strong position, and abundantly furnished with provisions, was in no hurry to run any risks. In vain did the Athenians sail over several days in succession to offer him battle; they always found his ships ready manned, and drawn up in too strong a position to warrant an attack; nor could they by all their manœuvres succeed in enticing him out to combat. This cowardice, as they deemed it, on the part of the Lacedæmonians, begat a corresponding negligence on theirs; discipline was neglected and the men allowed to straggle almost at will. It was in vain that Alcibiades, who since his dismissal resided in a fortress in that neighbourhood, remonstrated with the Athenian generals on the exposed nature of the station they had chosen, and advised them to proceed to Sestos. His counsels were received with taunts and insults. At length on the fifth day, Lysander, having watched an opportunity when the Athenian seamen had gone on shore and were dispersed over the country, rowed swiftly across the strait with all his ships. He found the Athenian fleet, with the exception of 10 or 12 vessels, totally unprepared, and succeeded in capturing nearly the whole of it, without having occasion to strike a single blow. Of the 180 ships which composed the fleet, only the trireme of Conon himself, the Paralus, and 8 or 10 other vessels succeeded in escaping. Conon was afraid to return to Athens after so signal a disaster, and took refuge with Evagoras, prince of Salamis in Cyprus. All the Athenian prisoners, amounting to 3000 or 4000, together with the generals, were put to death by order of Lysander, in retaliation for the cruelty with which the Athenians had treated the prisoners they had lately made.

By this momentous victory, which was suspected to have been achieved through the corrupt connivance of some of the Athenian generals, the contest on the Hellespont, and virtually the Peloponnesian war, was brought to an end. The closing scene of the catastrophe was enacted at Athens itself; but the fate of the imperial city must be reserved for another chapter.

FROM THE BATTLE OF EGOSPOTAMI TO THE OVERTHROW OF THE THIRTY TYRANTS AND THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY AT ATHENS.

§1. Alarm at Athens. § 2. Proceedings of Lysander. Capture of the Athenian dependencies. § 3. Measures of the Athenians. Athens invested. 84. Embassy of Theramenes. Conditions of capitulation. § 5. Lysander takes possession of Athens. Destruction of the long walls, &c. 6. Return of the oligarchical exiles. Establishment of the Thirty. 87. Surrender of Samos and triumph of Lysander. § 8. Pro ceedings of the Thirty at Athens. § 9. Opposition of Theramenes. § 10. Proscriptions. Death of Theramenes. § 11. Suppression of intellectual culture. Socrates. §12. Death of Alcibiades. 13. Jealousy of the Grecian states towards Sparta and Lysander. 14. Thrasybulus at Phylé. § 15. Seizure and massacre of the Eleusinians. §16. Thrasybulus occupies Piræus. Death of Critias. § 17. Deposition of the Thirty, and establishment of the Ten. Return of Lysander to Athens, and arrival of Pausanias. §18. Peace with Thrasybulus, and evacuation of Attica by the Peloponnesians. § 19. Restoration of the democracy. § 20. Archonship of Euclides. Reduction of Eleusis.

1. The defeat of Egospotami, which took place about September, 405 B.C., was announced at Piræus in the night, by the

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arrival of the Paralus. man slept." The disaster, indeed, was as sudden and as authentic as it was vast and irretrievable. The proceedings of the dejected assembly which met on the following day at once showed that the remaining struggle was one for bare existence. In order to make the best preparations for a siege, it was resolved to block up two of the three ports of Athens-a plain confession that maritime supremacy, the sole basis of her power, had departed from her.

"On that night," says Xenophon, “no

§ 2. Lysander, secure of an easy triumph, was in no haste to gather it by force. The command of the Euxine enabled him to control the supplies of Athens; and sooner or later, a few weeks of famine must decide her fall. With the view of hastening the catastrophe he compelled the garrisons of all the towns which surrendered to proceed to the capital. The question was not one of arms, but of hunger; and an additional garrison, so far from adding to her strength, would complete her weakness. A strong proof of the insecure foundation of her power! A naval defeat in a remote quarter had not only deprived her of empire, but was about to render her in turn a captive and a subject.

Lysander now sailed forth to take possession of the Athenian towns, which fell one after another into his power as soon as he appeared before them. In all a new form of government was established, consisting of an oligarchy of ten of the citizens, called a decarchy, under a Spartan harmost. Chalcedon, Byzantium, Mytilené, surrendered to Lysander himself; whilst Eteonicus was despatched to occupy and revolutionize the Athenian towns in Thrace. Amidst the general defection, Samos alone remained faithful to Athens. All her other dependencies at once yielded to the Lacedæmonians; whilst her cleruchs were forced to abandon their possessions and return home. In many places, and especially in Thasos, these revolutious were attended with violence and bloodshed.

§3. The situation of Athens was now more desperate even than when Xerxes was advancing against her with his countless host. The juncture demanded the hearty co-operation of all her citizens; and a general amnesty was proposed and carried for the purpose of releasing all debtors, accused persons, and state prisoners, except a few of the more desperate criminals and homicides. The citizens were then assembled in the Acropolis, and swore a solemn oath of mutual forgiveness and harmony.

About November Lysander made his appearance at Ægina, with an overwhelming fleet of 150 triremes, and proceeded to devastate Salamis and blockade Piræus. At the same time the

whole Peloponnesian army was marched into Attica, and encamped in the precincts of the Academus, at the very gates of Athens. Famine soon began to be felt within the walls. Yet the Athenians did not abate of their pretensions. In their proposals for a capitulation they demanded the preservation of their long walls, and of the port of Piræus. But the Spartan Ephors, to whom the Athenian envoys had been referred by king Agis, refused to listen to such terms, and insisted on the demolition of the long walls for the space of 10 stadia at least. The spirit of the people, however, was still so unsubdued-though some of them were actually dying of hunger-that the senator Archestratus was imprisoned for proposing to accept the terms offered by the Ephors; and on the motion of Cleophon, it was forbidden to make any such proposal in future.

§ 4. Theramenes, formerly one of the Four Hundred, now offered to proceed to Lysander for the purpose of learning his real intentions with regard to the fate of Athens; and as he pretended that his personal connexions would afford him great facilities in such an undertaking, his offer was accepted. After wasting three months with Lysander,-three months of terrible suffering to the Athenians,—he said that Lysander had then informed him for the first time that the Ephors alone had power to treat. The only construction that can be put on this conduct of Theramenes is, that he designed to reduce the Athenians to the last necessity, so that they should be compelled to purchase peace at any price. If such was his object he completely succeeded. When he returned to Athens the famine had become so dreadful, that he was immediately sent back to conclude a peace on whatever terms he could. In the debate which ensued at Sparta, the Thebans, the Corinthians, and others of the more bitter enemies of Athens, urged the very extinction of her name and the sale of her whole population into slavery. But this proposition was resolutely opposed by the Lacedæmonians, who declared, with great appearance of magnanimity, though probably with a view to their own interest in converting Athens into a useful dependency, that they would never consent to enslave or annihilate a city which had rendered such eminent services to Greece. The terms which the Ephors dictated, and which the Athenians were in no condition to refuse, were: That the long walls and the fortifications of Piræus should be demolished; that the Athenians should give up all their foreign possessions, and confine themselves to their own territory; that they should surrender all their ships of war; that they should readmit all their exiles; and that they should become allies of Sparta. As Theramenes re-entered Athens, bearing in his hand

the roll or scytale, which contained these terms, he was pressed upon by an anxious and haggard crowd, who, heedless of the terms, gave loud vent to their joy that peace was at length concluded. And though there was still a small minority for holding out, the vote for accepting the conditions was carried, and notified to Lysander.

5. It was about the middle or end of March, в.c. 404, that Lysander sailed into Piræus, and took formal possession of Athens; the war, in singular conformity with the prophecies current at the beginning of it, having lasted for a period of thrice nine, or 27 years. The Lacedæmonian fleet and army remained in possession of the city till the conditions of its capitulation had been executed. Lysander carried away all the Athenian triremes except twelve, destroyed the naval arsenals, and burned the ships on the stocks. The insolence of the victors added another blow to the feelings of the conquered. The work of destruction, at which Lysander presided, was converted into a sort of festival. Female flute-players and wreathed dancers inaugurated the demolition of the strong and proud bulwarks of Athens; and as the massive walls fell piece by piece exclamations arose from the ranks of the Peloponnesians that freedom had at length begun to dawn upon Greece. The solidity of the works rendered the task of demolition a laborious one. After some little progress had been made in it, Lysander withdrew with his fleet to prosecute the siege of Samos.

Thus fell imperial Athens in the seventy-third year after the formation of the Confederacy of Delos, the origin of her subsequent empire. During that interval she had doubtless committed many mistakes and much injustice; had uniformly, perhaps, overrated the real foundations of her strength, and frequently employed unjustifiable means in order to support it. But on the other hand, it must be recollected that in that brief career she had risen by her genius and her valour, from the condition of a small and subordinate city to be the leading power in Greece; that in the first instance empire had not been sought by her ambition, but laid at her feet, and in a manner thrust upon her; that it had been accepted, and successfully employed, for the most noble of human purposes, and to avert an overwhelming deluge of barbarism; and that Greece, and more particularly Athens herself, had been thus enabled to become the mother of refinement, the nurse of literature and art, and the founder of European civilisation.

§ 6. The fall of Athens brought back a host of exiles, all of them the enemies of her democratical constitution. Of these the most distinguished was Critias, a man of wealth and family, the