Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
dice, and men with oaths," an imitation of Polycrates of Samos, not
very honorable to a lawful commander, to take example, namely, from a
tyrant; nor in character with Laconian usages, to treat gods as ill
as enemies, or, indeed, even more injuriously; since he who
overreaches by an oath admits that he fears his enemy, while he
despises his God.
Cyrus now sent for Lysander to Sardis, and gave him some money, and
promised him some more, youthfully protesting in favor to him, that
if his father gave him nothing, he would supply him of his own; and
if he himself should be destitute of all, he would cut up, he said,
to make money, the very throne upon which he sat to do justice, it
being made of gold and silver; and, at last, on going up into Media
to his father, he ordered that he should receive the tribute of the
towns, and committed his government to him, and so taking his leave,
and desiring him not to fight by sea before he returned, for he would
come back with a great many ships out of Phoenicia and Cilicia,
departed to visit the king.
Lysander's ships were too few for him to venture to fight, and yet
too many to allow of his remaining idle; he set out, therefore, and
reduced some of the islands, and wasted Aegina and Salamis; and from
thence landing in Attica, and saluting Agis, who came from Decelea to
meet him, he made a display to the land-forces of the strength of the
fleet, as though he could sail where he pleased, and were absolute
master by sea. But hearing the Athenians pursued him, he fled
another way through the islands into Asia. And finding the
Hellespont without any defense, he attacked Lampsacus with his ships
by sea; while Thorax, acting in concert with him with the land army,
made an assault on the walls; and so, having taken the city by storm,
he gave it up to his soldiers to plunder. The fleet of the
Athenians, a hundred and eighty ships, had just arrived at Elaeus in
the Chersonese; and hearing the news, that Lampsacus was destroyed,
they presently sailed to Sestos; where, taking in victuals, they
advanced to Aegos Potami, over against their enemies, who were still
stationed about Lampsacus. Amongst other Athenian captains who were
now in command was Philocles, he who persuaded the people to pass a
decree to cut off the right thumb of the captives in the war, that
they should not be able to hold the spear, though they might the oar.
Then they all rested themselves, hoping they should have battle the
next morning. But Lysander had other things in his head; he
commanded the mariners and pilots to go on board at dawn, as if there
should be a battle as soon as it was day, and to sit there in order,
and without any noise, expecting what should be commanded, and in
like manner that the land army should remain quietly in their ranks
by the sea. But the sun rising, and the Athenians sailing up with
their whole fleet in line, and challenging them to battle, he, though
he had had his ships all drawn up and manned before daybreak,
nevertheless did not stir. He merely sent some small boats to those
who lay foremost, and bade them keep still and stay in their order;
not to be disturbed, and none of them to sail out and offer battle.
So about evening, the Athenians sailing back, he would not let the
seamen go out of the ships before two or three, which he had sent to
espy, were returned, after seeing the enemies disembark. And thus
they did the next day, and the third, and so to the fourth. So that
the Athenians grew extremely confident, and disdained their enemies,
as if they had been afraid and daunted. At this time, Alcibiades,
who was in his castle in the Chersonese, came on horseback to the
Athenian army, and found fault with their captains, first of all that
they had pitched their camp neither well nor safely, on an exposed
and open beach, a very bad landing for the ships, and, secondly, that
where they were, they had to fetch all they wanted from Sestos, some
considerable way off; whereas if they sailed round a little way to
the town and harbor of Sestos, they would be at a safer distance from
an enemy, who lay watching their movements, at the command of a
single general, terror of whom made every order rapidly executed.
This advice, however, they would not listen to; and Tydeus angered
disdainfully, that not he, but others, were in office now. So
Alcibiades, who even suspected there must be treachery, departed.
But on the fifth day, the Athenians having sailed towards them, and
gone back again as they were used to do, very proudly and full of
contempt, Lysander sending some ships, as usual, to look out,
commanded the masters of them that when they saw the Athenians go to
land, they should row back again with all their speed, and that when
they were about half-way across, they should lift up a brazen shield
from the foredeck, as the sign of battle. And he himself sailing
round, encouraged the pilots and masters of the ships, and exhorted
them to keep all their men to their places, seamen and soldiers
alike, and as soon as ever the sign should be given, to row up boldly
to their enemies. Accordingly when the shield had been lifted up
from the ships, and the trumpet from the admiral's vessel had sounded
for battle, the ships rowed up, and the foot soldiers strove to get
along by the shore to the promontory. The distance there between the
two continents is fifteen furlongs, which, by the zeal and eagerness
of the rowers, was quickly traversed. Conon, one of the Athenian
commanders, was the first who saw from the land the fleet advancing,
and shouted out to embark, and in the greatest distress bade some and
entreated others, and some he forced to man the ships. But all his
diligence signified nothing, because the men were scattered about;
for as soon as they came out of the ships, expecting no such matter,
some went to market, others walked about the country, or went to
sleep in their tents, or got their dinners ready, being, through
their commanders' want of skill, as far as possible from any thought
of what was to happen; and the enemy now coming up with shouts and
noise, Conon, with eight ships, sailed out, and making his escape,
passed from thence to Cyprus, to Evagores. The Peloponnesians
falling upon the rest, some they took quite empty, and some they
destroyed while they were filling; the men, meantime, coming unarmed
and scattered to help, died at their ships, or, flying by land, were
slain, their enemies disembarking and pursuing them. Lysander took
three thousand prisoners, with the generals, and the whole fleet,
excepting the sacred ship Paralus, and those which fled with Conon.
So taking their ships in tow, and having plundered their tents, with
pipe and songs of victory, he sailed back to Lampsacus, having
accomplished a great work with small pains, and having finished in
one hour, a war which had been protracted in its continuance, and
diversified in its incidents and its fortunes to a degree exceeding
belief, compared with all before it. After altering its shape and
character a thousand times, and after having been the destruction of
more commanders than all the previous wars of Greece put together, it
was now put an end to by the good counsel and ready conduct of one
man.
Some, therefore, looked upon the result as a divine intervention, and
there were certain who affirmed that the stars of Castor and Pollux
were seen on each side of Lysander's ship, when he first set sail
from the haven toward his enemies, shining about the helm; and some
say the stone which fell down was a sign of this slaughter. For a
stone of a great size did fall, according to the common belief, from
heaven, at Aegos Potami, which is shown to this day, and had in great
esteem by the Chersonites. And it is said that Anaxagoras foretold,
that the occurrence of a slip or shake among the bodies fixed in the
heavens, dislodging any one of them, would be followed by the fall of
the whole of them. For no one of the stars is now in the same place
in which it was at first; for they, being, according to him, like
stones and heavy, shine by the refraction of the upper air round
about them, and are carried along forcibly by the violence of the
circular motion by which they were originally withheld from
falling, when cold and heavy bodies were first separated from the
general universe. But there is a more probable opinion than this
maintained by some, who say that falling stars are no effluxes, nor
discharges of ethereal fire, extinguished almost at the instant of
its igniting by the lower air; neither are they the sudden combustion
and blazing up of a quantity of the lower air let loose in great
abundance into the upper region; but the heavenly bodies, by a
relaxation of the force of their circular movement, are carried by an
irregular course, not in general into the inhabited part of the
earth, but for the most part into the wide sea; which is the cause of
their not being observed. Daimachus, in his treatise on Religion.
supports the view of Anaxagoras. He says, that before this stone
fell, for seventy-five days continually, there was seen in the
heavens a vast fiery body, as if it had been a flaming cloud, not
resting, but carried about with several intricate and broken
movements, so that the flaming pieces, which were broken off by this
commotion and running about, were carried in all directions, shining
as falling stars do. But when it afterwards came down to the ground
in this district, and the people of the place recovering from their
fear and astonishment came together, there was no fire to be seen,
neither any sign of it; there was only a stone lying, big indeed, but
which bore no proportion, to speak of, to that fiery compass. It is
manifest that Daimachus needs to have indulgent hearers; but if what
he says be true, he altogether proves those to be wrong who say that
a rock broken off from the top of some mountain, by winds and
tempests, and caught and whirled about like a top, as soon as this
impetus began to slacken and cease, was precipitated and fell to the
ground. Unless, indeed, we choose to say that the phenomenon which
was observed for so many days was really fire, and that the change in
the atmosphere ensuing on its extinction was attended with violent
winds and agitations, which might be the cause of this stone being
carried off. The exacter treatment of this subject belongs, however,
to a different kind of writing.
Lysander, after the three thousand Athenians whom he had taken
prisoners were condemned by the commissioners to die, called
Philocles the general, and asked him what punishment he considered
himself to deserve, for having advised the citizens as he had done,
against the Greeks; but he, being nothing cast down at his calamity,
bade him not accuse him of matters of which nobody was a judge, but
to do to him, now he was a conqueror, as he would have suffered, had
he been overcome. Then washing himself, and putting on a fine cloak,
he led the citizens the way to the slaughter, as Theophrastus writes
in his history. After this Lysander, sailing about to the various
cities, bade all the Athenians he met go into Athens, declaring that
he would spare none, but kill every man whom he found out of the
city, intending thus to cause immediate famine and scarcity there,
that they might not make the siege laborious to him, having
provisions sufficient to endure it. And suppressing the popular
governments and all other constitutions, he left one Lacedaemonian
chief officer in every city, with ten rulers to act with him,
selected out of the societies which he had previously formed in the
different towns. And doing thus as well in the cities of his
enemies, as of his associates, he sailed leisurely on, establishing,