loss, and when they heard that the land forces had entered the town they formed in line and engaged them.  A severe battle took place, but Alkibiades on the right wing, and Theramenes on the left, were at length victorious, and took prisoners the survivors, some three hundred in number.  After this battle no citizen of Byzantium was either put to death or banished, those being the terms on which the conspirators had delivered up the city, namely, that they should suffer no loss of life or property.

Anaxilaus was afterwards tried at Sparta for having betrayed the city, and justified what he had done, saying that he was not a Lacedaemonian, but a Byzantine, and that he saw Byzantium, not Sparta, in danger, as the city was surrounded by the enemy’s siege works, no provisions being brought in to it, and what there was in it being consumed by the Peloponnesians and Boeotians, while the people of Byzantium with their wives and children were starving.  He did not, he said, betray the city to the enemy, but relieved it from the miseries of war, imitating therein the noblest Lacedaemonians, whose only idea of what was noble and just was what would serve their own country.  The Lacedaemonians, on hearing this speech, were ashamed to press the charge, and acquitted him.

XXXII.  Now, at length, Alkibiades began to wish to see his native country again, and still more to be seen and admired by his countrymen after his splendid series of victories.  He proceeded home with the Athenian fleet, which was magnificently adorned with shields and trophies, and had many prizes in tow, and the flags of many more which he had captured and destroyed—­all of them together amounting to not less than two hundred.  But we cannot believe the additions which Douris the Samian, who says that he is a descendant of Alkibiades, makes to this story, to the effect that Chrysogonus, the victor at the Pythian games, played on the flute to mark the time for the rowers, while Kallipides the tragedian, attired in his buskins, purple robe, and other theatrical properties, gave them orders, and that the admiral’s ship came into harbour with purple sails, as if returning from a party of pleasure.  Neither Theopompus, nor Ephorus, nor Xenophon mentions these circumstances, nor was it likely that he should present himself before the Athenians in such a swaggering fashion, when he was returning home from exile, after having suffered such a variety of misfortunes.  The truth is, he sailed to Athens with considerable misgivings, and on his arrival would not leave his ship until from her deck he saw Euryptolemus his cousin, with many of his friends and relatives, assembled to welcome him.