Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy & the Birth of Democracy (39 page)

As summer began, Lysander’s big Peloponnesian fleet seemed to be here, there, and everywhere in the Aegean. The Athenian navy, based once more on Samos, could neither pin him down to a battle nor prevent his strikes against their few remaining allies. Reports reached the frustrated Athenians that he had raided Rhodes, the coast of Asia Minor, even Attica itself. Sometime after midsummer Conon and his colleagues finally determined that Lysander was heading north to the Hellespont. The Athenians set off in pursuit with all their available forces, including six generals, 180 triremes, the state ship
Paralos,
and more than thirty-five thousand men. At all costs they must prevent Lysander from closing the grain route. Within a month the heavily laden freighters would begin their annual descent through the Bosporus and Hellespont. Clearly the Spartans meant to capture the flotilla or at least block its passage to the Piraeus, as they had previously done when Mindarus was admiral. The Athenian generals knew that a strong and undefeated navy would count for nothing if the city lacked bread.

By the time the Athenians reached the Hellespont, Lysander had already struck his first blow. After a short siege he captured Lampsacus, allowing the hoplites of the resident Athenian garrison to evacuate the city in return for their prompt surrender. Lampsacus guarded the upper entrance to the Hellespont, which at that point was some three miles wide. The loss of Lampsacus was a serious blow, but the Athenians could still hope to blockade Lysander there till the grain fleet had passed safely downstream, or even entice him out into the open for a proper naval battle. The Athenian triremes took on provisions at Sestos and then rowed upstream to Lampsacus. Lysander’s ships lay safe within the curving bay that served the city as a harbor, while a large Spartan field army kept the Athenians from making a landing anywhere on the Asiatic shore. So the generals turned north to search for a base on the opposite shore.

In those days there was no city on the European side of the Hellespont’s upper entrance. Many years later some Greeks would build Kallipolis (“Beautiful City”) directly across from Lampsacus. Over the passage of centuries the city’s name would be worn down to Gallipoli. As modern Gelibolu, the city boasts a fine enclosed harbor. But no such secure base was available to the Athenians as they confronted Lysander and his forces.

Lacking a port city, the Athenians required an open beach for their ships and a campsite for the crews. The swift current prevented sandy beaches from forming along the straight coastline within the Hellespont itself, but just outside the channel’s mouth stretched a fine sandy beach more than a mile and a half long. Lapped by the waters of the Sea of Marmara, the beach faced east toward Byzantium. From this stretch of pale shelly sand the Athenians would be able to see the grain fleet as it approached, or intercept Lysander’s naval force should it make a move toward the Bosporus. The distance from the beach to Lampsacus was about six miles, and a lofty cape at the beach’s southern end screened the position from Lysander’s lookouts. Inland, a wide plain afforded room for the vast horde of men, and a pair of little watercourses running down from the hilly hinterland supplied drinking water. The two streams gave the spot its name: Aegospotami (“Goat Rivers”). It was fortunate that the fleet had picked up provisions at Sestos, for there were none to be had at Aegospotami.

With confidence born of their recent victories at Cyzicus and the Arginusae Islands, the Athenians launched their ships at dawn the next day: outside Lampsacus harbor they arrayed the fleet in line of battle. But Lysander would not come out and fight. The Athenian lookouts could not even tell if he had manned his ships. After hours of desultory rowing against the stream to keep their station in front of Lampsacus, the Athenians gave up hope of a battle and rowed back to Aegospotami for their midday meal. The next day the challenge was repeated and again declined. A third day passed in this way and a fourth, with no sign that Lysander intended to leave Lampsacus while the huge Athenian fleet was in the vicinity. In the face of what appeared to be Spartan cowardice, the spirits of the Athenians rose even as their food supplies dwindled.

One frustrated Athenian observer was a helpless witness to these daily maneuvers. From the battlements of his fortress at Pactye, on the neck of the Gallipoli peninsula, Alcibiades had a view of the entire panorama from Aegospotami to Lampsacus. After spending little more than a year as warlord, he was now a force to be reckoned with in the region. It was a poor exchange for the Athenian generalship that he had forfeited, but Alcibiades believed that his local power could provide some much-needed leverage. With it he meant to insinuate his way into command of the fleet that had unexpectedly planted itself at his doorstep.

From his stronghold he rode on horseback along the shore to Aegospotami. Conon and the other generals gave him permission to speak. The Athenians were in a perilous position on their open beach and would never prevail over their enemies without a strong force to fight on land. Two neighboring kings had promised Alcibiades an army of Thracian warriors. Ferried across the Hellespont in Athenian triremes, they could attack Lampsacus by land. Alcibiades promised either to defeat the Peloponnesian army or to force Lysander to face the Athenian fleet at sea. He asked only one thing in return: a share of the command.

The generals were not interested. They knew Alcibiades too well. If his plan failed, the Assembly would blame the officially appointed generals. If it succeeded, he would get all the credit. Brusquely the generals ordered their uninvited guest to leave the camp and never come back. He offered one piece of advice before he departed: they should withdraw from Aegospotami to Sestos with its proper harbor, walls, and granaries. The generals were neither grateful nor impressed. “We are in charge now,” they told Alcibiades. “Not you.”

Alcibiades was silenced. The Athenians seemed bent on self-destruction. Mounting his horse, he made his way through the camp, past the trierarchs’ field tents, the long row of ships’ sterns, and the bivouacs of the crews. From this familiar universe of Athenian men and ships Alcibiades was now forever barred. He could only return to his fortress and gaze from a distance at the unfolding drama.

In true democratic fashion, the generals were rotating the command among themselves on a daily basis. Having taken the initiative to offer battle at sea, they now seemed incapable of changing or adjusting their plan. The challenge to Lysander had become a morning ritual. Discipline continued to slacken as the chances of battle seemed to grow more remote. Each afternoon the careless crews relaxed or even slept on shore, or scattered farther and farther from the ships in search of food. In time the overconfident generals even stopped posting lookouts on shore.

Unfortunately for the Athenians, Alcibiades was not their only observer. Each day, unregarded by the rearmost ships in the fleet, two or three enemy spy ships were trailing the Athenians from Lampsacus back toward Aegospotami. As the Athenians disembarked on shore for their midday meal, scouts were watching them from the leading trireme, positioned well out in the Sea of Marmara. Lysander was waiting for a signal from his little chain of spy ships—a signal that the Athenians had dispersed too far inland to get back to their ships in case he attacked.

The scouts carried polished bronze shields so that they could flash messages between ships and ultimately back to Lampsacus. When on the afternoon of the fifth day Lysander saw a gleam of reflected sunlight from the nearest spy ship, he knew that the crews had deserted the triremes of the Athenian fleet and that the camp was unguarded. Immediately Lysander eased his entire fleet away from Lampsacus harbor and advanced to a low-lying promontory called Abarnis, also on the Asiatic shore. There the Peloponnesian crews unloaded the big masts and cruising sails of the triremes and deposited them on shore, to be collected if the day’s battle went against them and they needed to escape. Lysander knew that if he were defeated, there would be no returning to Lampsacus.

With the crews back on board and his triremes stripped for action, Lysander gave the command to the trumpeter. The brazen call rang out over the water, and the long line surged away from shore. With powerful strokes the rowers overcame the inertia of wooden hulls and crowded decks. Younger Spartans in the fleet had been waiting all their lives for this moment. Their hopes rested on reaching Aegospotami before the Athenians became aware of the attack and gathered their forces. Speed was all.

On Lysander’s orders the steersmen headed first for an unguarded sandy cove south of the Athenian camp. Their initial landing would be screened from Aegospotami by a high cape. As the ships reached land, the Spartan troops instantly leaped ashore and sprinted to seize the headland. Once entrenched on the high ground, they could either attack the Athenian camp or (in case the Athenians repelled their assault) at least establish a Peloponnesian base on European soil. As soon as the soldiers were safely ashore, Lysander ordered the triremes back to sea.

As the fleet swung around the cape, Lysander’s leading ships took by surprise an Athenian squadron cruising directly toward them. This small detachment was commanded by the fire-breathing general Philocles. The trierarchs and steersmen of his squadron immediately saw that they had blundered into the entire enemy fleet. In headlong flight they turned back toward Aegospotami. Beyond them stretched the long line of Athenian ships drawn up along the beach, deserted by their crews.

Hot on the sterns of the fleeing Athenians, Lysander’s triremes bore down on their targets. They hit the southernmost end of the line first, then swept up the beach like a wildfire in the hope of trapping them all. Lysander had stationed men armed with grappling irons at the prows of his ships. As the steersmen brought the triremes ram-first into the shallows, these men cast their hooks onto the empty hulls in front of them. Once the irons held fast in Athenian timber, the Peloponnesian crews backed their oars hard and towed their prizes out to sea.

In the Athenian camp, chaos reigned. Amid the confusion some tried to pull their triremes back to shore, while others clambered on board to resist. Here and there Peloponnesians were ramming the bows of Athenian ships even as their crews were climbing up the ladders at the stern. Frantic Athenian commanders launched ships with only one or two oar banks manned, only to have them quickly snapped up by the enemy. Some hulls floated off almost empty. Lysander and his marines landed and advanced on the camp through gaps in the Wooden Wall of ships. They joined the Spartan soldiers who had been set ashore near the cape, stamping out the small pockets of resistance and rounding up thousands of fleeing Athenians. The army moved so efficiently that only a few escaped into the countryside. Tens of thousands of Athenians were taken prisoner; three thousand would be executed the next day, starting with Philocles and the other generals. Thanks to Lysander’s carefully worked out plan, the so-called battle of Aegospotami was in fact a rout almost from the first moment. A war that had lasted for a generation had ended in a single hour on a summer afternoon, with almost no casualties on the Spartan side.

Only one Athenian general and a handful of crews kept their heads. Conon had stayed near his ships that afternoon and was among the first to see the enemy fleet. He managed to man eight triremes and row out to sea before the Peloponnesians reached his section of the beach. There he was joined by the
Paralos.
Like Conon’s crews, the Paraloi had managed to get on board and run out their oars in time to escape. It was impossible for Conon to aid the thousands of his fellow countrymen caught on the beach, where Lysander and his forces were rapidly completing the capture of the Athenian navy. He could only hope to save his own life and the lives of his men.

Putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the slaughter, the escaping Athenians came in sight of the promontory at Abarnis where Lysander had left his cruising gear. Here was a heaven-sent sliver of luck. The Athenians had had no time to fit out their ships for sailing before they made their escape, and they were in desperate need of masts and sails for the long voyage ahead. Landing on the flat shore, Conon’s men quickly took what they needed from the equipment the Spartans had fortuitously left in their path.