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THIRD TREATY VlTTI PERSIA. 23 circulated at Samos, to account for their unexpected feh<t*w in realizing the hopes which they had raised, created among the armament an impression that Alkibiades was really favorable to the democracy, at the same time leaving unabated the prestige of his unbounded ascendency over Tissaphernes aod the Great King. We shall presently see the effects resulting from this belief. Immediately after the rupture of the negotiations, however, the satrap took a step well calculated to destroy the hopes of the Athenians altogether, so far as Persian aid was concerned. Though persisting in his policy of lending no decisive assistance to either party and of merely prolonging the war so as to enfee- ble both, he yet began to fear that he was pushing matters too far against the Peloponnesians, who had now been two months inac- tive at Rhodes, with their large fleet hauled achore. He had no treaty with them actually in force, since Lichas had disallowed the two previous conventions ; nor had he furnished them with pay or maintenance. His bribes to the officers had hitherto kept the armament quiet ; yet we do not distinctly see how so large a body of men found subsistence. 1 He i^as now, however, ap prized that they could find subsistence no longer, and that they would probably desert, or commit depredations on the coast of his satrapy, or perhaps be driven to hasten on a general action with the Athenians, under desperate circumstances. Under such apprehensions he felt compelled to put himself again in commu- nication with them, to furnish them with pay, and to conclude with them a third convention, the proposition of which he had refused to entertain at Knidus. He therefore went to Kaunus, invited the Peloponnesian leaders to Miletus, and concluded with them near that town a treaty to the following effect : " In this thirteenth year of the reign of Darius, and in the ephorship of Alexippidas at Lacedaemon, a convention is hereby concluded by the Lacedaemonians and their allies, with Tissa- 1 Thucyd. vii. 44-57. In two parallel cases, one in Chios, the other in Korkyra. the seamen of an unpaid armament found^ subsistence by hiring themselves out for agricultural labor. But this was only during the ummer (sec Xcnoph. Hcllcn. ii, 1, 1 ; vi, 2, 37), while the stay of the Pclo- ponnesians *. Rhodes was from January to Maich.