Kitap 8
So the Boeotians receive Oenoe; and the oligarchy and sedition at Athens cease.
About the same time of this summer, when none of those whom Tissaphernes at his going to Aspendus had substituted to pay the Peloponnesian navy at Miletus did it, and seeing neither the Phoenician fleet nor Tissaphernes came to them, and seeing Philip, that was sent along with him, and also another, one Hippocrates, a Spartan, that was lying in Phaselis, had written to Mindarus, the general, that the fleet was not to come at all and in every thing Tissaphernes abused them; seeing also that Pharnabazus had sent for them and was willing, upon the coming to him of their fleet, for his own part also as well as Tissaphernes, to cause the rest of the cities within his own province to revolt from the Athenians; then at length, Mindarus, hoping for benefit by him, with good order and sudden warning that the Athenians at Samos might not be aware of their setting forth, went into the Hellespont with seventythree galleys, besides sixteen which the same summer were gone into the Hellespont before and had overrun part of Chersonnesus. But tossed with the wind she was forced to put in at Icarus; and after he had stayed there through ill weather some five or six days, he arrived at Chios.
Thrasyllus having been advertised of his departure from Miletus, he also puts to sea from Samos with five-and-fifty sail, hasting to be in the Hellespont before him.
But hearing that he was in Chios and conceiving that he would stay there, he appointed spies to lie in Lesbos and in the continent over against it, that the fleet of the enemy might not remove without his knowledge; and he himself, going to Methymna, commanded provision to be made of meal and other necessaries, intending, if they stayed there long, to go from Lesbos and invade them in Chios. Withal, because Eressos was revolted from Lesbos, he purposed to go thither with his fleet;
if he could, to take it in. For the most potent of the Methymnaean exiles had gotten into their society about fifty men of arms out of Cume and hired others out of the continent, and with their whole number in all three hundred, having for their leader Anaxarchus, a Theban, chosen in respect of their descent from the Thebans, first assaulted Methymna. But beaten in the attempt by the Athenian garrison that came against them from Mytilene and again in a skirmish without the city driven quite away, they passed by the way of the mountain to Eressos, and caused it to revolt.
Thrasyllus therefore intended to go thither with his galleys and to assault it. At his coming he found Thrasybulus there also before him with five galleys from Samos, for he had been advertised of the outlaws coming over;
but being too late to prevent them, he went to Eressos and lay before it at anchor. Hither also came two galleys of Methymna that were going home from the Hellespont; so that they were in all threescore and seven sail, out of which they made an army, intending with engines, or any other way they could, to take Eressos by assault.
In the meantime, Mindarus and the Peloponnesian fleet that was at Chios, when they had spent two days in victualling their galleys and had received of the Chians three Chian tessaracostes a man, on the third day put speedily off from Chios and kept far from the shore, that they might not fall amongst the galleys at Eressos.
And leaving Lesbos on the left hand, went to the continent side, and putting in at a haven in Craterei, belonging to the territory of Phocaea, and there dining, passed along the territory of Cume, and came to Arginusae in the continent over against Mytilene, where they supped.
From thence they put forth late in the night and came to Harmatus, a place in the continent over against Methymna; and after dinner going a great pace by Lectus, Larissa, Hamaxitus, and other the towns in those parts, came before midnight to Rhoeteium; this now is in Hellespont. But some of his galleys put in at Sigeium and other places thereabouts.
The Athenians that lay with eighteen galleys at Sestos knew that the Peloponnesians were entering into the Hellespont by the fires, both those which their own watchmen put up and by the many which appeared on the enemies' shore; and therefore the same night in all haste as they were, kept the shore of Chersonnesus towards Elaeus, desiring to get out into the wide sea and to decline the fleet of the enemy, and went out unseen of those sixteen galleys that lay at Abydos, though these had warning before from the fleet of their friends that came on to watch them narrowly that they went not out.
But in the morning, being in sight of the fleet with Mindarus and chased by him, they could not all escape, but the most of them got to the continent and into Lemnos;
only four of the hindmost were taken near Elaeus, whereof the Peloponnesians took one with the men in her that had run herself aground at the temple of Protesilaus, and two other without the men, and set fire on a fourth, abandoned upon the shore of Imbros.
After this they besieged Elaeus the same day with those galleys of Abydos which were with them, and with the rest, being now altogether fourscore and six sail. But seeing it would not yield, they went away to Abydos.
The Athenians, who had been deceived by their spies, and not imagining that the enemy's fleet could have gone by without their knowledge, and attended at leisure the assault of Eressos, when now they knew they were gone, immediately left Eressos and hasted to the defence of Hellespont.
By the way they took two galleys of the Peloponnesians that, having ventured into the main more boldly in following the enemy than the rest had done, chanced to light upon the fleet of the Athenians. The next day they came to Elaeus and stayed; and thither from Imbros came unto them those other galleys that had escaped from the enemy. Here they spent five days in preparation for a battle.
After this, they fought in this manner: The Athenians went by the shore, ordering their galleys one by one, towards Sestos. The Peloponnesians also, when they saw this, brought out their fleet against them from Abydos.
Being sure to fight, they drew out their fleets in length, the Athenians along the shore of Chersonnesus, beginning at Idacus and reaching as far as Arrhiana, threescore and six galleys; and the Peloponnesians, from Abydos to Dardanum, fourscore and six galleys.
In the right wing of the Peloponnesians were the Syracusians; in the other, Mindarus himself and those galleys that were nimblest. Amongst the Athenians, Thrasyllus had the left wing and Thrasybulus the right; and the rest of the commanders, every one the place assigned him.
Now the Peloponnesians laboured to give the first onset and with their left wing to over-reach the right wing of the Athenians and keep them from going out, and to drive those in the middle to the shore which was near. The Athenians, who perceived it, where the enemy went about to cut off their way out, put forth the same way that they did and outwent them;
the left wing of the Athenians was also gone forward by this time beyond the point called Cynos-sema. By means whereof that part of the fleet which was in the midst became both weak and divided, especially when theirs was the less fleet; and the sharp and angular figure of the place about Cynos-sema took away the sight of what passed there from those that were on the other side.
The Peloponnesians, therefore, charging this middle part, both drave their galleys to the dry land, and being far superior in fight, went out after them and assaulted them upon the shore.
And to help them neither was Thrasybulus able, who was in the right wing, for the multitude of the enemies that pressed him; nor Thrasyllus in the left wing, both because he could not see what was done for the promontory of Cynos-sema and because also he was kept from it by the Syracusians and others, lying upon his hands no fewer in number than themselves. Till at last the Peloponnesians, bold upon their victory, chasing some one galley some another, fell into some disorder in a part of their army.
And then those about Thrasybulus, having observed that the opposite galleys sought now no more to go beyond them, turned upon them, and fighting put them presently to flight; and having also cut off from the rest of the fleet such galleys of the Peloponnesians, of that part that had the victory, as were scattered abroad, some they assaulted, but the greatest number they put into affright unfoughten. The Syracusians also, whom those about Thrasyllus had already caused to shrink, when they saw the rest fly fled outright.
This defeat being given and the Peloponnesians having for the most part escaped first to the river Pydius and afterwards to Abydos, though the Athenians took but few of their galleys (for the narrowness of the Hellespont afforded to the enemy a short retreat), yet the victory was the most seasonable to them that could be.
For having till this day stood in fear of the Peloponnesian navy, both for the loss which they had received by little and little and also for their great loss in Sicily, they now ceased either to accuse themselves or to think highly any longer of the naval power of their enemies.
The galleys they took were these: eight of Chios, five of Corinth, of Ambracia two, of Leucas, Laconia, Syracuse, and Pellene, one apiece. Of their own they lost fifteen.
When they had set up a trophy in the promontory of Cynossema and taken up the wrecks and given truce to the enemies to fetch away the bodies of their dead, they presently sent away a galley with a messenger to carry news of the victory to Athens.
The Athenians, upon the coming in of this galley hearing of their unexpected good fortune, were encouraged much after their loss in Euboea and after their sedition, and conceived that their estate might yet keep up if they plied the business courageously.
The fourth day after this battle, the Athenians that were in Sestos, having hastily prepared their fleet, went to Cyzicus, which was revolted; and espying, as they passed by, the eight galleys come from Byzantium riding under Harpagium and Priapus, set upon them, and having also overcome those that came to their aid from the land, took them. Then coming to Cyzicus, being an open town, they brought it again into their own power and levied a sum of money amongst them.
The Peloponnesians in the meantime, going from Abydos to Elaeus, recovered as many of their galleys [formerly] taken as remained whole; the rest the Elaeusians [had] burnt. They also sent Hippocrates and Epicles into Euboea to fetch away the fleet that was there.
About the same time also returned Alcibiades to Samos with his thirteen galleys from Caunus and Phaselis, reporting that he had diverted the Phoenician fleet from coming to the Peloponnesians and that he had inclined Tissaphernes to the friendship of the Athenians more than he was before.
Thence manning out nine galleys more, he exacted a great sum of money of the Hallicarnasseans, and fortified Cos. Being now almost autumn, he returned to Samos.
The Peloponnesians being now in Hellespont, the Antandrians (who are Aeolians) received into the city men of arms from Abydos by land through mount Ida, upon injury that had been done them by Arsaces, a deputy lieutenant of Tissaphernes.
This Arsaces, having feigned a certain war, not declared against whom, had formerly called out the chiefest of the Delians (the which in hallowing of Delos by the Athenians were turned out and had planted themselves in Adramyttium) to go with him to this war; and when under colour of amity and confederacy he had drawn them out, he observed a time when they were at dinner, and having hemmed them in with his own soldiers, murdered them with darts.
And therefore, for this act's sake fearing lest he might do some unlawful prank against them also, and for that he had otherwise done them injury, they cast his garrison out of their citadel.
Tissaphernes, hearing of this, being the act of the Peleponnesians as well as that at Miletus or that at Cnidus (for in those cities his garrisons had also been cast out in the same manner), and conceiving that he was deeply charged to them, and fearing lest they should do him some other hurt, and withal not enduring that Pharnabazus should receive them and with less time and cost speed better against the Athenians than he had done, resolved to make a journey to them in the Hellespont, both to complain of what was done at Antandros and to clear himself of his accusations the best he could, as well concerning the Phoenician fleet as other matters. And first he put in at Ephesus and offered sacrifices to Diana.
When the winter following this summer shall be ended, the one-and-twentieth year [of this war] shall be complete.