The Spartans had to choose between concentrating their effort either on the Aegean for which they would have the support of the Chiosian navy, or the Hellespont. Alcibiades, who had friends in Miletus, and his Spartan family friend Endius, an ephor, inclined them to the Aegean. In the spring the Spartan allies under Agis met at Corinth and decided that Chios, Lesbos and the Hellespont would be the order of priority.
In the spring the Spartans had thirty-nine triremes in Corinth’s west coast port Lechaeum, transported across the Isthmus to the Saronic Gulf. The advent of the Isthmian festival, during which the Corinthians would not consent to any military operations, meant that it was not until midsummer that the first Peloponnesian fleet of twenty-one ships under Alcamenes (d.412 BC) left Corinth’s east coast port Cenchreae for Chios. They were intercepted by an Athenian squadron and driven ashore near the uninhabited harbour Peiraeum, on the border of Corinth and Epidaurus. Alcamenes was slain, but a Peloponnesian land-force arrived and it was decided to guard the slips and await a suitable opportunity to evade the Athenian fleet that was now blockading them.
When they heard the news of the defeat and death of Alcamenes the Spartans cancelled their plans. Alcibiades, however, persuaded the ephors to allow the Spartan navarch Chalcideus and himself to slip out of Sparta’s port Gytheum with five ships and sail to Chios. On his arrival at Chios, Alcibiades persuaded the oligarchs to revolt. This was soon followed by the revolts of Erythrae and Clazomenae.
When the news of Chios’ defection reached Athens, the Athenians, Realising the danger of the revolt spreading, voted a thousand talents, which at the beginning of the war Pericles had set aside as a special reserve, was to be used to send as many ships as possible to Ionia. From the blockading fleet off Peiraeum, a squadron of eight triremes under Strombichides (d.404 BC) was sent immediately to Ionia, followed shortly by Thrasycles with twelve others. Meanwhile, Teos, Lesbos and Miletus proclaimed their independence of Athens.
At Miletus, Chalcideus on behalf of Sparta concluded a treaty (the first of three) with Tissaphernes, which recognized Persian suzerainty over the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and agreed that Persia and Sparta would jointly carry on the war against Athens. As part of the agreement Miletus was handed over to Tissaphernes. However, Persian support for Sparta against Athens proved to be sporadic and ineffective as it was believed that the two sides would exhaust each other.
At Peiraeum, the Athenian blocking fleet was surprised and defeated by the Peloponnesian fleet, which was thus able to get to Corinth’s east coast port Cenchreae and the sixteen Peloponnesian ships that had fought at Syracuse had already returned to Corinth’s west coast port Lechaeum. The Spartan navarch Astyochus was sent to Cenchreae to take command and proceed to Ionia. He arrived at Chios with only four ships but six more were to follow later. At Athens a Board of Ten elder statesmen, including Hagnon and the poet Sophocles (c.496-406/5 BC), was appointed as advisory commissioners (probouloi) for the duration of the crisis.
Samos was nearer to Athens than any other of the great Ionian ports, and was advantageously positioned between the two chief centres of the revolt – Chios to the north, and Miletus to the south. The demos, warned by the revolt at Chios, with the help of the crews of three triremes that happened to be in the port at the time, rose up against the oligarchs and killed them or drove them out. Athens recognized the newly established democracy, put the Samians on an equal footing as independent allies and Samos became the base of the Athenian fleet for the remainder of the war.
Both sides managed to reinforce their Aegean fleets. Hermocrates brought Sparta twenty ships from Syracuse and two more from Selinus. Twenty-five Athenian ships under Leon (1) (d.403 BC) and Diomedon arrived at Mytilene (Lesbos), defeated some Chian ships in the harbour, won a battle on land and took Lesbos at the first assault. With Lesbos secure the Athenians recaptured Clazomenae and carried out several attacks on Chios, but they never recovered the island.
Strombichides and Thrasycles had taken up station at Lade and they now crossed with their twenty triremes to Milesian lands. Landing at Panormus, which lay on a headland about twenty-one kilometres south of Miletus, they defeated the Milesian force sent out to oppose them and Chalcideus himself was killed; but the Athenian force was insufficient to make an attempt on Miletus.
Towards the end of summer, the Athenians Phrynichus (d.411 BC) and Scironides arrived at Samos with a fleet of 48 triremes and 3500 hoplites (1500 from Argos) and crossed to Milesian territory. Eight-hundred Milesian under Alcibiades and an unknown number of allied troops – Peloponnesians previously under the orders of Chalcideus, and mercenaries and cavalry commanded by Tissaphernes – marched out to meet them. The Argives charged the Milesians opposite, lost formation and were defeated with the loss of about 300 men. The Athenians, however, defeated the Peloponnesians opposite them and the others fled.
The Athenians then moved to make an assault on Miletus; but on the evening of the same day of the battle the news arrived of the approach of fifty-five Peloponnesian triremes commanded by Therimenes. Phrynichus (d.411 BC) refused to do battle against the slightly superior numbers and the fleet returned to Samos. His withdrawal enabled the Spartans to capture Iasus, in Caria, and hand over it and Amorges to Tissaphernes. The Argives, unhappy with their losses at Miletus, returned home, and Argos took no further part in the war.
In the winter, Tissaphernes paid the wages of the crews but announced that he could not continue to pay so high a rate of pay unless he received instructions from Susa. Astyochus (or Therimenes?) negotiated a new treaty with Tissaphernes in which it was stated not what the king was to possess but that neither Sparta nor the King would attack or levy tribute from what the other possessed (better); and that the King would pay for any troops he sent for and were employed in his territory (worse). Therimenes later drowned at sea.
The Athenians now landed on the east coast of Chios and started to fortify a site called Delphinium, a strong point north of the capital city. When the fort neared completion it became a refuge for runaway slaves, and the Chians began to suffer much as the Athenians were suffering from Decelea but with the addition of being blocked by sea. Pedaritus, the Spartan governor of the island, appealed for help to Astyochus at Miletus. When he refused, Pedaritus sent a letter of complaint to Sparta against him. Sparta sent out a fleet of twenty-seven triremes with eleven councillors, chief of whom was Lichas, with the authority to replace Astyochus with the fleet’s commander Antisthenes.
Learning of Antisthenes arrival at Caunus, Astyochus sailed to meet his new advisors. In his voyage southward he captured the city of Cos, and then encountered an Athenian flotilla of twenty ships off the island of Syme, northwest of Rhodes, led by Charminus. After a brief skirmish, Charminus retreated to Halicarnassus after losing six ships.
Astyochus returned to Cnidus where Lichas and Aristothenes had in the meantime arrived. Tissaphernes had also arrived to resume treaty negotiations. When Lichas objected to the extent of the Persian claims allowed by the wording of the two treaties, a breach with Tissaphernes resulted. Astyochus kept his position.
The island of Rhodes was at this time divided between three city governments – Lindus, Ialysus and Kamirus (in 408 BC the cities united and built the city of Rhodes on the northeast of the island). All three Rhodian cities, intimidated by a force of ninety-four triremes, were persuaded to revolt from Athens and ally themselves with the Peloponnesians, who now made the island the main base for their fleet instead of Miletus. The Peloponnesians hauled all their triremes ashore and stayed there, inactive, for eighty days, from the middle of January until the end of March.
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