In Greece Thrasybulus,1 who had been sent out by the Athenians with thirty ships and a strong force of hoplites as well as a hundred horsemen, put in at Ephesus; and after disembarking his troops at two points he launched assaults upon the city. The inhabitants came out of the city against them and a fierce battle ensued; and since the entire populace of the Ephesians joined in the fighting, four hundred Athenians were slain and the remainder Thrasybulus2 took aboard his ships and sailed off to Lesbos. [2] The Athenian generals who were in the neighbourhood of Cyzicus, sailing to Chalcedon,3 established there the fortress of Chrysopolis and left an adequate force behind; and the officers in charge they ordered to collect a tenth from all merchants sailing out of the Pontus. [3] After this they divided their forces and Theramenes was left behind with fifty ships with which to lay siege to Chalcedon and Byzantium, and Thrasybulus was sent to Thrace, where he brought the cities in those regions over to the Athenians. [4] And Alcibiades, after giving Thrasybulus4 a separate command5 with the thirty ships, sailed to the territory held by Pharnabazus, and when they had conjointly laid waste a great amount of that territory, they not only sated the soldiers with plunder but also themselves realized money from the booty, since they wished to relieve the Athenian people of the property-taxes imposed for the prosecution of the war. [5]
When the Lacedaemonians learned that all the armaments of the Athenians were in the region of the Hellespont, they undertook a campaign against Pylos, which the Messenians held with a garrison; on the sea they had eleven ships, of which five were from Sicily and six were manned by their own citizens, while on land they had gathered an adequate army, and after investing the fortress they began to wreak havoc both by land and by sea. [6] As soon as the Athenian people learned of this they dispatched to the aid of the besieged thirty ships and as general Anytus6 the son of Anthemion. Now Anytus sailed out on his mission, but when he was unable to round Cape Malea because of storms he returned to Athens. The people were so incensed at this that they accused him of treason and brought him to trial; but Anytus, being in great danger, saved his own life by the use of money, and he is reputed to have been the first Athenian to have bribed a jury. [7] Meanwhile the Messenians in Pylos held out for some time, awaiting aid from the Athenians; but since the enemy kept launching successive assaults and of their own number some were dying of wounds and others were reduced to sad straits for lack of food, they abandoned the place under a truce. And so the Lacedaemonians became masters of Pylos, after the Athenians had held it fifteen years from the time Demosthenes had fortified it.7
