which lay there, to a sea-fight.  After this ceremony they would return and spend the whole day in careless indolence, as if despising their enemy.  Alkibiades, who lived close by, did not disregard their danger, but even rode over on horseback and pointed out to the generals that they were very badly quartered in a place where there was no harbour and no city, having to obtain all their provisions from Sestos, and, when the ships were once hauled up on shore, allowing the men to leave them unguarded and straggle where they pleased, although they were in the presence of a fleet which was trained to act in silence and good order at the command of one man.

XXXVII.  Though Alkibiades gave this advice, and urged the generals to remove to Sestos, they would not listen to him.  Tydeus indeed rudely bade him begone, for they, not he, were now generals.  Alkibiades, too, suspected that there was some treachery in the case, and retired, telling his personal friends, who escorted him out of the camp, that if he had not been so outrageously insulted by the generals, he could in a few days have compelled the Lacedaemonians either to fight a battle at sea against their will, or abandon their ships.  To some this seemed mere boasting, while others thought that he could very possibly effect it by bringing many Thracian light-armed troops and cavalry to assault the camp on the land side.  However, the result soon proved that he had rightly seen the fault of the Athenian position.  Lysander suddenly and unexpectedly assailed it, and except eight triremes which escaped under Konon, took all the rest, nearly two hundred in number.  Lysander also put three thousand prisoners to the sword.  He shortly afterwards captured Athens, burned her ships, and pulled down her Long Walls.  Alkibiades, terrified at seeing the Lacedaemonians omnipotent by sea and land, shifted his quarters to Bithynia, sending thither a great amount of treasure, and taking much with him, but leaving much more in his Thracian fortresses.  In Bithynia, however, he suffered much loss at the hands of the natives, and determined to proceed to the court of Artaxerxes, thinking that the Persian king, if he would make trial of him, would find that he was not inferior to Themistokles in ability, while he sought him in a much more honourable way; for it was not to revenge himself on his fellow-citizens, as Themistokles did, but to assist his own country against its enemy that he meant to solicit the king’s aid.  Imagining that Pharnabazus would be able to grant him a safe passage to the Persian court, he went into Phrygia to meet him, and remained there for some time, paying his court to the satrap, and receiving from him marks of respect.