Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/173

 MOVEMENTS OF AGIS. 151 twenty-eight thousand men, of whom half were hoplites, with twelve hundred cavalry, nine hundred of them Boeotians were seen on the ensuing day close under the walls of the city, which were amply manned with the full remaining strength of Athens. [n an obstinate cavalry battle which ensued, the Athenians gained Ihe advantage even over the Boeotians. Agis encamped the next night in the garden of Akademus ; again on the morrow he drew up his troops and offered battle to the Athenians, who are affirmed to have gone forth in order of battle, but to have kept under the protection of the missiles from the walls, so that Agis did not dare to attack them. 1 We may well doubt whether the Athenians went out at all, since they had been for years accus- tomed to regard themselves as inferior to the Peloponnesians in the field. Agis now withdrew, satisfied apparently with having offered battle, so as to efface the affront which he had received from the march of the Eleusinian communicants in defiance of his neighborhood. The first exploit of Alkibiades was to proceed to Andros, now under a Lacedaemonian harmost and garrison. Landing on the island, he plundered the fields, defeated both the native troops and the Lacedaemonians, and forced them to shut themselves up within the town ; which he besieged for some days without avail, and then proceeded onward to Samos, leaving Konon in a forti- fied post, with twenty ships, to prosecute the siege. 2 At Samos, he first ascertained the state of the Peloponnesian fleet at Ephe- sus, the influence acquired by Lysander over Cyrus, the strong anti-Athenian dispositions of the young prince, and the ample rate of pay, put down even in advance, of which the Peloponne- sian seamen were now in actual receipt. He now first became convinced of the failure of those hopes which he had conceived, not without good reason, in the preceding year, and of which he had doubtless boasted at Athens, that the alliance of Persia might be neutralized at least, if not won over, through the envoys escorted to Su$a by Pharnabazus. It was in vain that he pre- vailed upon Tissaphernes to mediate with Cyrus, to introduce to 1 Diodor. xiii, 72, 73. 69. The latter says that Thrasybulus was left at Andr >s, which cannot bfl tiue
 * Xcnoph. Hcllcn. i, 4, 22 ; i, 5, 18; Plutarch, Alkib. c. 35 ; Diodor. xiii