=206.= BATTLE OF ÆGOS-POTAMI. At length Lysander, seizing a moment when the Athenian seamen were scattered over the country, crossed the strait with his entire force. Only a dozen vessels, in Conon’s personal command, were in condition for battle; and the whole fleet, with the exception of the flag-ship, the sacred Par´alus, and eight or ten others, fell into the Spartan possession without a blow. Three or four thousand prisoners, including officers and men, were massacred, in retaliation for recent cruelties of the Athenians in the treatment of their captives. The defeat at Ægos-Potami was the death-blow of the Athenian empire. Chalcedon, Byzantium, and Mytilene soon surrendered; and all the Athenian towns, except that of Samos, fell without resistance into the hands of the Spartans. Popular governments were every-where overthrown, and a new form of oligarchy was established, consisting of ten citizens, with a Spartan officer, called a _harmost_, at their head. =207.= The news of the great calamity arrived in the night at Piræus. A cry of sorrow and despair spread instantly from the port to the city, as each man passed the terrible tidings to his neighbor. “That night no man slept;”[52] and in the morning the Assembly was called, to consider how the existence of the city might be prolonged. The situation was desperate. Even though no hostile force should approach Athens, Lysander, by holding the Euxine, could effectually reduce it to starvation. The number of citizens was so diminished, that even criminals could not be spared from public service. All prisoners were released, except a few murderers and desperate villains; private offenses were forgotten in the common danger, and all Athenians united in a solemn oath of mutual forgiveness. [Sidenote: B. C. 405, Nov.] =208.= Two months after the defeat, Lysander appeared at Ægina with an overwhelming naval force; and, at the same time, the Peloponnesian army encamped in the groves of Academia, near the gates of Athens. Yet, though some of the people were already dying of hunger, their spirit was not broken; and when the Spartan ephors proposed peace on condition of the destruction of the Long Walls, a senator was imprisoned for merely discussing the acceptance of these terms. When, at last, the Athenians sent offers of capitulation, three months were wasted in vain debate before the terms could be settled. The Thebans and Corinthians insisted that no conditions should be granted, but that the very name of Athens should be blotted out, her site become a desert, and her people be sold into slavery. The Spartans, with more generosity, refused to “put out one of the eyes of Greece,” or to enslave a people which had rendered such services to the whole Hellenic race in the great crisis of the Persian wars.