Lysander

The shouts and splashing oars of the oncoming enemy were already heard, when Conon, with eight ships, sailed stealthily away, and making his escape, proceeded to Cyprus, to Evagoras; but the Peloponnesians fell upon the rest of the ships, some of which they took entirely empty, and others they disabled while their crews were still getting aboard. And the men, coming up unarmed and in straggling fashion, perished at their ships, or if they fled by land, their enemies, who had disembarked, slew them.

Lysander took three thousand men prisoners, together with their generals, and captured the whole fleet, excepting the Paralus[*](One of the sacred state-galleys. It now carried the news of the disaster to Athens (Xen. Hell. 2.1.28).) and the ships that had made their escape with Conon. So after plundering his enemy’s camp and taking their ships in tow, he sailed back to Lampsacus, to the sound of pipes and hymns of victory. He had wrought a work of the greatest magnitude with the least toil and effort, and had brought to a close in a single hour a war which, in length, and the incredible variety of its incidents and fortunes, surpassed all its predecessors.

Its struggles and issues had assumed ten thousand changing shapes, and it had cost Hellas more generals than all her previous wars together, and yet it was brought to a close by the prudence and ability of one man. Therefore some actually thought the result due to divine intervention.

There were some who declared that the Dioscuri[*](Castor and Pollux.) appeared as twin stars on either side of Lysander’s ship just as he was sailing out of the harbor against the enemy, and shone out over the rudder-sweeps. And some say also that the falling of the stone was a portent of this disaster; for according to the common belief, a stone of vast size had fallen from heaven at Aegospotami,[*](In 468-7 B.C., according to the Parian marble (ep. 57) and Pliny NH 2.149 f.)

and it is shown to this day by the dwellers in the Chersonese, who hold it in reverence. Anaxagoras is said to have predicted that if the heavenly bodies should be loosened by some slip or shake, one of them might be torn away, and might plunge and fall down to earth; and he said that none of the stars was in its original position; for being of stone, and heavy, their shining light is caused by friction with the revolving aether, and they are forced along in fixed orbits by the whirling impulse which gave them their circular motion, and this was what prevented them from falling to our earth in the first place, when cold and heavy bodies were separated from universal matter.