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but also Cyrus, who had come in order to be ruler of all the peoples on the coast and to support the Lacedaemonians in the war. This Cyrus brought with407 B.C. him a letter, addressed to all the dwellers upon the seai.e. the maritime provinces of Asia Minor, as contrasted with the interior of the Persian Empire. and bearing the King’s seal, which contained among other things these words: I send down Cyrus as caranusThe word caranus means lord. of those whose mustering-place is Castolus.
When the Athenian ambassadors heard all this and saw Cyrus, they wished, if it were possible, to make their journey to the King, but otherwise to return home.
Cyrus, however, directed Pharnabazus either to give the ambassadors into his charge, or at any rate not to let them go home as yet, for he wished the Athenians not to know of what was going on.
Pharnabazus, accordingly, in order that Cyrus might not censure him, detained the ambassadors for a time, now saying that he would conduct them to the King, and again, that he would let them go home;
but when three years had passed, he requested Cyrus to release them, on the plea that he had given his oath to conduct them back to the coast, since he could not take them to the King. So they sent the ambassadors to Ariobarzanes and directed him to escort them on; and he conducted them to Cius, in Mysia, whence they set sail to join the Athenian army.
Meanwhile Alcibiades, wishing to sail home with his troops, made straight for Samos; from there he sailed, with twenty of the ships, to the Ceramic Gulf, in Caria; and after collecting there a hundred talents, he returned to Samos.
Thrasybulus, however, with thirty ships, went off to the Thracian coast, where he reduced all the places which had revolted to the Lacedaemonians, and especially407 B.C. Thasos, which was in a bad state on account of wars and revolutions and famine.
Thrasyllus finally, with the rest of the fleet, sailed home to Athens; but before he arrived, the Athenians had chosen as generals Alcibiades, who was still in exile, Thrasybulus, who was absent, and as a third, from among those at home, Conon.
And now Alcibiades sailed from Samos with his twenty ships and his money to Paros, and from there directed his course straight to Gytheium, in order to take a look at the thirty triremes which he heard the Lacedaemonians were making ready there and to see how his city felt toward him, with reference to his homecoming.
And when he found that the temper of the Athenians was kindly, that they had chosen him general, and that his friends were urging him by personal messages to return, he sailed in to Piraeus, arriving on the day when the city was celebrating the PlynteriaWhen the clothing of the ancient wooden statue of Athena Polias was removed and washed (πλύνειν). and the statue of Athena was veiled from sight,—a circumstance which some people imagined was of ill omen, both for him and for the state; for on that day no Athenian would venture to engage in any serious business.
When he sailed in, the common crowd of Piraeus and of the city gathered to his ships, filled with wonder and desiring to see the famous Alcibiades. Some of them said that he was the best of the citizens; that he alone was banished without just cause, but rather because he was plotted against by those who had less power than he and spoke less well and ordered their political doings with a view to their own private gain, whereas he was always407 B.C. advancing the common weal, both by his own means and by the power of the state.
At the time in question,In 415 B.C., just before the departure of Alcibiades with the Syracusan expedition. they said, he was willing to be brought to trial at once, when the charge had just been made that he had committed sacrilege against the Eleusinian Mysteries; his enemies, however, postponed the trial, which was obviously his right, and then, when he was absent, robbed him of his fatherland;
thereafter, in his exile, helpless as a slave and in danger of his life every day, he was forced to pay court to those whom he hated mostThe Spartans and the Persians.; and though he saw those who were dearest to him, his fellow-citizens and kinsmen and all Athens, making mistakes, he was debarred by his banishment from the opportunity of helping them.
It was not the way, they said, of men such as he to desire revolution or a change in government; for under the democracy it had been his fortune to be not only superior to his contemporaries but also not inferior to his elders, while his enemies, on the other hand, were held in precisely the same low estimation after his banishment as before; later, however, when they had gained power, they had slain the best men, and since they alone were left, they were accepted by the citizens merely for the reason that better men were not available.
Others, however, said that Alcibiades alone was responsible for their past troubles, and as for the ills which threatened to befall the state, he alone would probably prove to be the prime cause of them.
Meanwhile Alcibiades, who had come to anchor close to the shore, did not at once disembark, through fear of his enemies; but mounting upon the deck of407 B.C. his ship, he looked to see whether his friends were present.
But when he sighted his cousin Euryptolemus, the son of Peisianax, and his other relatives and with them his friends, then he disembarked and went up to the city, accompanied by a party who were prepared to quell any attack that anyone might make upon him.
And after he had spoken in his own defence before the Senate and the Assembly, saying that he had not committed sacrilege and that he had been unjustly treated, and after more of the same sort had been said, with no one speaking in opposition because the Assembly would not have tolerated it, he was proclaimed general-in-chief with absolute authority, the people thinking that he was the man to recover for the state its former power; then, as his first act, he led out all his troops and conducted by land the processionFrom Athens to the temple of Demeter at Eleusis. of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which the Athenians had been conducting by sea on account of the war;
and after this he collected an armament of fifteen hundred hoplites, one hundred and fifty horsemen, and one hundred ships. Then, in the fourth month after his return to Athens, he set sail for Andros, which had revolted from the Athenians; and with him were sent Aristocrates and Adeimantus, the son of Leucolophides, the generals who had been chosen for service by land.
Alcibiades disembarked his army at Gaurium, in the territory of Andros; and when the men of Andros and the Laconians who were there came forth to meet him, the Athenians routed them, shut them up in their city, and killed some few of them.
Accordingly Alcibiades set up a trophy, and after remaining there a few days, sailed to Samos, and407 B.C. from Samos as a base prosecuted the war.
Not long before this the Lacedaemonians had sent out Lysander as admiral, since Cratesippidas’ term of office had expired. And after Lysander had arrived at Rhodes and secured some ships there, he sailed to Cos and Miletus, and from there to Ephesus, where he remained with seventy ships until Cyrus arrived at Sardis. On his arrival Lysander went up to visit him, accompanied by the ambassadors from Lacedaemon.
Then and there they told Cyrus of the deeds of which Tissaphernes had been guilty, and begged him to show the utmost zeal in the war.
Cyrus replied that this was what his father had instructed him to do, and that he had no other intention himself, but would do everything possible; he had brought with him, he said, five hundred talents; if this amount should prove insufficient, he would use his own money, which his father had given him; and if this too should prove inadequate, he would go so far as to break up the throne whereon he sat, which was of silver and gold.
The ambassadors thanked him, and urged him to make the wage of each sailor an Attic drachmaThe Attic drachma = about 9 d. or 18 cents; it was the average wage of an ordinary day-labourer. a day, explaining that if this were made the rate, the sailors of the Athenian fleet would desert their ships, and hence he would spend less money.Since the war would be brought to a speedy conclusion, the Athenian sailors going over to the Lacedaemonian fleet for the sake of the higher wage.
He replied that their plan was a good one, but that it was not possible for him to act contrary to the King’s instructions; besides, the original compact ran in this way, that the King should give thirty minaeA mina=100 drachmae=600 obols. A ship’s crew normally numbered 200 men; hence 30 minae per month per ship=3 obols per day per man. per month to each ship, whatever number of ships the Lacedaemonians407 B.C. might wish to maintain.
Lysander accordingly dropped the matter for the moment; but after dinner, when Cyrus drank his health and asked him by what act he could gratify him most, Lysander replied: By adding an obol to the pay of each sailor.
And from this time forth the wage was four obols, whereas it had previously been three. Cyrus also settled the arrears of pay and gave them a month’s wage in advance besides, so that the men of the fleet were much more zealous.
Now when the Athenians heard of this, they were despondent, and sent ambassadors to Cyrus through Tissaphernes.
Cyrus, however, would not receive them, although Tissaphernes urged him to do so and advised him to see to it that no single Greek state should become strong, but that all be kept weak through constant quarrelling among themselves,—the policy he himself had followed on the advice of Alcibiades.cp. Thuc. 8. 46.
As for Lysander, when he had finished organising his fleet, he hauled ashore the ships which were at Ephesus, now ninety in number, and kept quiet, while the ships were being dried out and repaired.
Meantime Alcibiades, hearing that Thrasybulus had come out from the Hellespont and was investing Phocaea, sailed across to see him, leaving in command of the fleet Antiochus, the pilot of his own ship, with orders not to attack Lysander’s ships.
Antiochus, however, with his own ship and one other sailed from Notium into the harbour of Ephesus and coasted along past the very prows of Lysander’s ships.On this incident see Plutarch, Alc. 35.
Lysander at first launched a few ships and pursued him, but when the Athenians came to the aid of Antiochus with more ships, he then formed407 B.C. into line of battle every ship he had and sailed against them. Thereupon the Athenians also launched the rest of their triremes at Notium and set out, as each one got a clear course.
From that moment they fell to fighting, the one side in good order, but the Athenians with their ships scattered, and fought until the Athenians took to flight, after losing fifteen triremes. As for the men upon them, the greater part escaped, but some were taken prisoners. Then Lysander, after taking possession of his prizes and setting up a trophy at Notium, sailed across to Ephesus, while the Athenians went to Samos.
After this Alcibiades came to Samos, set sail with all his ships to the harbour of Ephesus, and formed the fleet in line at the mouth of the harbour as a challenge to battle, in case anyone cared to fight. But when Lysander did not sail out against him, because his fleet was considerably inferior in numbers, Alcibiades sailed back to Samos. And a little later the Lacedaemonians captured Delphinium and Eion.
When the Athenians at home got the news of the battle at Notium, they were angry with Alcibiades, thinking that he had lost the ships through neglect of duty and dissolute conduct, and they chose ten new generals, Conon, Diomedon, Leon, Pericles, Erasinides, Aristocrates, Archestratus, Protomachus, Thrasyllus, and Aristogenes.
So Alcibiades, who was in disfavour with the army as well, took a trireme and sailed away to his castleWhich he had constructed, says Plutarch (Alc.36), to serve him as a place of refuge in case of possible trouble. in the Chersonese.
After this Conon set sail from Andros, with the twenty ships which he had, to Samos, there to407 B.C. assume command of the fleet in accordance with the vote which the Athenians had passed. They also sent Phanosthenes to Andros, with four ships, to replace Conon.
On the way Phanosthenes fell in with two Thurian triremes and captured them, crews and all; and the men who were thus taken were all imprisoned by the Athenians, but their commander, Dorieus, a Rhodian by birth, but some time before exiled from both Athens and Rhodes by the Athenians, who had condemned him and his kinsmen to death, and now a citizen of Thurii, they set free without even exacting a ransom, taking pity upon him.