The war was chiefly carried on in Asia Minor, where Alcibiades and
others defeated the Spartans and their allies by land and sea; but in
405 B. C. the tide of success for Athens turned again, and the Athenian
fleet was captured by the Spartan admiral Lysander, at Ægospotami, in
the Hellespont, the Athenian galleys being seized, by surprise, on the
beach. In 404 B. C. Athens, blockaded by the Spartans both by land and
sea, surrendered to Lysander after a four months’ siege, and the war
ended in the downfall of Athens, and the formal abolition of the great
Athenian democracy.