Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/134

 112 HISTORY OF GREECE. of Chalkis and the other cities, now left without foreign deteriLc against hei, employed themselves jointly with the Boeotians, whose interest in the case was even stronger than their evn, in divesting Euboea of its insular character, by constructing a mole or bridge across the Euripus, the narrowest portion of the Euboean strait, where Chalkis was divided from Boeotia. From each coast a mole was thrown out, each mole guarded at the extremity by a tower, and leaving only an intermediate opening, broad enough for a single vessel to pass through, covered by a wooden bridge. It was in vain that the Athenian Theramenes, with thirty tri- remes, presented himself to obstruct the progress of this under- taking. The Euboeans and Boeotians both prosecuted it in such numbers, and with so much zeal, that it was speedily brought to completion. Euboea, so lately the most important island attached to Athens, is from henceforward a portion of the mainland, al- together independent of her, even though it should please fortune to reestablish her maritime power. 1 The battle of Kynossema produced no very important conse- quences except that of encouragement to the Athenians. Even just after the action, Kyzikus revolted from them, and on the fourth day after it, the Athenian fleet, hastily refitted at Sestos, sailed to that place to retake it. It was unfortified, so that they succeeded with little difficulty, and imposed upon it a contribu- tion : moreover, in the voyage thither, they gained an additional advantage by capturing, off the southern coast of the Propontis, those eight Peloponnesian triremes which had accomplished, a 1 Diodor. xiii, 47. He places this event a year later, but I agree with Sievers in conceiving it as following with little delay on the withdrawal of the protecting fleet (Sievers, Comment, in Xenoph. Hellen. p. 9: note, p. 66). See Colonel Leake's Travels in Northern Greece, for a description of the Euripus, and the adjoining ground, with a plan, vol.ii. ch. xiv, pp. 259-265. I cannot make out from Colonel Leake what is the exact breadth of the channel. Strabo talks in his time of a bridge reaching two hundred feet (x, p. 400). But there must have been material alterations made by the inhabi- tants of Chalkis during the time of Alexander the Great (S*rabo, x, p 447). The bridge here described by Diodorus, covering an *pen space broad enough for one ship, could scarcely have been more than *wcnty feet broad ; for it was not at all designed to render the passage eas- The an- cient ships could all lower their masts. I cannot but think tX*t Colon? Leake (p. 259) must have read, in Diodoras, xiii, 47, oi> in pff * f 6.