid the king in hindering any of them from achieving their liberty. It still admitted, however, by implication, the same undiminished extent of the king's dominion, as it had stood when at its maximum under his predecessors ; the same undefined rights of the king to meddle with Grecian affairs ; the same unqualified abandonment of all the Greeks on the continent of Asia. The conclusion of this treaty was the last act performed by Theramenes, who was lost at sea shortly afterwards, on his voyage home, in a small boat, no one knew how. 1 Astyochus, now alone in command, was still importuned by the urgent solicitations of the distressed Chians for relief, and, in spite of his reluctance, was compelled by the murmurs of his own army to lend an ear to them, when a new incident happened which gave him at least a good pretext for directing his attention southward. A Peloponnesian squadron of twenty-seven triremes under the command of Antisthenes, having started from Cape Malea about the winter tropic or close of 412 B.C., had first crossed the sea to Melos, where it dispersed ten Athenian tri- remes and captured three of them ; then afterwards, from appre- hension that these fugitive Athenians would make known its approach at Samos, had made a long circuit round by Krete, and thus ultimately reached Kaunus at the southeastern extremity of Asia Minor. This was the squadron which Kalligeitus and over which the king holds empire, deserves notice. By the former phrase, is understood, I presume, the continent of Asia, which the court of Susa looked upon, together with all its inhabitants, as a freehold exceedingly gacred and peculiar (Herodot. i, 4) : by the latter, as much as the satrap should find it convenient to lay hands upon, of that which had once be- longed to Darius son of Ilystaspes or to Xerxes, in the plenitude cf theii power. ' Thncyd. viii, 38. uiroTtMuv fi> KE^IJTI uavi&Tai.