Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/162

 140 HISTORY OF GREECE. ing, for his own profit, a political revolution at Chios. Bribed by a party of Chian exiles, he took possession of the acropolis, re- instated them in the island, and aided them in deposing and ex- pelling the party then in office, to the number of six hundred. It is plain that this is not a question between democracy and oligarchy, but between two oligarchical parties, the one of which succeeded in purchasing the factious agency of the Spartan ad- miral. The exiles whom he expelled took possession of Atar- neus, a strong post belonging to the Chians on the mainland opposite Lesbos. From hence they made war, as well as they could, upon their rivals now in possession of the island, and also upon other parts of Ionia ; not without some success and profit, as will appear by their condition about ten years afterwards. 1 The practice of reconstituting the governments of the Asiatic cities, thus begun by Kratesippidas, was extended and brought to a system by Lysander ; not indeed for private emolument, which he always despised, but in views of ambition. Having departed from Peloponnesus with a squadron, he reinforced it at Rhodes, and then sailed onward to Kos an Athenian island, so that he could only have touched there and Miletus. He took up his final station at Ephesus, the nearest point to Sardis, where Cyrus was expected to arrive ; and while awaiting his coming, augmented his fleet to the number of seventy triremes. As soon as Cyrus reached Sardis, about April or May 407 B.C., Lysander went to pay his court to him, along with some Lacedaemonian envoys, and found himself welcomed with every mark of favor. Preferring bitter complaints against the double-dealing of Tissa- phernes, whom they accused of having frustrated the king's orders, and sacrificed the interests of the empire, under the seduc- tions of Alkibiades, they intreated Cyrus to adopt a new policy, and execute the stipulations of the treaty, by lending the most vigorous aid to put down the common enemy. Cyrus replied, that these were the express orders which he had received from his father, and that he was prepared to fultfl them with all his might. He had brought with him, he said, five hundred talents, which 1 Diodor. xiii, 65; Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 2, 11. I presume that this con- duct of Kratesippidas is the fact glanced at by Isokrates de Pace. sect. 128 p. 240, ed. Bekk.