Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/189

 KONON DRIVEN TO MITYLLNE. 167 having diminished the number of his triremes from ono .* to seventy, had been able to preserve all the best rowers, so that in speed he outran Kallikratidas and entered first the harbor of Mitylene. His pursuers, however, were close behiud, and even got into the harbor along with him, before it could l-e closed and put in a state of defence. Constrained to fight a bittle at its en- trance, he was completely defeated ; thirty of IAS ships were taken, though the crews escaped to land ; and he preserved the remaining forty only by hauling them ashore undor the wall. 1 The town of Mitylene, originally founded on a small islet off Lesbos, had afterwards extended across a narrow strait to Lesbos itself. By this strait, whether bridged over or not we are not in- formed, the town was divided into two portions, and had two har- bors, one opening northward towards the Hellespont, the other southward towards the promontory of Kane on the mainland. 2 Both these harbors were undefended, and both now fell into the occupation of the Pcloponnesian fleet; at least all the outer portion of each, near to the exit of the haibor, which Kallikrati- 1 Xcnoph. Hcllcn. i, 6, 17 ; Diodor. xiii, 78, 79. Here, as on so many other occasions, it is impojsiblc to blend these two narratives together. Diodorus conceives the facts in a manner qnite differ- ent from Xenoplion, and much less probable. He tells us that Konon practised a stratagem during his flight (the same in Polyoenus, i, 482), whereby he was enabled to fight with and defeat the foremost Peloponne- sitin ships before the rest came up : also, that he got into the harbor in time to put it into a state of defence before Ks.llikratidas came up. Diodorus then gives a prolix description of the battlu by which Kallikratidas forced his way in. The narrative of Xenoplion, which I liavo followed, plainly implies that Konon could have had no time to mako preparations for defending the harbor. (Strabo, xiii, p. G17). Xenoplion talks only of the harbor, as if it were one; and possibly, in very inaccurate language, it might be described as one har- bor with two entrances. It seems to ni,, however, that Xenoplion had no clear idea of the locality. Strabo speaks of the northern harbor as defended by a mole, the southern haibor, as defended by triremes chaincci together. Such defences did not exist in the year 406 B.C. Probably, after the revolt of Mityleue in 427 B.C., the Athenians had removed what defences might have been before pjv rided for the harbor.
 * Thucyd. viii, G. roi)f ityopftovc TT' Ufj^orepoif rolf fapeaiv tirotovvro