Alcibiades by P.J. Rhodes

Author:P.J. Rhodes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Ancient / General
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2011-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter VI

Alcibiades and the Athenian Navy: 411–406

In late summer 411, while Tissaphernes was still away from the Aegean, visiting Aspendus, the Peloponnesian forces were still not receiving the Persian money they hoped for, and Spartans who had gone with him were reporting that there was no hope that he would bring the Phoenician ships. Pharnabazus, the satrap at Dascylium, was inviting the Peloponnesians to move north and cooperate with him instead. Mindarus set sail from Miletus for the Hellespont, and Athenian ships under Thrasyllus sailed from Samos, hoping to arrive there first. Mindarus was delayed by a storm, but the Athenians paused on Lesbos, joining a contingent which had gone there earlier under Thrasybulus to besiege the city of Eresus, which had defected, and the Peloponnesians did reach the Hellespont first. They based themselves at Abydus, on the Asiatic side; most of an Athenian squadron at Sestos, further from the Aegean on the European side, managed to get past them and into the Aegean; they then joined the Athenian ships coming from Samos and Lesbos, and these based themselves at Elaeus, just inside the Hellespont on the European side.1

There followed a battle, in the waters around Cynossema, a headland on the European side, between the Athenian position at Elaeus and the Spartan position at Abydus, around which the Hellespont bends. This was the narrowest stretch of the Hellespont, where the Peloponnesians hoped the Athenians would be least able to profit from their greater skill. The Athenians moved eastwards into the Hellespont from Elaeus, and the Peloponnesians put out to meet them. As the Peloponnesians tried to outflank the Athenians on the west, the Athenians by moving their wing in response weakened their centre. The Peloponnesians attacked there successfully, but then fell into disorder, and the Athenians were able to recover and finish victorious. This recalls the second of the two battles in the Gulf of Corinth in 429, when the heavily-outnumbered Athenians had similarly been able to turn defeat into victory.2 On this occasion, their first victory in a major naval battle since the disaster in Sicily greatly strengthened the Athenians’ morale. After the battle they brought Cyzicus, on the Propontis, back onto the Athenian side.3

At this stage Alcibiades was not present with the Athenians in the Hellespont. On returning to the Aegean he went back to Samos, claiming that he had prevented Tissaphernes from bringing the Phoenician ships to the Peloponnesians and had made him more friendly to the Athenians; and he obtained money from Halicarnassus and fortified Cos. Tissaphernes returned from Aspendus to find that at Antandrus, on the gulf opposite the north of Lesbos, the people, who were being badly treated by his subordinate Arsaces, had expelled their Persian garrison.4 He therefore headed north to talk to the Peloponnesians, pausing to sacrifice to Artemis at Ephesus (St. Paul’s ‘Diana of the Ephesians’) …5

…and at that point, in the autumn of 411, Thucydides’ narrative abruptly ends. All that we now have of Thucydides’ text is all that was

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