From the end of the Persian to the beginning of the Peloponnesian
War—The Progress from Supremacy to Empire
The way in which Athens came to be placed in the circumstances under
which her power grew was this. After the Medes had returned from
Europe, defeated by sea and land by the Hellenes, and after those of
them who had fled with their ships to Mycale had been destroyed,
Leotychides, king of the Lacedaemonians, the commander of the Hellenes
at Mycale, departed home with the allies from Peloponnese. But the
Athenians and the allies from Ionia and Hellespont, who had now
revolted from the King, remained and laid siege to Sestos, which was
still held by the Medes. After wintering before it, they became masters
of the place on its evacuation by the barbarians; and after this they
sailed away from Hellespont to their respective cities. Meanwhile the
Athenian people, after the departure of the barbarian from their
country, at once proceeded to carry over their children and wives, and
such property as they had left, from the places where they had
deposited them, and prepared to rebuild their city and their walls. For
only isolated portions of the circumference had been left standing, and
most of the houses were in ruins; though a few remained, in which the
Persian grandees had taken up their quarters.
Perceiving what they were going to do, the Lacedaemonians sent an
embassy to Athens. They would have themselves preferred to see neither
her nor any other city in possession of a wall; though here they acted
principally at the instigation of their allies, who were alarmed at the
strength of her newly acquired navy and the valour which she had
displayed in the war with the Medes. They begged her not only to
abstain from building walls for herself, but also to join them in
throwing down the walls that still held together of the
ultra-Peloponnesian cities. The real meaning of their advice, the
suspicion that it contained against the Athenians, was not proclaimed;
it was urged that so the barbarian, in the event of a third invasion,
would not have any strong place, such as he now had in Thebes, for his
base of operations; and that Peloponnese would suffice for all as a
base both for retreat and offence. After the Lacedaemonians had thus
spoken, they were, on the advice of Themistocles, immediately dismissed
by the Athenians, with the answer that ambassadors should be sent to
Sparta to discuss the question. Themistocles told the Athenians to send
him off with all speed to Lacedaemon, but not to dispatch his
colleagues as soon as they had selected them, but to wait until they
had raised their wall to the height from which defence was possible.
Meanwhile the whole population in the city was to labour at the wall,
the Athenians, their wives, and their children, sparing no edifice,
private or public, which might be of any use to the work, but throwing
all down. After giving these instructions, and adding that he would be
responsible for all other matters there, he departed. Arrived at
Lacedaemon he did not seek an audience with the authorities, but tried
to gain time and made excuses. When any of the government asked him why
he did not appear in the assembly, he would say that he was waiting for
his colleagues, who had been detained in Athens by some engagement;
however, that he expected their speedy arrival, and wondered that they
were not yet there. At first the Lacedaemonians trusted the words of
Themistocles, through their friendship for him; but when others
arrived, all distinctly declaring that the work was going on and
already attaining some elevation, they did not know how to disbelieve
it. Aware of this, he told them that rumours are deceptive, and should
not be trusted; they should send some reputable persons from Sparta to
inspect, whose report might be trusted. They dispatched them
accordingly. Concerning these Themistocles secretly sent word to the
Athenians to detain them as far as possible without putting them under
open constraint, and not to let them go until they had themselves
returned. For his colleagues had now joined him, Abronichus, son of
Lysicles, and Aristides, son of Lysimachus, with the news that the wall
was sufficiently advanced; and he feared that when the Lacedaemonians
heard the facts, they might refuse to let them go. So the Athenians
detained the envoys according to his message, and Themistocles had an
audience with the Lacedaemonians, and at last openly told them that
Athens was now fortified sufficiently to protect its inhabitants; that
any embassy which the Lacedaemonians or their allies might wish to send
to them should in future proceed on the assumption that the people to
whom they were going was able to distinguish both its own and the
general interests. That when the Athenians thought fit to abandon their
city and to embark in their ships, they ventured on that perilous step
without consulting them; and that on the other hand, wherever they had
deliberated with the Lacedaemonians, they had proved themselves to be
in judgment second to none. That they now thought it fit that their
city should have a wall, and that this would be more for the advantage
of both the citizens of Athens and the Hellenic confederacy; for
without equal military strength it was impossible to contribute equal
or fair counsel to the common interest. It followed, he observed,
either that all the members of the confederacy should be without walls,
or that the present step should be considered a right one.
The Lacedaemonians did not betray any open signs of anger against the
Athenians at what they heard. The embassy, it seems, was prompted not
by a desire to obstruct, but to guide the counsels of their government:
besides, Spartan feeling was at that time very friendly towards Athens
on account of the patriotism which she had displayed in the struggle
with the Mede. Still the defeat of their wishes could not but cause
them secret annoyance. The envoys of each state departed home without
complaint.
In this way the Athenians walled their city in a little while. To this
day the building shows signs of the haste of its execution; the
foundations are laid of stones of all kinds, and in some places not
wrought or fitted, but placed just in the order in which they were
brought by the different hands; and many columns, too, from tombs, and
sculptured stones were put in with the rest. For the bounds of the city
were extended at every point of the circumference; and so they laid
hands on everything without exception in their haste. Themistocles also
persuaded them to finish the walls of Piraeus, which had been begun
before, in his year of office as archon; being influenced alike by the
fineness of a locality that has three natural harbours, and by the
great start which the Athenians would gain in the acquisition of power
by becoming a naval people. For he first ventured to tell them to stick
to the sea and forthwith began to lay the foundations of the empire. It
was by his advice, too, that they built the walls of that thickness
which can still be discerned round Piraeus, the stones being brought up
by two wagons meeting each other. Between the walls thus formed there
was neither rubble nor mortar, but great stones hewn square and fitted
together, cramped to each other on the outside with iron and lead.
About half the height that he intended was finished. His idea was by
their size and thickness to keep off the attacks of an enemy; he
thought that they might be adequately defended by a small garrison of
invalids, and the rest be freed for service in the fleet. For the fleet
claimed most of his attention. He saw, as I think, that the approach by
sea was easier for the king’s army than that by land: he also thought
Piraeus more valuable than the upper city; indeed, he was always
advising the Athenians, if a day should come when they were hard
pressed by land, to go down into Piraeus, and defy the world with their
fleet. Thus, therefore, the Athenians completed their wall, and
commenced their other buildings immediately after the retreat of the
Mede.
Meanwhile Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, was sent out from Lacedaemon
as commander-in-chief of the Hellenes, with twenty ships from
Peloponnese. With him sailed the Athenians with thirty ships, and a
number of the other allies. They made an expedition against Cyprus and
subdued most of the island, and afterwards against Byzantium, which was
in the hands of the Medes, and compelled it to surrender. This event
took place while the Spartans were still supreme. But the violence of
Pausanias had already begun to be disagreeable to the Hellenes,
particularly to the Ionians and the newly liberated populations. These
resorted to the Athenians and requested them as their kinsmen to become
their leaders, and to stop any attempt at violence on the part of
Pausanias. The Athenians accepted their overtures, and determined to
put down any attempt of the kind and to settle everything else as their
interests might seem to demand. In the meantime the Lacedaemonians
recalled Pausanias for an investigation of the reports which had
reached them. Manifold and grave accusations had been brought against
him by Hellenes arriving in Sparta; and, to all appearance, there had
been in him more of the mimicry of a despot than of the attitude of a
general. As it happened, his recall came just at the time when the
hatred which he had inspired had induced the allies to desert him, the
soldiers from Peloponnese excepted, and to range themselves by the side
of the Athenians. On his arrival at Lacedaemon, he was censured for his
private acts of oppression, but was acquitted on the heaviest counts
and pronounced not guilty; it must be known that the charge of Medism
formed one of the principal, and to all appearance one of the best
founded, articles against him. The Lacedaemonians did not, however,
restore him to his command, but sent out Dorkis and certain others with
a small force; who found the allies no longer inclined to concede to
them the supremacy. Perceiving this they departed, and the
Lacedaemonians did not send out any to succeed them. They feared for
those who went out a deterioration similar to that observable in
Pausanias; besides, they desired to be rid of the Median War, and were
satisfied of the competency of the Athenians for the position, and of
their friendship at the time towards themselves.
The Athenians, having thus succeeded to the supremacy by the voluntary
act of the allies through their hatred of Pausanias, fixed which cities
were to contribute money against the barbarian, which ships; their
professed object being to retaliate for their sufferings by ravaging
the King’s country. Now was the time that the office of “Treasurers for
Hellas” was first instituted by the Athenians. These officers received
the tribute, as the money contributed was called. The tribute was first
fixed at four hundred and sixty talents. The common treasury was at
Delos, and the congresses were held in the temple. Their supremacy
commenced with independent allies who acted on the resolutions of a
common congress. It was marked by the following undertakings in war and
in administration during the interval between the Median and the
present war, against the barbarian, against their own rebel allies, and
against the Peloponnesian powers which would come in contact with them
on various occasions. My excuse for relating these events, and for
venturing on this digression, is that this passage of history has been
omitted by all my predecessors, who have confined themselves either to
Hellenic history before the Median War, or the Median War itself.
Hellanicus, it is true, did touch on these events in his Athenian
history; but he is somewhat concise and not accurate in his dates.
Besides, the history of these events contains an explanation of the
growth of the Athenian empire.
First the Athenians besieged and captured Eion on the Strymon from the
Medes, and made slaves of the inhabitants, being under the command of
Cimon, son of Miltiades. Next they enslaved Scyros, the island in the
Aegean, containing a Dolopian population, and colonized it themselves.
This was followed by a war against Carystus, in which the rest of
Euboea remained neutral, and which was ended by surrender on
conditions. After this Naxos left the confederacy, and a war ensued,
and she had to return after a siege; this was the first instance of the
engagement being broken by the subjugation of an allied city, a
precedent which was followed by that of the rest in the order which
circumstances prescribed. Of all the causes of defection, that
connected with arrears of tribute and vessels, and with failure of
service, was the chief; for the Athenians were very severe and
exacting, and made themselves offensive by applying the screw of
necessity to men who were not used to and in fact not disposed for any
continuous labour. In some other respects the Athenians were not the
old popular rulers they had been at first; and if they had more than
their fair share of service, it was correspondingly easy for them to
reduce any that tried to leave the confederacy. For this the allies had
themselves to blame; the wish to get off service making most of them
arrange to pay their share of the expense in money instead of in ships,
and so to avoid having to leave their homes. Thus while Athens was
increasing her navy with the funds which they contributed, a revolt
always found them without resources or experience for war.
Next we come to the actions by land and by sea at the river Eurymedon,
between the Athenians with their allies, and the Medes, when the
Athenians won both battles on the same day under the conduct of Cimon,
son of Miltiades, and captured and destroyed the whole Phoenician
fleet, consisting of two hundred vessels. Some time afterwards occurred
the defection of the Thasians, caused by disagreements about the marts
on the opposite coast of Thrace, and about the mine in their
possession. Sailing with a fleet to Thasos, the Athenians defeated them
at sea and effected a landing on the island. About the same time they
sent ten thousand settlers of their own citizens and the allies to
settle the place then called Ennea Hodoi or Nine Ways, now Amphipolis.
They succeeded in gaining possession of Ennea Hodoi from the Edonians,
but on advancing into the interior of Thrace were cut off in Drabescus,
a town of the Edonians, by the assembled Thracians, who regarded the
settlement of the place Ennea Hodoi as an act of hostility. Meanwhile
the Thasians being defeated in the field and suffering siege, appealed
to Lacedaemon, and desired her to assist them by an invasion of Attica.
Without informing Athens, she promised and intended to do so, but was
prevented by the occurrence of the earthquake, accompanied by the
secession of the Helots and the Thuriats and Aethaeans of the Perioeci
to Ithome. Most of the Helots were the descendants of the old
Messenians that were enslaved in the famous war; and so all of them
came to be called Messenians. So the Lacedaemonians being engaged in a
war with the rebels in Ithome, the Thasians in the third year of the
siege obtained terms from the Athenians by razing their walls,
delivering up their ships, and arranging to pay the moneys demanded at
once, and tribute in future; giving up their possessions on the
continent together with the mine.
The Lacedaemonians, meanwhile, finding the war against the rebels in
Ithome likely to last, invoked the aid of their allies, and especially
of the Athenians, who came in some force under the command of Cimon.
The reason for this pressing summons lay in their reputed skill in
siege operations; a long siege had taught the Lacedaemonians their own
deficiency in this art, else they would have taken the place by
assault. The first open quarrel between the Lacedaemonians and
Athenians arose out of this expedition. The Lacedaemonians, when
assault failed to take the place, apprehensive of the enterprising and
revolutionary character of the Athenians, and further looking upon them
as of alien extraction, began to fear that, if they remained, they
might be tempted by the besieged in Ithome to attempt some political
changes. They accordingly dismissed them alone of the allies, without
declaring their suspicions, but merely saying that they had now no need
of them. But the Athenians, aware that their dismissal did not proceed
from the more honourable reason of the two, but from suspicions which
had been conceived, went away deeply offended, and conscious of having
done nothing to merit such treatment from the Lacedaemonians; and the
instant that they returned home they broke off the alliance which had
been made against the Mede, and allied themselves with Sparta’s enemy
Argos; each of the contracting parties taking the same oaths and making
the same alliance with the Thessalians.
Meanwhile the rebels in Ithome, unable to prolong further a ten years’
resistance, surrendered to Lacedaemon; the conditions being that they
should depart from Peloponnese under safe conduct, and should never set
foot in it again: any one who might hereafter be found there was to be
the slave of his captor. It must be known that the Lacedaemonians had
an old oracle from Delphi, to the effect that they should let go the
suppliant of Zeus at Ithome. So they went forth with their children and
their wives, and being received by Athens from the hatred that she now
felt for the Lacedaemonians, were located at Naupactus, which she had
lately taken from the Ozolian Locrians. The Athenians received another
addition to their confederacy in the Megarians; who left the
Lacedaemonian alliance, annoyed by a war about boundaries forced on
them by Corinth. The Athenians occupied Megara and Pegae, and built the
Megarians their long walls from the city to Nisaea, in which they
placed an Athenian garrison. This was the principal cause of the
Corinthians conceiving such a deadly hatred against Athens.
Meanwhile Inaros, son of Psammetichus, a Libyan king of the Libyans on
the Egyptian border, having his headquarters at Marea, the town above
Pharos, caused a revolt of almost the whole of Egypt from King
Artaxerxes and, placing himself at its head, invited the Athenians to
his assistance. Abandoning a Cyprian expedition upon which they
happened to be engaged with two hundred ships of their own and their
allies, they arrived in Egypt and sailed from the sea into the Nile,
and making themselves masters of the river and two-thirds of Memphis,
addressed themselves to the attack of the remaining third, which is
called White Castle. Within it were Persians and Medes who had taken
refuge there, and Egyptians who had not joined the rebellion.
Meanwhile the Athenians, making a descent from their fleet upon Haliae,
were engaged by a force of Corinthians and Epidaurians; and the
Corinthians were victorious. Afterwards the Athenians engaged the
Peloponnesian fleet off Cecruphalia; and the Athenians were victorious.
Subsequently war broke out between Aegina and Athens, and there was a
great battle at sea off Aegina between the Athenians and Aeginetans,
each being aided by their allies; in which victory remained with the
Athenians, who took seventy of the enemy’s ships, and landed in the
country and commenced a siege under the command of Leocrates, son of
Stroebus. Upon this the Peloponnesians, desirous of aiding the
Aeginetans, threw into Aegina a force of three hundred heavy infantry,
who had before been serving with the Corinthians and Epidaurians.
Meanwhile the Corinthians and their allies occupied the heights of
Geraneia, and marched down into the Megarid, in the belief that, with a
large force absent in Aegina and Egypt, Athens would be unable to help
the Megarians without raising the siege of Aegina. But the Athenians,
instead of moving the army of Aegina, raised a force of the old and
young men that had been left in the city, and marched into the Megarid
under the command of Myronides. After a drawn battle with the
Corinthians, the rival hosts parted, each with the impression that they
had gained the victory. The Athenians, however, if anything, had rather
the advantage, and on the departure of the Corinthians set up a trophy.
Urged by the taunts of the elders in their city, the Corinthians made
their preparations, and about twelve days afterwards came and set up
their trophy as victors. Sallying out from Megara, the Athenians cut
off the party that was employed in erecting the trophy, and engaged and
defeated the rest. In the retreat of the vanquished army, a
considerable division, pressed by the pursuers and mistaking the road,
dashed into a field on some private property, with a deep trench all
round it, and no way out. Being acquainted with the place, the
Athenians hemmed their front with heavy infantry and, placing the light
troops round in a circle, stoned all who had gone in. Corinth here
suffered a severe blow. The bulk of her army continued its retreat
home.
About this time the Athenians began to build the long walls to the sea,
that towards Phalerum and that towards Piraeus. Meanwhile the Phocians
made an expedition against Doris, the old home of the Lacedaemonians,
containing the towns of Boeum, Kitinium, and Erineum. They had taken
one of these towns, when the Lacedaemonians under Nicomedes, son of
Cleombrotus, commanding for King Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias, who was
still a minor, came to the aid of the Dorians with fifteen hundred
heavy infantry of their own, and ten thousand of their allies. After
compelling the Phocians to restore the town on conditions, they began
their retreat. The route by sea, across the Crissaean Gulf, exposed
them to the risk of being stopped by the Athenian fleet; that across
Geraneia seemed scarcely safe, the Athenians holding Megara and Pegae.
For the pass was a difficult one, and was always guarded by the
Athenians; and, in the present instance, the Lacedaemonians had
information that they meant to dispute their passage. So they resolved
to remain in Boeotia, and to consider which would be the safest line of
march. They had also another reason for this resolve. Secret
encouragement had been given them by a party in Athens, who hoped to
put an end to the reign of democracy and the building of the Long
Walls. Meanwhile the Athenians marched against them with their whole
levy and a thousand Argives and the respective contingents of the rest
of their allies. Altogether they were fourteen thousand strong. The
march was prompted by the notion that the Lacedaemonians were at a loss
how to effect their passage, and also by suspicions of an attempt to
overthrow the democracy. Some cavalry also joined the Athenians from
their Thessalian allies; but these went over to the Lacedaemonians
during the battle.
The battle was fought at Tanagra in Boeotia. After heavy loss on both
sides, victory declared for the Lacedaemonians and their allies. After
entering the Megarid and cutting down the fruit trees, the
Lacedaemonians returned home across Geraneia and the isthmus. Sixty-two
days after the battle the Athenians marched into Boeotia under the
command of Myronides, defeated the Boeotians in battle at Oenophyta,
and became masters of Boeotia and Phocis. They dismantled the walls of
the Tanagraeans, took a hundred of the richest men of the Opuntian
Locrians as hostages, and finished their own long walls. This was
followed by the surrender of the Aeginetans to Athens on conditions;
they pulled down their walls, gave up their ships, and agreed to pay
tribute in future. The Athenians sailed round Peloponnese under
Tolmides, son of Tolmaeus, burnt the arsenal of Lacedaemon, took
Chalcis, a town of the Corinthians, and in a descent upon Sicyon
defeated the Sicyonians in battle.
Meanwhile the Athenians in Egypt and their allies were still there, and
encountered all the vicissitudes of war. First the Athenians were
masters of Egypt, and the King sent Megabazus a Persian to Lacedaemon
with money to bribe the Peloponnesians to invade Attica and so draw off
the Athenians from Egypt. Finding that the matter made no progress, and
that the money was only being wasted, he recalled Megabazus with the
remainder of the money, and sent Megabuzus, son of Zopyrus, a Persian,
with a large army to Egypt. Arriving by land he defeated the Egyptians
and their allies in a battle, and drove the Hellenes out of Memphis,
and at length shut them up in the island of Prosopitis, where he
besieged them for a year and six months. At last, draining the canal of
its waters, which he diverted into another channel, he left their ships
high and dry and joined most of the island to the mainland, and then
marched over on foot and captured it. Thus the enterprise of the
Hellenes came to ruin after six years of war. Of all that large host a
few travelling through Libya reached Cyrene in safety, but most of them
perished. And thus Egypt returned to its subjection to the King, except
Amyrtaeus, the king in the marshes, whom they were unable to capture
from the extent of the marsh; the marshmen being also the most warlike
of the Egyptians. Inaros, the Libyan king, the sole author of the
Egyptian revolt, was betrayed, taken, and crucified. Meanwhile a
relieving squadron of fifty vessels had sailed from Athens and the rest
of the confederacy for Egypt. They put in to shore at the Mendesian
mouth of the Nile, in total ignorance of what had occurred. Attacked on
the land side by the troops, and from the sea by the Phoenician navy,
most of the ships were destroyed; the few remaining being saved by
retreat. Such was the end of the great expedition of the Athenians and
their allies to Egypt.
Meanwhile Orestes, son of Echecratidas, the Thessalian king, being an
exile from Thessaly, persuaded the Athenians to restore him. Taking
with them the Boeotians and Phocians their allies, the Athenians
marched to Pharsalus in Thessaly. They became masters of the country,
though only in the immediate vicinity of the camp; beyond which they
could not go for fear of the Thessalian cavalry. But they failed to
take the city or to attain any of the other objects of their
expedition, and returned home with Orestes without having effected
anything. Not long after this a thousand of the Athenians embarked in
the vessels that were at Pegae (Pegae, it must be remembered, was now
theirs), and sailed along the coast to Sicyon under the command of
Pericles, son of Xanthippus. Landing in Sicyon and defeating the
Sicyonians who engaged them, they immediately took with them the
Achaeans and, sailing across, marched against and laid siege to
Oeniadae in Acarnania. Failing however to take it, they returned home.
Three years afterwards a truce was made between the Peloponnesians and
Athenians for five years. Released from Hellenic war, the Athenians
made an expedition to Cyprus with two hundred vessels of their own and
their allies, under the command of Cimon. Sixty of these were detached
to Egypt at the instance of Amyrtaeus, the king in the marshes; the
rest laid siege to Kitium, from which, however, they were compelled to
retire by the death of Cimon and by scarcity of provisions. Sailing off
Salamis in Cyprus, they fought with the Phoenicians, Cyprians, and
Cilicians by land and sea, and, being victorious on both elements
departed home, and with them the returned squadron from Egypt. After
this the Lacedaemonians marched out on a sacred war, and, becoming
masters of the temple at Delphi, it in the hands of the Delphians.
Immediately after their retreat, the Athenians marched out, became
masters of the temple, and placed it in the hands of the Phocians.
Some time after this, Orchomenus, Chaeronea, and some other places in
Boeotia being in the hands of the Boeotian exiles, the Athenians
marched against the above-mentioned hostile places with a thousand
Athenian heavy infantry and the allied contingents, under the command
of Tolmides, son of Tolmaeus. They took Chaeronea, and made slaves of
the inhabitants, and, leaving a garrison, commenced their return. On
their road they were attacked at Coronea by the Boeotian exiles from
Orchomenus, with some Locrians and Euboean exiles, and others who were
of the same way of thinking, were defeated in battle, and some killed,
others taken captive. The Athenians evacuated all Boeotia by a treaty
providing for the recovery of the men; and the exiled Boeotians
returned, and with all the rest regained their independence.
This was soon afterwards followed by the revolt of Euboea from Athens.
Pericles had already crossed over with an army of Athenians to the
island, when news was brought to him that Megara had revolted, that the
Peloponnesians were on the point of invading Attica, and that the
Athenian garrison had been cut off by the Megarians, with the exception
of a few who had taken refuge in Nisaea. The Megarians had introduced
the Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Epidaurians into the town before they
revolted. Meanwhile Pericles brought his army back in all haste from
Euboea. After this the Peloponnesians marched into Attica as far as
Eleusis and Thrius, ravaging the country under the conduct of King
Pleistoanax, the son of Pausanias, and without advancing further
returned home. The Athenians then crossed over again to Euboea under
the command of Pericles, and subdued the whole of the island: all but
Histiaea was settled by convention; the Histiaeans they expelled from
their homes, and occupied their territory themselves.
Not long after their return from Euboea, they made a truce with the
Lacedaemonians and their allies for thirty years, giving up the posts
which they occupied in Peloponnese—Nisaea, Pegae, Troezen, and Achaia.
In the sixth year of the truce, war broke out between the Samians and
Milesians about Priene. Worsted in the war, the Milesians came to
Athens with loud complaints against the Samians. In this they were
joined by certain private persons from Samos itself, who wished to
revolutionize the government. Accordingly the Athenians sailed to Samos
with forty ships and set up a democracy; took hostages from the
Samians, fifty boys and as many men, lodged them in Lemnos, and after
leaving a garrison in the island returned home. But some of the Samians
had not remained in the island, but had fled to the continent. Making
an agreement with the most powerful of those in the city, and an
alliance with Pissuthnes, son of Hystaspes, the then satrap of Sardis,
they got together a force of seven hundred mercenaries, and under cover
of night crossed over to Samos. Their first step was to rise on the
commons, most of whom they secured; their next to steal their hostages
from Lemnos; after which they revolted, gave up the Athenian garrison
left with them and its commanders to Pissuthnes, and instantly prepared
for an expedition against Miletus. The Byzantines also revolted with
them.
As soon as the Athenians heard the news, they sailed with sixty ships
against Samos. Sixteen of these went to Caria to look out for the
Phoenician fleet, and to Chios and Lesbos carrying round orders for
reinforcements, and so never engaged; but forty-four ships under the
command of Pericles with nine colleagues gave battle, off the island of
Tragia, to seventy Samian vessels, of which twenty were transports, as
they were sailing from Miletus. Victory remained with the Athenians.
Reinforced afterwards by forty ships from Athens, and twenty-five Chian
and Lesbian vessels, the Athenians landed, and having the superiority
by land invested the city with three walls; it was also invested from
the sea. Meanwhile Pericles took sixty ships from the blockading
squadron, and departed in haste for Caunus and Caria, intelligence
having been brought in of the approach of the Phoenician fleet to the
aid of the Samians; indeed Stesagoras and others had left the island
with five ships to bring them. But in the meantime the Samians made a
sudden sally, and fell on the camp, which they found unfortified.
Destroying the look-out vessels, and engaging and defeating such as
were being launched to meet them, they remained masters of their own
seas for fourteen days, and carried in and carried out what they
pleased. But on the arrival of Pericles, they were once more shut up.
Fresh reinforcements afterwards arrived—forty ships from Athens with
Thucydides, Hagnon, and Phormio; twenty with Tlepolemus and Anticles,
and thirty vessels from Chios and Lesbos. After a brief attempt at
fighting, the Samians, unable to hold out, were reduced after a nine
months’ siege and surrendered on conditions; they razed their walls,
gave hostages, delivered up their ships, and arranged to pay the
expenses of the war by instalments. The Byzantines also agreed to be
subject as before.