Struthas, with his wife, on their road to Sardis. The sum paid for their ransom was so large that he at once had the wherewithal to pay his mercenaries. Diphridas was no less attractive than his predecessor Thibron; but he was of a more orderly temperament, steadier, and incomparably more enterprising as a general; the secret of this superiority being that he was a man over whom the pleasures of the body exercised no sway. He became readily absorbed in the business before him--whatever he had to do he did it with a will.
[22] See 'Anab.' VII. viii. 9 for a similar exploit.
Ecdicus having reached Cnidus, there learned that the democracy in Rhones were entirely masters of the situation. They were dominant by land and sea; indeed they possessed a fleet twice the size of his own. He was therefore content to keep quiet in Cnidus until the Lacedaemonians, perceiving that his force was too small to allow him to benefit their friends, determined to relieve him. With this view they ordered Teleutias to take the twelve ships which formed his squadron (at present in the gulf adjoining Achaia and Lechaeum),[23] and to feel his way round to Ecdicus: that officer he was to send home. For himself, he was to undertake personally to protect the interests of all who cared to be their friends, whilst injuring the enemy by every possible means.
[23] See above, IV. viii. 11.
So then Teleutias, having reached Samos, where he added some vessels to his fleet, set sail to Cnidus. At this point Ecdicus returned home, and Teleutias, continuing his voyage, reached Rhodes, at the head now of seven- and-twenty vessels. It was during this portion of the voyage that he fell in with Philocrates, the son of Ephialtes, who was sailing from Athens to Cyprus with ten triremes, in aid of their ally Evagoras.[24] The whole flotilla fell into the Spartan's hands--a curious instance, it may be added, of cross purposes on the part of both belligerents. Here were the Athenians, supposed to be on friendly terms with the king, engaged in sending an allied force to support Evagoras, who was at open war with him; and here again was Teleutias, the representative of a people at war with Persia, engaged in crippling a fleet which had been despatched on a mission hostile to their adversary. Teleutias put back into Cnidus to dispose of his captives, and so eventually reached Rhodes, where his arrival brought timely aid to the party in favour of Lacedaemon.
[24] See Diod. xiv. 98; Hicks, 72; Kohler, 'C. I. A.' ii. p. 397; Isoc. 'Evag.' 54-57; Paus. I. iii. 1; Lys. 'de bon. Ar.' 20; Dem. p. 161.
B.C. 389.[25] And now the Athenians, fully impressed with the belief that their rivals were laying the basis of a new naval supremacy, despatched Thrasybulus the Steirian to check them, with a fleet of forty sail. That officer set sail, but abstained from bringing aid to Rhodes, and for good reasons. In Rhodes the Lacedaemonian party had hold of the fortress, and would be out of reach of his attack, especially as Teleutias was close at hand to aid them with his fleet. On the other hand, his own friends ran no danger of succumbing to the enemy, as they held the cities and were numerically much stronger, and they had established their superiority in the field. Consequently he made for the Hellespont, where, in the absence of any rival power, he hoped to achieve some stroke of good fortune for his city. Thus, in the first place, having detected the rivalries existing between Medocus,[26] the king of the Odrysians, and Seuthes,[27] the rival ruler of the seaboard, he reconciled them to each other, and made them friends and allies of Athens; in the belief that if he secured their friendship the Hellenic cities on the Thracian coast would show greater proclivity to Athens. Such being the happy state of affairs not only in Europe but as regards the states in Asia also, thanks to the friendly attitude of the king to his fellow-citizens, he sailed into Byzantium and sold the tithe-duty levied on vessels arriving from the Euxine. By another stroke he converted the oligarchy of Byzantium into a democracy. The result of this was that the Byzantine demos[28] were no longer sorry to see as vast a concourse of Athenians in their city as possible. Having so done, and having further won the friendship of the men of Calchedon, he set sail south of the Hellespont. Arrived at Lesbos, he found all the cities devoted to Lacedaemon with the exception of Mytilene. He was therefore loth to attack any of the former until he had organised a force within the latter. This force consisted of four hundred hoplites, furnished from his own vessels, and a corps of exiles from the different cities who had sought shelter in Mytilene; to which he added a stout contingent, the pick of the Mytileneian citizens themselves. He stirred the ardour of the several contingents by suitable appeals: representing to the men of Mytilene that by their capture of the cities they would at once become the chiefs and patrons of Lesbos; to the exiles he made it appear that if they would but unite to attack each several city in turn, they might all reckon on their particular restoration; while he needed only to remind his own warriors that the acquisition of Lesbos meant not only the attachment of a friendly city, but the discovery of a mine of wealth. The exhortations ended and the contingents organised, he advanced against Methymna.
[25] Grote, 'H. G.' ix. 507.
[26] Al. Amedocus.
[27] For Seuthes, see above, 'Hell.' III. ii. 2, if the same.
[28] For the varying fortunes of the democrats at Byzantium in 408 B.C. and 405 B.C., see above, 'Hell.' I. iii. 18; II. ii. 2); for the present moment, 390-389 B.C., see Demosth. 'c. Lept.' 475; for the admission of Byzantium into the new naval confederacy in 378 B.C., see Hicks, 68; Kohler, 'C. I. A.' ii. 19; and for B.C. 363, Isocr. 'Phil.' 53; Diod. xv. 79; and for its commercial prosperity, Polyb. iv. 38-47.
Therimachus, who chanced to be the Lacedaemonian governor at the time, on hearing of the meditated attack of Thrasybulus, had taken a body of marines from his vessels, and, aided by the citizens of Methymna themselves, along with all the Mytileneian exiles to be found in that place, advanced to meet the enemy on their borders. A battle was fought and Therimachus was slain, a fate shared by several of the exiles of his party.
As a result[29] of his victory the Athenian general succeeded in winning the adhesion of some of the states; or, where adhesion was refused, he could at least raise supplies for his soldiers by freebooting expeditions, and so hastened to reach his goal, which was the island of Rhodes. His chief concern was to support as powerful an army as possible in those parts, and with this object he proceeded to levy money aids, visiting various cities, until he finally reached Aspendus, and came to moorings in the river Eurymedon. The money was safely collected from the Aspendians, and the work completed, when, taking occasion of some depredations[30] of the soldiers on the farmsteads, the people of the place in a fit of irritation burst into the general's quarters at night and butchered him in his tent.
[29] According to some critics, B.C. 389 is only now reached.
[30] See Diod. xiv. 94.
So perished Thrasybulus,[31] a good and great man by all admission. In room of him the Athenians chose Agyrrhius,[32] who was despatched to take command of the fleet. And now the Lacedaemonians--alive to the fact that the sale of the Euxine tithe-dues had been negotiated in Byzantium by Athens; aware also that as long as the Athenians kept hold on Calchedon the loyalty of the other Hellespontine cities was secured to them (at any rate while Pharnabazus remained their friend) --felt that the state of affairs demanded their serious attention. They attached no blame indeed to Dercylidas. Anaxibius, however, through the friendship of the ephors, contrived to get himself appointed as governor, on a mission to Abydos. With the requisite funds and ships, he promised to exert such hostile pressure upon Athens that at least her prospects in the Hellespont would cease to be so sunny. His friends the ephors granted him in return for these promises three ships of war and funds to support a thousand mercenaries, and so they despatched him on his mission. Reaching Abydos, he set about improving his naval and military position. First he collected a foreign brigade, by help of which he drew off some of the Aeolid cities from Pharnabazus. Next he set on foot a series of retaliatory expeditions against the states which attacked Abydos, marching upon them and ravaging their territories; and lastly, manning three vessels besides those which he already held in the harbour of Abydos, he intercepted and brought into port all the merchant ships of Athens or of her allies which he could lay hands on.
[31] 'Thus perished the citizen to whom, more than any one else, Athens owed not only her renovated democracy, but its wise, generous, and harmonious working, after renovation.'--Grote, 'H. G.' ix. 509.
[32] For this statesman, see Demosth. 'c. Timocr.' 742; Andoc. 'de Myst.' 133; Aristot. 'Ath. Pol.' 41, and Mr. Kenyon's notes ad loc.; Aristoph. 'Eccles.' 102, and the Schol. ad loc.; Diod. xiv. 99; Curtius, 'H. G.' Eng tr. iv. 280.
Getting wind of these proceedings, the Athenians, fearing lest the fair foundation laid for them by Thrasybulus in the Hellespont should be ruined, sent out Iphicrates with eight vessels and twelve hundred peltasts. The majority of them[33] consisted of troops which he had commanded at Corinth. In explanation it may be stated that the Argives, when once they had appropriated Corinth and incorporated it with Argos, gave out they had no further need of Iphicrates and his troops; the real fact being that he had put to death some of the partisans of Argos.[34] And so it was he turned his back on Corinth and found himself at home in Athens at the present crisis.
[33] Or, 'The mass of them.'
