(M561) The absence of the fleet from Athens encouraged the Lacedæmonians, who retook Pylus, B.C. 409, while the Athenians captured Chalcedon, and the following year Byzantium itself. Such was the state of the contending parties when Cyrus the younger was sent by his father Darius as satrap of Lydia, Phrygia, and Cappadocia, and whose command in Asia Minor was attended by important consequences. Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus were still left in command of the coast. (M562) Cyrus, a man of great ambition and self-control, came to Asia Minor with a fixed purpose of putting down the Athenian power, which for sixty years had humbled the pride of the Persian kings. He formed a hearty and cordial alliance with Lysander, the Spartan admiral, and the most eminent man, after Brasidas, whom the Lacedæmonians had produced during the war. He was a man of severe Spartan discipline and virtue, but ambitious and cruel. He visited Cyrus at Sardis, was welcomed with every mark of favor, and induced Cyrus to grant additional pay to every Spartan seaman. (M563) Meanwhile Alcibiades re-entered his native city in triumph, after eight years’ exile, and was welcomed by all parties as the only man who had sufficient capacity to restore the fallen fortunes of Athens. His confiscated property was restored, and he was made captain-general with ample powers, while all his treasons were apparently forgotten, which had proved so fatal to his country—the sending of Gylippus to Syracuse, the revolt of Chios and Miletus, and the conspiracy of the Four Hundred. The effect of this treatment, so much better than what he deserved, intoxicated this wayward and unprincipled, but exceedingly able man. His first exploit was to sail to Andros, now under a Lacedæmonian garrison, whose fields he devastated, but was unable to take the town. He then went to Samos, and there learned that all his intrigues with Persia had failed, and that Persia was allied still more strongly with the Lacedæmonians under Lysander. (M564) This great general, now at Ephesus, pursued a cautious policy, and refused to give battle to the Athenian forces under Alcibiades, who then retired to Phocæa, leaving his fleet under the command of Antiochus, his favorite pilot. Antiochus, in the absence of his general, engaged the Lacedæmonian fleet, but was defeated and slain at Notium. The conduct of Alcibiades produced great disaffection at Athens. He had sailed with a fleet not inferior to that which he commanded at Syracuse, and had made great promises of future achievements, yet in three months he had not gained a single success. He was therefore dismissed from his command, which was given to ten generals, of whom Conon was the most eminent, while he retired to the Chersonese. Lysander, at the same time, was superseded in the command of the Lacedæmonians by Callicratidas, in accordance with Spartan custom, his term being expired.