Kyros and Lysandros were necessary to one another. The new Spartan admiral, feeling the hopelessness of pursuing the war in the Hellespont without the assistance of the representative of Persia, turned his attention to the Ionian coast. From Sparta and her allies he collected a fleet of seventy ships, and sailed with them to Ephesos, where Athenian influence was weakest, and where he would be at the nearest point to Sardis, which Kyros had made his capital. He soon appeared at the young prince’s court. These two men became close allies; they suited and resembled one another. Lysandros laid before the Persian the needs of his country, and persuaded him to double the pay of the sailors of the Spartan fleet. Kyros showed the wondering Lakedaimonian the stores of gold he had brought with him for that purpose. By this means the Spartan fleet was restored to its old strength, and manned by the best sailors, who were drawn to it by the larger pay with which the admiral was now able to reward them. This fleet was lying ready for action at Ephesos, within a short distance of the port of Samos, when Alkibiades arrived in the island. The new condition of affairs might well have discouraged one of less resources. The ground upon which he had been building crumbled beneath him. The very largeness of his fleet became a weakness to him; and his reputation, his almost unparalleled success, a cause of discontent. The object of his opponent in moving his station to the Ionian coast was twofold. It hindered the Athenians from getting their tribute and supplies from their tributary towns; and it enabled him to receive more readily the payment of the Persian subsidy. Alkibiades had reckoned upon the influence of Pharnabazos at any rate to stop any further payment to the Spartans. Without that payment he knew they would not long keep their fleet at sea. He now found the subsidy not only continued, but increased, while he could get scarcely anything with which to pay his sailors even the smaller wages he had promised them. Instead, then, of attacking the enemy at once, he was obliged to lose time by employing his fleet in petty freebooting expeditions on the Karian coast. And when he had collected something in this way, he could not get the crafty foe to meet him in fair fight. In vain he brought out his ships, paraded them before Lysandros at Ephesos, and challenged him to come out and fight on equal terms. The fox was too wary to be caught. He knew that each day the enemy’s difficulties would increase, while he could tempt that enemy’s best sailors from him by the bribe of higher pay with Persian gold. Delay was what he wanted, not a hazardous engagement with the first commander in the world.