Ancient Greece, Second (=Great) Peloponnesian War, Decelean (=Ionian) War (413-404 BC):Year Nineteen (413/2 BC): Panormus, Miletus, Chios, Syme

In the spring Demosthenes had sailed to Aegina with most of his force and was waiting for the remainder. His instructions were that while en route to Syracuse he was to cooperate with Charicles in attacks on the Laconian coast. The two generals occupied and fortified a small area on the mainland opposite Cythera to which the helots of Sparta might desert, and from whence plundering excursions might be made as from Pylos. 

  Charicles left a garrison then returned home. Demosthenes sailed for Acarnania to collect allies and met Eurymedon returning from Sicily. Conon (c.450-c.389 BC) at Naupactus reported to Demosthenes that he was being challenged by twenty-five Corinthians ships stationed on the opposite coast (to allow ships to take Peloponnesian reinforcements to Sicily). As Conon had only eighteen ships, Demosthenes and Eurymedon sent him ten and then proceeded to Sicily. Later in the year Conon was succeeded by another commander and with each side having about thirty ships they fought a close battle, which for the Corinthians was as good as a victory.

But the most important development in Greece that year was that in the spring the Spartans under Agis invaded Attica, ravaged the borders of the plain, established themselves at Decelea about twenty-two kilometres (≈14 miles) north of Athens, and put the city under siege. Agis was to remain there with a garrison until the end of the war.

Decelea served Sparta as Pylos had served Athens, i.e. as a frontline fort for raids and as a rallying point for the enemy’s disaffected underclass. Thucydides tells us that about twenty thousand Athenian slaves escaped to Decelea during the remaining nine years of the war. Athenian overland communication outside the walls became difficult. Local resources, such as food and silver ore, became less available, and the Athenians became increasingly more dependent on purchased supplies imported by ship.

  Although it is called the Decelean War after the village in Attica occupied by the Spartans, the period is also known as the Ionian War because the major campaigns shifted to sea battles in the eastern Aegean and the shorelines of Asia Minor, especially Ionia. Here were Athens’ most important allies and control of the sea route bringing grain from the ports of the Black Sea. The vulnerable points in the sea route were the narrow waters of the Hellespont and Bosporus, which Athenian forces controlled out of the naval base at Sestus.

Despite their failure at Syracuse, the Athenians resolved to fight on. They built more ships and took economic measures such as the abandonment of the fort opposite Cythera. Sparta called on its allies to join in building a hundred ships. Some members of the Delian League made contact with the Spartans: the Euboeans and Lesbians with Agis at Decelea; and the oligarchic leaders of Chios and Erythrae with the authorities at Sparta. Approaches to Sparta were also made by Pharnabazus (1) (r.c.413-387 BC), the Persian satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia, and Tissaphernes (r.c.415-408 BC; d.395 BC), the satrap of Caria and Lydia.

  Tissaphernes invited the Spartans to the Aegean and promised to maintain their army. He was under pressure from his king Darius II (r.423-404 BC) to produce the tribute from his province which because of the Athenians he had been unable to gather from the Greek cities. Pharnabazus’ invitation of the Spartans to the Hellespont was based on similar considerations. Tissaphernes also wanted the Spartans to help capture Amorges (d.412 BC), the illegitimate son of the satrap Pissuthnes (before 440-415 BC), who had rebelled in Caria.