supreme lord--"over all those who muster at Castolus." The ambassadors
of the Athenians, even while listening to this announcement, and
indeed after they had seen Cyrus, were still desirous, if possible, to
continue their journey to the king, or, failing that, to return home.
Cyrus, however, urged upon Pharnabazus either to deliver them up to
himself, or to defer sending them home at present; his object being to
prevent the Athenians learning what was going on. Pharnabazus, wishing
to escape all blame, for the time being detained them, telling them,
at one time, that he would presently escort them up country to the
king, and at another time that he would send them safe home. But when
three years had elapsed, he prayed Cyrus to let them go, declaring
that he had taken an oath to bring them back to the sea, in default of
escorting them up to the king. Then at last they received safe conduct
to Ariobarzanes, with orders for their further transportation. The
latter conducted them a stage further, to Cius in Mysia; and from Cius
they set sail to join their main armament.

[1] {Karanos.} Is this a Greek word, a Doric form, {karanos}, akin to
    {kara} (cf. {karenon}) = chief? or is it not more likely a Persian
    or native word, Karanos? and might not the title be akin
    conceivably to the word {korano}, which occurs on many Indo-
    Bactrian coins (see A. von Sallet, "Die Nachfolger Alexanders des
    Grossen," p. 57, etc.)? or is {koiranos} the connecting link? The
    words translated "that is to say, supreme lord," {to de karanon
    esti kurion}, look very like a commentator's gloss.

Alcibiades, whose chief desire was to return home to Athens with the
troops, immediately set sail for Samos; and from that island, taking
twenty of the ships, he sailed to the Ceramic Gulf of Caria, where he
collected a hundred talents, and so returned to Samos.

Thrasybulus had gone Thrace-wards with thirty ships. In this quarter
he reduced various places which had revolted to Lacedaemon, including
the island of Thasos, which was in a bad plight, the result of wars,
revolutions, and famine.

Thrasylus, with the rest of the army, sailed back straight to Athens.
On his arrival he found that the Athenians had already chosen as their
general Alcibiades, who was still in exile, and Thrasybulus, who was
also absent, and as a third, from among those at home, Conon.

Meanwhile Alcibiades, with the moneys lately collected and his fleet
of twenty ships, left Samos and visited Paros. From Paros he stood out
to sea across to Gytheum,[2] to keep an eye on the thirty ships of war
which, as he was informed, the Lacedaemonians were equipping in that
arsenal. Gytheum would also be a favourable point of observation from
which to gauge the disposition of his fellow-countrymen and the
prospects of his recall. When at length their good disposition seemed
to him established, not only by his election as general, but by the
messages of invitation which he received in private from his friends,
he sailed home, and entered Piraeus on the very day of the festival of
the Plunteria,[3] when the statue of Athena is veiled and screened
from public gaze. This was a coincidence, as some thought, of evil
omen, and unpropitious alike to himself and the State, for no Athenian
would transact serious business on such a day.

[2] Gytheum, the port and arsenal of Sparta, situated near the head of
    the Laconian Gulf (now Marathonisi).

[3] {ta Plunteria}, or feast of washings, held on the 25th of the
    month Thargelion, when the image of the goddess Athena was
    stripped in order that her clothes might be washed by the
    Praxiergidae; neither assembly nor court was held on that day, and
    the Temple was closed.

As he sailed into the harbour, two great crowds--one from the Piraeus,
the other from the city[4]--flocked to meet the vessels. Wonderment,
mixed with a desire to see Alcibiades, was the prevailing sentiment of
the multitude. Of him they spoke: some asserting that he was the best
of citizens, and that in his sole instance banishment had been ill-
deserved. He had been the victim of plots, hatched in the brains of
people less able than himself, however much they might excel in
pestilent speech; men whose one principle of statecraft was to look to
their private gains; whereas this man's policy had ever been to uphold
the common weal, as much by his private means as by all the power of
the State. His own choice, eight years ago, when the charge of impiety
in the matter of the mysteries was still fresh, would have been to
submit to trial at once. It was his personal foes, who had succeeded
in postponing that undeniably just procedure; who waited till his back
was turned, and then robbed him of his fatherland. Then it was that,
being made the very slave of circumstance, he was driven to court the
men he hated most; and at a time when his own life was in daily peril,
he must see his dearest friends and fellow-citizens, nay, the very
State itself, bent on a suicidal course, and yet, in the exclusion of
exile, be unable to lend a helping hand. "It is not men of this
stamp," they averred, "who desire changes in affairs and revolution:
had he not already guaranteed to him by the Democracy a position
higher than that of his equals in age, and scarcely if at all inferior
to his seniors? How different was the position of his enemies. It had
been the fortune of these, though they were known to be the same men
they had always been, to use their lately acquired power for the
destruction in the first instance of the better classes; and then,
being alone left surviving, to be accepted by their fellow-citizens in
the absence of better men."

[4] Or, "collected to meet the vessels from curiosity and a desire to
    see Alcibiades."

Others, however, insisted that for all their past miseries and
misfortunes Alcibiades alone was responsible: "If more trials were
still in store for the State, here was the master mischief-maker ready
at his post to precipitate them."

When the vessels came to their moorings, close to the land,
Alcibiades, from fear of his enemies, was unwilling to disembark at
once. Mounting on the quarterdeck, he scanned the multitude,[5]
anxious to make certain of the presence of his friends. Presently his
eyes lit upon Euryptolemus, the son of Peisianax, who was his cousin,
and then on the rest of his relations and other friends. Upon this he
landed, and so, in the midst of an escort ready to put down any
attempt upon his person, made his way to the city.

[5] Or, "he looked to see if his friends were there."

In the Senate and Public Assembly[6] he made speeches, defending
himself against the charge of impiety, and asserting that he had been
the victim of injustice, with other like topics, which in the present
temper of the assembly no one ventured to gainsay.

[6] Technically the "Boule" ({Boule}) or Senate, and "Ecclesia" or
    Popular Assembly.

He was then formally declared leader and chief of the State, with
irresponsible powers, as being the sole individual capable of
recovering the ancient power and prestige of Athens. Armed with this
authority, his first act was to institute anew the processional march
to Eleusis; for of late years, owing to the war, the Athenians had
been forced to conduct the mysteries by sea. Now, at the head of the
troops, he caused them to be conducted once again by land. This done,
his next step was to muster an armament of one thousand five hundred
heavy infantry, one hundred and fifty cavalry, and one hundred ships;
and lastly, within three months of his return, he set sail for Andros,
which had revolted from Athens.

The generals chosen to co-operate with him on land were Aristocrates
and Adeimantus, the son of Leucophilides. He disembarked his troops on
the island of Andros at Gaurium, and routed the Andrian citizens who
sallied out from the town to resist the invader; forcing them to
return and keep close within their walls, though the number who fell
was not large. This defeat was shared by some Lacedaemonians who were
in the place. Alcibiades erected a trophy, and after a few days set
sail himself for Samos, which became his base of operations in the
future conduct of the war.

V

At a date not much earlier than that of the incidents just described,
the Lacedaemonians had sent out Lysander as their admiral, in the
place of Cratesippidas, whose period of office had expired. The new
admiral first visited Rhodes, where he got some ships, and sailed to
Cos and Miletus, and from the latter place to Ephesus. At Ephesus he
waited with seventy sail, expecting the advent of Cyrus in Sardis,
when he at once went up to pay the prince a visit with the ambassadors
from Lacedaemon. And now an opportunity was given to denounce the
proceedings of Tissaphernes, and at the same time to beg Cyrus himself
to show as much zeal as possible in the prosecution of the war. Cyrus
replied that not only had he received express injunction from his
father to the same effect, but that his own views coincided with their
wishes, which he was determined to carry out to the letter. He had, he
informed them, brought with him five hundred talents;[1] and if that
sum failed, he had still the private revenue, which his father allowed
him, to fall back upon, and when this resource was in its turn
exhausted, he would coin the gold and silver throne on which he sat,
into money for their benefit.[2]

[1] About 120,000 pounds. One Euboic or Attic talent = sixty minae =
    six thousand drachmae = 243 pounds 15 shillings of our money.

[2] Cf. the language of Tissaphernes, Thuc. viii. 81.

His audience thanked him for what he said, and further begged him to
fix the rate of payment for the seamen at one Attic drachma per
man,[3] explaining that should this rate of payment be adopted, the
sailors of the Athenians would desert, and in the end there would be a
saving of expenditure. Cyrus complimented them on the soundness of
their arguments, but said that it was not in his power to exceed the
injunctions of the king. The terms of agreement were precise, thirty
minae[4] a month per vessel to be given, whatever number of vessels
the Lacedaemonians might choose to maintain.

[3] About 9 3/4 pence; a drachma (= six obols) would be very high pay
    for a sailor--indeed, just double the usual amount. See Thuc. vi.
    8 and viii. 29, and Prof. Jowett ad loc. Tissaphernes had, in the
    winter of 412 B.C., distributed one month's pay among the
    Peloponnesian ships at this high rate of a drachma a day, "as his
    envoy had promised at Lacedaemon;" but this he proposed to reduce
    to half a drachma, "until he had asked the king's leave, promising
    that if he obtained it, he would pay the entire drachma. On the
    remonstrance, however, of Hermocrates, the Syracusan general, he
    promised to each man a payment of somewhat more than three obols."

[4] Nearly 122 pounds; and thirty minae a month to each ship (the crew
    of each ship being taken at two hundred) = three obols a day to
    each man. The terms of agreement to which Cyrus refers may have
    been specified in the convention mentioned above in chap. iv,
    which Boeotius and the rest were so proud to have obtained. But
    see Grote, "Hist. of Greece," vol. viii. p. 192 note (2d ed.)

To this rejoinder Lysander at the moment said nothing. But after
dinner, when Cyrus drank to his health, asking him "What he could do