The Athenian armament, with its sailors hurriedly got together and for the most part inexperienced, were no match for their opponents. They were utterly defeated. Twenty-two ships of the small remnant of Athens’ fleet were lost, and their crews were either killed or taken prisoners. The Lakedaimonians got possession of Euboia, the granary of Athens—a blow almost as fatal as if they had taken the town itself. No greater consternation ever seized upon the city. This was worse than the loss of her fleet and men at Syrakuse. The government was at its wits’ end, and the members of it were divided amongst themselves. Their overtures to Sparta being spurned, they trembled for their lives. The people met, as though by inspiration, in their old meeting-place, and, without a sign from their late tyrants, proceeded to depose them. So they disappeared after a reign of barely five miserable months. Many of them went over to the enemy at Dekeleia, and did what further injury they could to Athens. Others were allowed, with ignominy, to return to their former obscurity. Only Antiphon, perhaps the best among them, and one other publicly suffered the death they all deserved. The spot where their houses once stood was marked by a stone recording that there had lived a traitor. Athens again enjoyed the constitution, with the assembly, the senate and the executive, which had been given to it by Perikles. Samos was still jubilant at the fall of the four hundred and the restoration of the democratic government at home when the _Eros_, at the head of the twelve other ships, rowed into the port. The good tidings of the exciting and successful chase had scarce been told before an Athenian messenger came from the restored senate and Ekklesia to the commander of the forces at Samos, confirming him in the high office already conferred upon him by the Samian garrison. But he found the main fleet he had left behind with Thrasyllos gone. In his absence Mindaros, the new Spartan admiral, had stolen quietly out of Miletos, but Thrasyllos, having had notice of his going, had followed in his wake with fifty-five warships, had picked up Thrasyboulos with his five triremes at Eresos, and had met Mindaros and had a brush with him already in the Hellespont.