Kitap 1
On the next day they sailed to Notium and from there, after making the necessary preparations, marched to Colophon; and the Colophonians gave them their allegiance. It was now the time when the grain was ripening, and during the following night they made a raid into Lydia, burned many villages, and seized money, slaves, and other booty in great quantities.
Stages, the Persian, however, was in this region, and when the Athenians had scattered from their camp for private plunder, he captured one of them and killed seven others, despite the fact that their cavalry came to the rescue.
After this Thrasyllus led his409 B.C. army back to the coast, with the intention of sailing to Ephesus. But when Tissaphernes learned of this plan, he gathered together a large army and sent out horsemen to carry word to everybody to rally at Ephesus for the protection of Artemis.
And now, on the seventeenth day after his raid, Thrasyllus sailed to Ephesus; and having disembarked the hoplites at the foot of Mount Coressus, and the cavalry, peltasts, marines, and all the rest near the marsh on the opposite side of the city, he led forward the two divisions at daybreak.
The defenders of the city sallied forth to meet the attack,—the Ephesians, the allies whom Tissaphernes had brought them, the crews of the original twenty Syracusan ships and of five others which chanced to have arrived there at the time, newly come from Syracuse under the command of Eucles, the son of Hippon, and Heracleides, the son of Aristogenes, and finally, the crews of two Selinuntine ships.
All these contingents directed their first attack upon the hoplites at Coressus; and after routing them, killing about a hundred of them, and pursuing the rest down to the shore, they turned their attention to those by the marsh; and there also the Athenians were put to flight, and about three hundred of them were killed.
So the Ephesians set up a trophy there and a second at Coressus. They also gave to the Syracusans and Selinuntines, who had especially distinguished themselves, the prizes for valour, not only general prizes, but many to particular individuals among them, while upon any one of them who at any time might desire it they conferred the privilege of dwelling in Ephesus tax free; and to the Selinuntines, after Selinus had been destroyed,By the Carthaginians, shortly after the events here narrated. they gave the rights of409 B.C. Ephesian citizenship as well.
As for the Athenians, after obtaining a truce and so recovering the bodies of their dead, they sailed back to Notium, buried the dead there, and sailed on towards Lesbos and the Hellespont.
While they were at anchor in the harbour of Methymna, in Lesbos, they saw sailing past them from Ephesus the twenty-five Syracusan ships; and putting out to the attack they captured four of them, men and all, and chased the rest back to Ephesus.
And Thrasyllus sent home to Athens all the prisoners with the exception of Alcibiades; this Alcibiades, who was an Athenian and a cousin and fellow-exile of Alcibiades the general, he caused to be stoned to death. Then he set sail to Sestus to join the rest of the army; and from Sestus the entire force crossed over to Lampsacus.
And now the winter came on. During the course of it the Syracusan prisoners, who were immured in stone quarries in Piraeus, dug through the rock and made their escape by night, most of them to Decelea and the rest to Megara.
Meanwhile at Lampsacus Alcibiades endeavoured to marshal his entire army as a unit, but the old soldiers were unwilling to be marshalled with the troops of Thrasyllus; for they said that they had never known defeat, while the others had just come from a defeat. Both contingents, however, wintered there together, occupying themselves in fortifying Lampsacus.
They also made an expedition against Abydus; and Pharnabazus, who came to its aid with a large force of cavalry, was defeated in battle and put to flight. And Alcibiades409 B.C. pursued him with the Athenian cavalry and one hundred and twenty of the hoplites, under the command of Menander, until darkness covered the retreat.
As a result of this battle the soldiers came together of their own accord and the old troops fraternised with those under Thrasyllus. The Athenians also made some other expeditions during the winter into the interior and laid waste the King’s territory.
At the same period the Lacedaemonians granted terms to the Helots who had revolted and fled from Malea to Coryphasium, allowing them to evacuate Coryphasium unmolested.Coryphasium, or Pylos, had been in the hands of the Athenians since 425 B.C. It was garrisoned largely by Messenians and Helots. At about the same time, also, the colonists of Heracleia, in Trachis, were betrayed by the Achaeans in a battle where both peoples were drawn up against their enemies, the Oetaeans, and as a result about seven hundred of the Heracleots perished, together with the Lacedaemonian governor, Labotas.
So this year ended, being the year in which the Medes, who had revolted from Darius, king of the Persians, were again reduced to subjection.
During the ensuing year the temple of408 B.C. Athena at Phocaea was struck by lightning and set on fire. When the winter ended and spring began,—Pantacles being now ephor and Antigenes archon, and the war having continued for twenty-two years—the Athenians sailed with their entire force to Proconnesus.
From there they set out against Calchedon and Byzantium, and went into camp near Calchedon. Now the Calchedonians, when they learned that the Athenians were approaching, had put all their portable408 B.C. property in the keeping of the Bithynian Thracians, their neighbours.
Alcibiades, however, taking a few of the hoplites and the cavalry, and giving orders that the ships should sail along the coast, went to the Bithynians and demanded the property of the Calchedonians, saying that if they did not give it to him, he would make war upon them; so they gave it over.
And when Alcibiades returned to his camp with the booty, after having concluded a treaty with the Bithynians, he proceeded with his whole army to invest Calchedon by building a wooden stockade which extended from sea to sea, taking in the river also in so far as this was practicable.From sea to sea, i.e. from Bosporus to Propontis. The river broke the line of the stockade, but the latter was carried as near as possible to each bank of the river.
Thereupon Hippocrates, the Lacedaemonian governor, led forth his troops from the city to do battle; and the Athenians marshalled themselves against him, while Pharnabazus, outside the stockade, with infantry and horsemen in great numbers, tried to aid Hippocrates.
Now for a long time Hippocrates and Thrasyllus fought, each with his hoplites, until Alcibiades came to the rescue with a few hoplites and the cavalry. Then Hippocrates was killed, and those who were with him fled back into the city.
At the same time Pharnabazus, unable to effect a junction with Hippocrates owing to the narrowness of the space, since the stockade came down close to the river, retired to the Heracleium in the Calchedonian territory, where he had his camp.
After this Alcibiades went off to the Hellespont and the Chersonese to collect money; and the rest of the generals concluded a compact with Pharnabazus which provided that, in408 B.C. consideration of their sparing Calchedon, Pharnabazus should give the Athenians twenty talents and should conduct Athenian ambassadors to the King;
they also received from Pharnabazus a pledge under oath that the Calchedonians should pay to the Athenians precisely the same tribute they had been accustomed to pay and should settle the arrears of tribute, while they on their side made oath that the Athenians would not wage war upon the Calchedonians until the ambassadors should return from the King.
Alcibiades was not present at the exchange of these oaths, but was in the neighbourhood of Selymbria; and when he had captured that city, he came to Byzantium, bringing with him all the forces of the Chersonesians and soldiers from Thrace and more than three hundred horsemen.
Now Pharnabazus thought that Alcibiades also ought to give his oath, and so waited at Calchedon until he should come from Byzantium; but when he came, he said that he would not make oath unless Pharnabazus also should do the like to him.
In the end, Alcibiades made oath at Chrysopolis to the representatives of Pharnabazus, Mitrobates and Arnapes, and Pharnabazus at Calchedon to the representatives of Alcibiades, Euryptolemus and Diotimus, both parties not only giving the official oath but also making personal pledges to one another.
Immediately after this Pharnabazus went away, leaving word that the ambassadors who were going to the King should meet him at Cyzicus. The Athenians who were sent were Dorotheus, Philocydes, Theogenes, Euryptolemus, and Mantitheus, and with them two Argives, Cleostratus and Pyrrolochus; ambassadors of the Lacedaemonians also went along, Pasippidas and others, and408 B.C. with them Hermocrates, who was already an exile from Syracuse, and his brother Proxenus.
While Pharnabazus was conducting this party, the Athenians were besieging Byzantium; they had built a stockade around the city, and were attacking its wall with missiles from a distance and by close assault.
Within Byzantium was Clearchus the Lacedaemonian, its governor, and with him some Laconian Perioeci, a few emancipated Helots, a contingent of Megarians, under the command of Helixus the Megarian, and one of Boeotians, under the command of Coeratadas.
Now the Athenians, finding that they were unable to accomplish anything by force, persuaded some of the Byzantines to betray the city.
Meanwhile Clearchus, the governor, supposing that no one would do that, arranged everything as well as he could, turned over the charge of the city to Coeratadas and Helixus, and crossed to the opposite shore to meet Pharnabazus, in order to get from him pay for the soldiers and also to collect ships. His plan was to assemble those which had been left behind by Pasippidas as guardships and were now in the Hellespont, those at Antandrus, and those which Agesandridas, a lieutenant of Mindarus, had under his command on the Thracian coast, and finally, to have other ships built; then, after gathering them all together, he thought to harry the allies of the Athenians and so draw off their army from Byzantium.
But when Clearchus had sailed away, those who wanted to betray the city of the Byzantines set about their work,—Cydon, Ariston, Anaxicrates, Lycurgus, and Anaxilaus.
This Anaxilaus was afterwards tried for his life at Lacedaemon408 B.C. because of this betrayal, but was acquitted, on the plea that he did not betray the city, but rather saved it; he was a Byzantine, he said, not a Lacedaemonian, and when he saw children and women perishing of starvation,—for Clearchus, he said, gave whatever provisions the city contained to the soldiers of the Lacedaemonians,—he had for this reason admitted the enemy, not for the sake of money nor out of hatred to the Lacedaemonians.
As has been said, however, these betrayers made their preparations, and then, opening by night the gates that lead to the Thracian Square, as it is called, let in the Athenian army and Alcibiades.
Now Helixus and Coeratadas, who knew nothing of what was going on, hurried to the market-place with all their troops; but when they found that the enemy were masters everywhere and that they could do nothing, they surrendered themselves.
They were all sent off to Athens, and as they were disembarking at Piraeus, Coeratadas slipped away in the crowd and made his escape to Decelea.
As for Pharnabazus and the ambassadors, while they were spending the winter at Gordium, in Phrygia, they heard what had happened at Byzantium.
But as they were continuing their journey to the407 B.C. King, at the opening of the spring, they met not only the Lacedaemonian ambassadors returning,—Boeotius and his colleagues and the messengersThe reference is uncertain. besides, who reported that the Lacedaemonians had obtained from the King everything they wanted,—