11
From that moment I have been reckless of both life and goods when called upon for a perilous venture. In fact, I at once proceeded to supply your forces in Samos with oar-spars—this was after the Four Hundred had seized power at Athensi.e. in 411.—since ArchelausKing of Macedon from 413 to 399 B.C. had hereditary connexions with my family and offered me the right of cutting and exporting as many as I wished.The text of an Attic decree honouring Archelaus for supplying ξύλα καὶ κωπέας still survives (I.G. i 2 105). It may be consulted best in the restored version of B. D. Meritt; see Classical Studies presented to Edward Capps Princeton, 1936. Meritt would date it to 407-406 B.C. And not only did I supply the spars; I refused to charge more for them than they had cost me, although I might have obtained a price of five drachmae apiece. In addition, I supplied corn and bronze.
12
Thus equipped, the forces in Samos went on to defeat the Peloponnesians at seaMost probably the battle of Cyzicus, April 410. See Introd.; and it was they, and they alone who saved Athens at the time. Now if those heroes rendered you true service by their deed, I may fairly claim that that service was in no small degree due to me. Had that army not been furnished with supplies just then, they would have been fighting not so much to save Athens as to save their own lives.
