Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/235

 LYSAXDER AT MILETUS- 213 Nevei theless, such was his partiality for Lysander, that he com- plied even with the additional demand now made, so as to send him awav satisfied. The latter was thus enabled to return to Ephesus in a state for restoring the effective condition of his fleet. He made good at once all the arrears of pay due to the seamen, constituted new trierarchs, summoned Eteonikus with the fleet from Chios7 together with all the other scattered squadrons, and directed that fresh triremes should be immediately put on the stocks at Antandrus. 1 In none of the Asiatic towns was the effect of Lysander's second advent felt more violently than at Miletus. lie had there a powerful faction or association of friends, who had done their best to hamper and annoy Kallikratidas on his first arrival, but had been put to silence, and even forced to make a show of zeal, by the straightforward resolution of that noble-minded admiral. Eager to reimburse themselves for this humiliation, they now formed a conspiracy, with the privity and concurrence of Lysan- der, to seize the government for themselves. They determined, if Plutarch and Diodorus are to be credited, to put down the existing democracy, and establish an oligarchy in its place. But we cannot believe that there could have existed a democracy at Miletus, which had now been for five years in dependence upon Sparta and the Persians jointly. We must rather understand the movement as a conflict between two oligarchical parties ; the friends of Lysander being more thoroughly self-seeking and anti- popular than their opponents, and perhaps even crying them down, by comparison, as a democracy. Lysander lent himself to the scheme, fanned the ambition of the conspirators, who were at one time disposed to a compromise, and even betrayed the gov- ernment into a false security, by promises of support which ho never intended to fulfil. At the festival of the Dionysia, tho conspirators, rising in arms, seized forty of their chief opponents in their houses, and three hundred more in the market-place ; while the government confiding in the promises of Lysander, who affected to reprove, but secretly continued instigating the insurgents made but a faint resistance. The three hundred and forty leaders thus seized, probably men who had gone heartily 1 Xencnh. Hcllcn. i ! , 1, 10-12.