Pharnabazus, meanwhile, was aiding the Spartans by every means in his power. He fed and clothed, armed and paid their seamen, allowed them to cut timber in the forests of Mount Ida, and build their ships at his docks of Antandros. Through his assistance, Chalcedon, on the Bosphorus, was enabled to hold out two years against Alcibiades. It surrendered at last, in 408. Selym´bria and Byzantium were taken about the same time. =200.= These repeated successes restored the credit of Alcibiades, and, in the spring of 407, he was welcomed back to his native city. All the people met him at Piræus, with as much joy and enthusiasm as they had escorted him thither, eight years before, when sailing for the fatal expedition to Sicily. He protested his innocence before the Senate and Assembly. His sentence was reversed by acclamation, his property restored, the curse revoked, and he was made general, with unlimited powers. Before his departure, with the large fleet and army which were now at his disposal, he resolved to atone to Demeter for whatever slight had been thrown upon her by his alleged sacrilege. The sacred procession from Athens to Eleusis had been intermitted these seven years, owing to the nearness of the Spartan troops. Alcibiades now delayed his departure, in order to escort and protect the participants. [Sidenote: B. C. 407.] =201.= The arrival of two new officers upon the Asiatic field of war turned the scale against Athens. The one was Cyrus, a son of the Persian king; the other was Lysander, the new Spartan _navarchus_, who took command of the Peloponnesian fleet at Ephesus. These two made common cause, and together took measures for severe and unrelenting war against the Athenians. The gold which the Persian prince lavished without stint, the Spartan applied to increasing the wages of his seamen. By this well-timed liberality, he drew over great numbers of men from the opposing fleet, and rendered even those who did not desert, discontented and mutinous. =202.= Alcibiades arrived with his fleet to find the situation less favorable than he had hoped. The Spartan troops were better paid and equipped than his own, and to raise funds he resorted to levying forced contributions on friendly states. During his absence on one of these forays, the fleet became engaged in battle with the Spartans, and was defeated with considerable loss. The Athenians began to perceive that eight years’ exile and two or three years’ good behavior, had not altered the character of the man, but that he was as dissolute, fickle, and unscrupulous as ever. They dismissed him from his command, and appointed ten generals, with Conon at their head. [Sidenote: B. C. 406.]