If the two land-victories of Sparta were barren of results, the case was far otherwise with her naval defeat at Cnidus. That defeat was pregnant with consequences following in rapid succession, and of the most disastrous character. As with Athens at Ægospotami—the loss of her fleet, serious as that was, served only as the signal for countless following losses. Pharnabazus and Conon, with their victorious fleet, sailed from island to island, and from one continental seaport to another, in the Ægean, to expel the Lacedæmonian harmosts, and terminate the empire of Sparta. So universal was the odium which it had inspired, that the task was found easy beyond expectation. Conscious of their unpopularity, the harmosts in almost all the towns, on both sides of the Hellespont, deserted their posts and fled, on the mere news of the battle of Cnidus. Everywhere Pharnabazus and Conon found themselves received as liberators, and welcomed with presents of hospitality. They pledged themselves not to introduce any foreign force or governor, nor to fortify any separate citadel, but to guarantee to each city its own genuine autonomy. This policy was adopted by Pharnabazus at the urgent representation of Conon, who warned him that if he manifested any design of reducing the cities to subjection, he would find them all his enemies; that each of them severally would cost him a long siege; and that a combination would ultimately be formed against him. Such liberal and judicious ideas, when seen to be sincerely acted upon, produced a strong feeling of friendship and even of gratitude, so that the Lacedæmonian maritime empire was dissolved without a blow, by the almost spontaneous movements of the cities themselves. Though the victorious fleet presented itself in many different places, it was nowhere called upon to put down resistance, or to undertake a single siege. Cos, Nisyrus, Teos, Chios, Erythræ, Ephesus, Mytilene, Samos, all declared themselves independent, under the protection of the new conquerors. Pharnabazus presently disembarked at Ephesus and marched by land northward to his own satrapy, leaving a fleet of forty triremes under the command of Conon.
[394-393 B.C.]
To this general burst of anti-Spartan feeling, Abydos, on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont, formed the solitary exception; and it happened by a fortunate accident for Sparta that the able and experienced Dercyllidas was harmost in the town at the moment of the battle of Cnidus. Dercyllidas assembled the Abydenes, heartened them up against the reigning contagion, and exhorted them to earn the gratitude of Sparta by remaining faithful to her while others were falling off; assuring them that she would still be found capable of giving them protection. His exhortations were listened to with favour. Abydos remained attached to Sparta, was put in a good state of defence, and became the only harbour of safety for the fugitive harmosts out of the other cities, Asiatic and European.
Dercyllidas maintained his position effectively both at Abydos and at Sestos; defying the requisition of Pharnabazus that he should forthwith evacuate them. The satrap threatened war, and actually ravaged the lands round Abydos; but without any result. His wrath against the Lacedæmonians, already considerable, was so aggravated by disappointment when he found that he could not yet expel them from his satrapy, that he resolved to act against them with increased energy, and even to strike a blow at them near their own home. For this purpose he transmitted orders to Conon to prepare a commanding naval force for the ensuing spring, and in the meantime to keep both Abydos and Sestos under blockade.
As soon as spring arrived, Pharnabazus embarked on board a powerful fleet equipped by Conon; directing his course to Melos, to various islands among the Cyclades, and lastly to the coast of Peloponnesus. They here spent some time on the coast of Laconia and Messenia, disembarking at several points to ravage the country. They next landed on the island of Cythera, which they captured, granting safe retirement to the Lacedæmonian garrison, and leaving in the island a garrison under the Athenian Nicophemus. Quitting then the harbourless, dangerous, and ill-provided coast of Laconia, they sailed up the Saronic Gulf to the Isthmus of Corinth. Here they found the confederates—Corinthian, Bœotian, Athenian, etc.—carrying on war, with Corinth as their central post, against the Lacedæmonians at Sicyon. The line across the isthmus from Lechæum to Cenchreæ (the two ports of Corinth) was now made good by a defensive system of operations, so as to confine the Lacedæmonians within Peloponnesus; just as Athens, prior to her great losses in 446 B.C., while possessing both Megara and Pegæ, had been able to maintain the inland road midway between them, where it crosses the high and difficult crest of Mount Geranea, thus occupying the only three roads by which a Lacedæmonian army could march from the Isthmus of Corinth into Attica or Bœotia. Pharnabazus communicated in the most friendly manner with the allies, assured them of his strenuous support against Sparta, and left with them a considerable sum of money.
The appearance of a Persian satrap with a Persian fleet, as master of the Peloponnesian Sea and the Saronic Gulf, was a phenomenon astounding to Grecian eyes. And if it was not equally offensive to Grecian sentiment, this was in itself a melancholy proof of the degree to which Panhellenic patriotism had been stifled by the Peloponnesian War and the Spartan empire. No Persian tiara had been seen near the Saronic Gulf since the battle of Salamis; nor could anything short of the intense personal wrath of Pharnabazus against the Lacedæmonians, and his desire to revenge upon them the damage inflicted by Dercyllidas and Agesilaus, have brought him now as far away from his own satrapy. It was this wrathful feeling of which Conon took advantage to procure from him a still more important boon.
Since 404 B.C., a space of eleven years, Athens had continued without any walls round her seaport town Piræus, and without any Long Walls to connect her city with Piræus. To this state she had been condemned by the sentence of her enemies, in the full knowledge that she could have little trade—few ships either armed or mercantile—poor defence even against pirates, and no defence at all against aggression from the mistress of the sea. Conon now entreated Pharnabazus, who was about to go home, to leave the fleet under his command, and to permit him to use it in rebuilding the fortifications of Piræus as well as the Long Walls of Athens. While he engaged to maintain the fleet by contributions from the islands, he assured the satrap that no blow could be inflicted upon Sparta so destructive or so mortifying, as the renovation of Athens and Piræus with their complete and connected fortifications. Sparta would thus be deprived of the most important harvest which she had reaped from the long struggle of the Peloponnesian War. Indignant as he now was against the Lacedæmonians, Pharnabazus sympathised cordially with these plans, and on departing not only left the fleet under the command of Conon, but also furnished him with a considerable sum of money towards the expense of the fortifications.
CONON REBUILDS THE LONG WALLS
[393 B.C.]
Conon betook himself to the work energetically and without delay. He had quitted Athens in 407 B.C., as one of the joint admirals nominated after the disgrace of Alcibiades. He had parted with his countrymen finally at the catastrophe of Ægospotami in 405 B.C., preserving the miserable fraction of eight or nine ships out of that noble fleet which otherwise would have passed entire into the hands of Lysander. He now returned, in 393 B.C., as a second Themistocles, the deliverer of his country, and the restorer of her lost strength and independence. All hands were set to work; carpenters and masons being hired with the funds furnished by Pharnabazus, to complete the fortifications as quickly as possible. The Bœotians and other neighbours lent their aid zealously as volunteers—the same who eleven years before had danced to the sound of joyful music when the former walls were demolished; so completely had the feelings of Greece altered since that period. By such hearty co-operation, the work was finished during the course of the present summer and autumn without any opposition; and Athens enjoyed again her fortified Piræus and harbour, with a pair of long walls, straight and parallel, joining it securely to the city. The Athenian people not only inscribed on a pillar a public vote gratefully recording the exploits of Conon, but also erected a statue to his honour.