Hellenica | Page 7

aid of the light troops came the naval brigade of peltasts, with two companies of heavy infantry, and all but annihilated the whole detachment from Miletus. They captured about two hundred shields, and set up a trophy. Next day they sailed to Notium, and from Notium, after due preparation, marched upon Colophon. The Colophonians capitulated without a blow. The following night they made an incursion into Lydia, where the corn crops were ripe, and burnt several villages, and captured money, slaves, and other booty in large quantity. But Stages, the Persian, who was employed in this neighbourhood, fell in with a reinforcement of cavalry sent to protect the scattered pillaging parties from the Athenian camp, whilst occupied with their individual plunder, and took one trooper prisoner, killing seven others. After this Thrasylus led his troops back to the sea, intending to sail to Ephesus. Meanwhile Tissaphernes, who had wind of this intention, began collecting a large army and despatching cavalry with a summons to the inhabitants one and all to rally to the defence of the goddess Artemis at Ephesus.
[1] The MSS. here give a suspected passage, which may be rendered thus: "The first of Olympiad 93, celebrated as the year in which the newly-added two-horse race was won by Evagorias the Eleian, and the stadion (200 yards foot-race) by the Cyrenaean Eubotas, when Evarchippus was ephor at Sparta and Euctemon archon at Athens." But Ol. 93, to which these officers,and the addition of the new race at Olympia belong, is the year 408. We must therefore suppose either that this passage has been accidentally inserted in the wrong place by some editor or copyist, or that the author was confused in his dates. The "stadium" is the famous foot-race at Olympia, 606 3/4 English feet in length, run on a course also called the "Stadion," which was exactly a stade long.
[2] Peltasts, i.e. light infantry armed with the "pelta" or light shield, instead of the heavy {aspis} of the hoplite or heavy infantry soldiers.
On the seventeenth day after the incursion above mentioned Thrasylus sailed to Ephesus. He disembarked his troops in two divisions, his heavy infantry in the neighbourhood of Mount Coressus; his cavalry, peltasts, and marines, with the remainder of his force, near the marsh on the other side of the city. At daybreak he pushed forward both divisions. The citizens of Ephesus, on their side, were not slow to protect themselves. They had to aid them the troops brought up by Tissaphernes, as well as two detachments of Syracusans, consisting of the crews of their former twenty vessels and those of five new vessels which had opportunely arrived quite recently under Eucles, the son of Hippon, and Heracleides, the son of Aristogenes, together with two Selinuntian vessels. All these several forces first attacked the heavy infantry near Coressus; these they routed, killing about one hundred of them, and driving the remainder down into the sea. They then turned to deal with the second division on the marsh. Here, too, the Athenians were put to flight, and as many as three hundred of them perished. On this spot the Ephesians erected a trophy, and another at Coressus. The valour of the Syracusans and Selinuntians had been so conspicuous that the citizens presented many of them, both publicly and privately, with prizes for distinction in the field, besides offering the right of residence in their city with certain immunities to all who at any time might wish to live there. To the Selinuntians, indeed, as their own city had lately been destroyed, they offered full citizenship.
The Athenians, after picking up their dead under a truce, set sail for Notium, and having there buried the slain, continued their vogage towards Lesbos and the Hellespont. Whilst lying at anchor in the harbour of Methymna, in that island, they caught sight of the Syracusan vessels, five-and-twenty in number, coasting along from Ephesus. They put out to sea to attack them, and captured four ships with their crews, and chased the remainder back to Ephesus. The prisoners were sent by Thrasylus to Athens, with one exception. This was an Athenian, Alcibiades, who was a cousin and fellow-exile of Alcibiades. Him Thrasylus released.[3] From Methymna Thrasylus set sail to Sestos to join the main body of the army, after which the united forces crossed to Lampsacus. And now winter was approaching. It was the winter in which the Syracusan prisoners who had been immured in the stone quarries of Piraeus dug through the rock and escaped one night, some to Decelia and others to Megara. At Lampsacus Alcibiades was anxious to marshal the whole military force there collected in one body, but the old troops refused to be incorporated with those of Thrasylus. "They, who had never yet been beaten, with these newcomers who