Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/244

222 HISTORY OF GREEOE. preparations they could for a siege, to put the walb in full state of defence, and to block up two out of the three ports. 1 For Athens thus to renounce her maritime action, the pride and glory of the city ever since the battle of Salamis, and to confine her- self to a defensive attitude within her own walls, was a humilia- tion which left nothing worse to be endured except actual famine and surrender. Lysander was in no hurry to pass from the Hellespont tc Athens. He knew that no farther corn-ships from the Euxine, and few supplies from other quarters, could now reach Athens ; and that the power of the city to hold out against blockade must necessarily be very limited ; the more limited, the greater the numbers accumulated within it. Accordingly, he permitted the Athenian garrisons which capitulated, to go only to Athens, and nowhere else. 3 His first measure was to make himself master of Chalkedon and Byzantium, where he placed the Lacedaemo- nian Sthenelaus as harmost, with a garrison. Next, he passed to Lesbos, where he made similar arrangements at Mitylene and other cities. In them, as well as in the other cities which now came under his power, he constituted an oligarchy of ten native citizens, chosen from among his most daring and unscrupulous partisans, and called a dekarchy, or dekadarchy, to govern in conjunction with the Lacedaemonian harmost. Eteonikus waa sent to the Thracian cities which had been in dependence on Athens, to introduce similar changes. In Thasus, however, this change was stained by much bloodshed : there was a numerous philo-Athenian party whom Lysander caused to be allured oul of their place of concealment into the temple of Herakles, under the false assurance of an amnesty : when assembled under this pledge, they were all put to death. 3 Sanguinary proceedings of the like character, many in the presence of Lysander himself, 1 Xenoph. Hellen. ii, 2, 3 ; Diodor. xiii, 107. 1 Xenoph. Hellen. ii, 2, 2 ; Plutarch, Lysand. c. 13. 3 Cornelius Nepos, Lysand. c. 2 ; Polyaen. i, 45, 4. It would appear that this is the same incident which Plutarch (Lysand. c. 19) recounts as if the Milesians, not the Thasiais, were the parties suffering. It cannot well b< the Milesians, however, it we compare chapter 8 of Plutarch's Life of Ly lander.