Still the war went on, the Athenians holding out steadily, but the
Spartans beginning to care more for leadership than for Greece, and so
making league with the Persians. Alkibiades was forgiven and called back
again after a time, and he gained numerous towns and islands back again
for the Athenians, so that he sailed into the Piraeus with a fleet, made
up by his own ships and prizes to full two hundred sail, all decked with
purple, gold, and silver, and doubling what had been lost in the unhappy
Sicilian enterprise; but his friends were sorry that it was what they
called an unlucky day--namely, that on which every year the statue of
Pallas Athene was stripped of its ornaments to be dusted, washed, and
repaired, and on which her worshippers always avoided beginning anything
or doing any business.
A very able man named Lysander, of the royal line, though not a king, had
come into command at Sparta, and he had a sea-fight at Notium, just
opposite to Ephesus, with the Athenians, and gained no very great
advantage, but enough to make the discontent and distrust always felt for
Alkibiades break out again, so that he was removed from the command and
sailed away to the Chersonese, where in the time of his exile he had
built himself a sort of little castle looking out on the strait.
Konon was the name of the next commander of the fleet, which consisted of
110 ships, with which he met the Spartan Kallikratidas with only fifty,
near the three little islets called Arginusae, near Malea. The numbers
were so unequal that the Spartan was advised not to fight, but he
answered that "his death would not hurt Sparta, but dishonour would hurt
him." The Athenians gained a complete victory, Kallikratidas was killed,
and the whole Spartan fleet broken up; but the Athenian fleet lost a
great many men by a violent storm, which hindered the vessels from coming
to the aid of those which had been disabled, and which therefore sunk in
the tempest.
The relations of the men who had been drowned called for a trial of the
commanders for neglecting to save the lives of their fellow-citizens, and
there was such a bad spirit of party feeling in Athens at the time that
they were actually condemned to death, all except Konon, though happily
they were out of reach, and their sentence could not be executed.
Lysander was, in the meantime, hard at work to collect a fresh fleet from
the Spartan allies and to build new ships, for which he obtained money
from the Persians at Sardis, where the satrap at that time was Cyrus, the
son of Darius, the Great King, a clever prince, who understood something
of Greek courage, and saw that the best thing for Persia was to keep the
Greeks fighting with one another, so that no one state should be
mightiest, or able to meddle with the Persian domains in Asia Minor. He
gave Lysander the means of adding to his forces, and with his new fleet
he plundered the shores of the islands of Salamis and Euboea, and even of
Attica itself, to insult the Athenians. Their fleet came out to drive
him off. It had just been agreed by the Athenians that every prisoner
they might take in the fight they expected should have his right thumb
cut off, to punish the Greeks who had taken Persian gold. Lysander
sailed away, with the Athenian fleet pursuing him up to the Hellespont,
where he took the city of Lampsacus and plundered it before they came up,
and anchored at a place called AEgos Potami, or the Goat's River, about
two miles from Sestos. In the morning Lysander made all his men eat
their first meal and then go on board, but gave orders that no ship
should stir from its place. The Athenians too embarked, rowed up to
Lampsacus and defied them; but as no Spartan vessel moved, they went back
again to their anchorage, a mere open shore where there were no houses,
so that all the crews went off to Sestos, or in search of villages
inland, to buy provisions. The very same thing happened the next day.
The challenge was not accepted by the Spartans, and the Athenians thought
them afraid, grew more careless, and went further away from their ships.
But on the hills above stood the little castle of Alkibiades, who could
look down on the strait, see both fleets, and perceive that the Spartans
sent swift galleys out each day to steal after the Athenians, so that
they would be quite sure to take advantage of their foolish security. He
could not bear to see his fellow-citizens ruining themselves, and came
down to warn them and beg them to move into Sestos, where they would have
the harbour to shelter them and the city behind them; but the generals
scoffed at him, and bade him remember that they were commanders now, not
he, and he went back to his castle, knowing only too well what would
happen.
Till the fifth day all went on as before, but then Lysander ordered his
watching galley to hoist a shield as a signal as soon as the Athenians
had all gone off to roam the country in search of food, and then he
spread out his fleet to its utmost width, and came rowing out with his
180 ships to fall upon the deserted Athenians. Not one general was at
his post, except Konon, and he, with the eight galleys he could man in
haste, sailed out in all haste--not to fight, for that was of no use, but
to escape. Almost every vessel was found empty by the Spartans, taken or
burnt, and then all the men were sought one by one as they were scattered
over the country, except the few who were near enough to take refuge in
the fort of Alkibiades. Out of the eight ships that got away, one went
straight to Athens to carry the dreadful news; but Konon took the other
seven with him to the island of Cyprus, thinking that thus he could do
better for his country than share the ruin that now must come upon her.
It was night when the solitary ship reached the Piraeus with the dreadful
tidings; but they seemed to rush through the city, for everywhere there
broke out a sound of weeping and wailing for husbands, fathers, brothers,
and kinsmen lost, and men met together in the market-places to mourn and
consult what could be done next. None went to rest that night; but the
fleet was gone, and all their best men with it, and Lysander was coming
down on Athens, putting down all her friends in the islands by the way,
and driving the Athenian garrisons on before him into Athens. Before
long he was at the mouth of the Piraeus himself with his 150 galleys, and
while he shut the Athenians in by sea, the Spartan army and its allies
blockaded them by land.
If they held out, there was no hope of help; delay would only make the
conquerors more bitter; so they offered to make terms, and very hard
these were. The Athenians were to pull down a mile on each side of the
Long Walls, give up all their ships except twelve, recall all their
banished men, and follow the fortunes of the Spartans. They were very
unwilling to accept these conditions, but their distress compelled them;
and Lysander had the Long Walls pulled down to the sound of music on the
anniversary of the day of the battle of Salamis. Then he overthrew the
old constitution of Solon, and set up a government of thirty men, who
were to keep the Athenians under the Spartan yoke, and who were so cruel
and oppressive that they were known afterwards as the thirty tyrants. So
in 404 ended the Peloponnesian war, after lasting twenty-seven years.
The Athenians were most miserable, and began to think whether Alkibiades
would deliver them, and the Spartans seem to have feared the same. He
did not think himself safe in Europe after the ruin at AEgos Potami, and
had gone to the Persian governor on the Phrygian coast, who received him
kindly, but was believed to have taken the pay of either the Spartans or
the thirty tyrants, to murder him, for one night the house where he was
sleeping was set on fire, and on waking he found it surrounded with
enemies. He wrapped his garment round his left arm, took his sword in
his hand, and broke through the flame. None of the murderers durst come
near him, but they threw darts and stones at him so thickly that at last
he fell, and they despatched him. Timandra, the last of his wives, took
up his body, wrapped it in her own mantle, and buried it in a city called
Melissa. Such was the sad end of the spoilt child of Athens. He had
left a son at Athens, whom the Thirty tried to destroy, but who escaped
their fury, although during these evil times the Thirty actually put to
death no less than fourteen hundred citizens of Athens, many of them
without any proper trial, and drove five thousand more into banishment
during the eight months that their power lasted. Then Thrasybulus and
other exiles, coming home, helped to shake off their yoke and establish
the old democracy; but even then Athens was in a weak, wretched state,
and Sparta had all the power.
[Picture: Athens]