In return for what he had done for them, the citizens provided him with pay for his followers, and ships to transport them to the Chersonesos. He arrived at his fortress at the end of the summer, with the spoils of his barbaric enemies and considerable gifts and treasure, the marks of the gratitude of Grecian cities. He now paid off his men, and sent most of them as valuable auxiliaries to his friend Amadokos, who was still at war with his northern enemies, bargaining only that they should return to him whenever he might need their services. Amadokos entreated him to come himself to lead his forces, but Alkibiades had other objects in view, and higher hopes than perpetual tribal warfare amongst the Thrakians. The king received this important assistance with expressions of eternal gratitude, and promised to come to fight with him against the enemies of Athens, if at any time the Athenians, his relations, might require his aid. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXVIII ‘The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.’ TENNYSON. The loss of Alkibiades was soon felt at Athens. Konon, in the spring of 406, through mismanagement, lost thirty ships in an action against the Lakedaimonians near Lesbos. He retreated into the port of Mytilene with the rest of his fleet, and there found himself caught in a trap by the Spartans, and completely shut up both by land and sea. Two ships alone escaped to carry the news of the disaster and perilous position of the general and his fleet to Athens. The Assembly decreed that a new fleet must by all practicable means be raised and sent to rescue the blockaded general at Mytilene. Every old hulk was furbished up, every craft that could possibly be made use of was pressed into the service of the state. In a month one hundred ships were ready, manned by old and young. The lowest classes, as well as the highest, were enlisted. Knights, and even slaves, were made to go on that final and most fatal expedition. The cloud of fate hung over it, the great gods hated it from the beginning. Facing Lesbos, and close to it, are three small islands, then called the Arginousai. Thither in July the new fleet came. Kallikratidas, who commanded the Lakedaimonians, leaving fifty ships to keep up the blockade of Konon and his armament at Mytilene, foolishly engaged the new Athenian fleet with inferior numbers. During the action the Spartan admiral was drowned. The Spartans fled, the Athenians followed them, and took or destroyed more than sixty of their vessels. But all was of no avail. That last victory was the final blow by which the overthrow of the Athenian state was consummated; the prowess of its sons was as the lurid ray of an angry setting sun before a night of utter gloom.