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 GKEECE 195 lost 30 ships ; but the Athenians, learning this disaster, despatched with incredible speed 110 triremes, and a great battle followed near the little islands called Arginusse, in which the Lacedaemonians lost 77 vessels (406). The generals were brought to trial at Athens on a charge of not collecting the bodies of the dead for burial, and six of them were executed in a moment of popular frenzy. Socrates, who happened to be one of the presiding officers at the public assembly, protested against the pro- ceeding and refused to put the vote ; but the next day a more pliant officer went through the form, and the great crime was consumma- ted. Callicratidas having perished in the bat- tle,' Lysander was reinstated in the command in 405 ; and proceeding to the Hellespont, he took up his station at Abydos. The Atheni- ans, hearing of this movement, also sailed to JEgospotami near Lampsacus, which Lysander was besieging. After five days of manoeuvring, the momentous battle was fought which put an end to the war by the ruin of Athens. Conon escaped with only 8 or 10 ships, out of 180; 3,000 or 4,000 Athenian prisoners were put to death, with the generals. It was in Septem- ber, 405, that Lysander received the submis- sion of the Athenian cities, and established in them oligarchies of ten (decarchies). He reached Athens in November, and the Pelo- ponnesian army marched into Attica, encamp- ing near the city, on the grounds of the acad- emy. After three months of dreadful suffer- ings by famine, the Athenians surrendered ; and in March, 404, Lysander took formal possession of the city. The conditions of the surrender were executed ; the walls and fortifications were dismantled to the music of the flute ; the arsenals were destroyed, the ships on the stocks burned, and all the fleet except 12 triremes car- ried off by Lysander. The government of the thirty, called the thirty tyrants, was establish- ed, and Lysander, sailing to Samos, soon reduced that island, and then returned to Sparta loaded with honors. The government of the thirty soon made themselves feared and hated, estab- lishing by their tyrannical and bloody acts a reign of terror. It is said that 1,500 persons were executed without trial. Alcibiades was included in the list of exiles ; but he was put to death by Pharnabazus, the Persian satrap, in compliance with orders transmitted from Sparta to Lysander. The state of feeling in Greece soon began to turn against the Lacedae- monians. They had shown a grasping dispo- sition, and Lysander, puffed up by his military successes, was haughty and tyrannical. Thra- sybulus and other Athenian exiles ventured to seize the fortress at the pass of Phyle, on Mt. Parnes, and the thirty were repulsed in an at- tempt to dislodge them. The thirty, feeling their position insecure, resorted to still more atro- cious and bloody means of perpetuating their power ; whereupon Thrasybulus marched down to Piraeus and occupied the hill of Munychia. The thirty, with the whole force at their com- mand, attacked them; but Thrasybulus fell upon and defeated them, and slew 70, with Critias their leader. A new government of ten was established at Athens, and the aid of the Lacedaemonians was invoked. Pausanias, having superseded Lysander, led an army into Attica, and after several unimportant combats terms were agreed upon (403) ; the exiles were restored ; the democracy was reestab- lished, with all the old administrative bodies ; the acts of the thirty were annulled, and the old laws revised, and inscribed on the walls of the Pcecile Stoa, in the full Ionic alphabet of 24 letters, then for the first time introduced into the public records. In 401 occurred the episode of the Anabasis, or expedition of Cyrus the Younger, which is connected with the his- tory of Greece by the circumstance that his army consisted in part of Greek mercenaries, and that Xenophon the historian served as volunteer, and conducted the Greek troops back to the sea, after the battle of Cunaxa. The period following the downfall of Athens is that of the Spartan supremacy, which lasted 34 years, from 405 till the battle of Leuctra, 371, although her maritime power was greatly diminished by the battle of Cnidus, in 394. The conquest of Elis in 402 extended her power in the Peloponnesus ; but she soon entered upon a course of degeneracy and decay. The intrigues of Lysander, and the large sums of gold and silver introduced into the country, tended to change and corrupt the ancient character of the Lacedemonians, and to produce great inequali- ties in the condition of the citizens. Troubles soon broke out in Asia Minor, and a Lacedae- monian force under Thimbron was despatched to protect the Ionian cities against Tissaphernes, the Persian viceroy of Asia Minor. He was succeeded by Dercyllidas. In 397, after sev- eral encounters, an armistice was agreed upon ; but Pharnabazus, the rival of Tissaphernes, seized the opportunity to organize a fleet, which was placed under the command of Co- non, who since the defeat at ^Egospotami had lived under the protection of Evagoras, prince of Salamis in Cyprus. Agesilaus invaded Asia with a powerful army in 396, and in 395 marched upon Sardis. Tissaphernes was put to death, through the influence of the queen mother Parysatis, and his successor Tithraustes made an armistice of six months with Agesi- laus, who in the mean time was appointed to the command of the Lacedaemonian fleet in ad- dition to that of the army. A new fleet of 120 triremes, under the command of Pisander, was sent out by the Lacedaemonians the following year. In August, 394, the great battle of Cni- dus was fought, in which more than half of the Lacedaemonian fleet was destroyed, and Pi- sander fell. In the mean while discontents in Greece itself with the Spartan power were ea- gerly fomented by Persian agents, and hostili- ties breaking out between Sparta and Thebes, Athens was called in by the latter. Lysander was slain in an action at Haliartus (395), and