Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/166

144 HISTORY OF GREECE. B.C., the victorious exile Alkibiades had accomplished the impor tant and delicate step of reentering his native city for the firs! time. According to the accommodation with Pharnabazus, con eluded after the reduction of Chalkedon, the Athenian fleet was precluded from assailing his satrapy, and was thus forced to seek subsistence elsewhere. Byzantium and Selymbria, with contribu- tions levied in Thrace, maintained them for the winter : in the spring (407 B.C.), Alkibiades brought them again to Samoa ; from whence he undertook an expedition against the coast of Karia, levying contributions to the extent of one hundred talents. Thrasybulus, with thirty triremes, went to attack Thrace, where he reduced Thasos, Abdera, and all those towns which had re- volted from Athens ; Thasos being now in especial distress from famine as well as from past seditions. A valuable contribution for the support of the fleet was doubtless among the fruits of this success. Thrasyllus at the same time conducted another division of the army home to Athens, intended by Alkibiades as precur- sors of his own return. 1 Before Thrasyllus arrived, the people had already manifested their favorable disposition towards Alkibiades by choosing him anew general of the armament, along with Thrasybulus and Konon. Alkibiades was now tending homeward from Samos with twenty triremes, bringing with him all the contributions recently levied : he first stopped at Paros, then visited the coast of Laconia, and lastly looked into the harbor of Gytheion in Laconia, where he had learned that thirty triremes were pre- paring. The news which he received of his reelection as gen- eral, strengthened by the pressing invitations and encouragements of his friends, as well as by the recall of his banished kinsmen at length determined him to sail to Athens. He reached Peiraeus on a marked day, the festival of the Plynteria, on the 25th of the month Thargelion, about the end of May, 407 B.C. This was a day of melancholy solemnity, accounted unpropitious for any action of importance. The statue of the goddess Athene was stripped of all its ornaments, covered up from every one's gaze, 1 Xcnopli. Hellen. i, 4, 8-10 ; Diodor. xiii, 72. The chronology of Xen ophon, though not so clear as ire could wish, deserves unquestionable pref erence over that of Diodorus.