The number of those who thus perished, according to Plutarch,[177] was 3000—a wholesale destruction, in cold blood, from which the mind revolts. It admits of no palliation from the alleged pretext of the violation of international law; for it is hard to say which party commenced that system of military execution which forms the especial stigma of this portion of Greek history, and it is at least certain that in this stage of the contest neither belligerent could have a right to upbraid the other with aggravating the evils of war by unnecessary cruelty. The defeat of Ægospotami was conclusive. Conon, not daring to appear in Athens after the example of Arginusæ, and aware probably that further resistance was hopeless, bent his course to Cyprus, despatching the sacred ship Paralus to carry news of the defeat to Athens. It arrived by night, and the calamity being announced, “the wailing passed from Peiræus to the city, along the long walls, from one person to another; so that in this night no one slept, not only through grief for the dead, but far more because the living expected to meet the same treatment as they had given to the Melians—a colony of Lacedæmon, after having besieged and taken their city, and to the citizens of Histiœa, and Scione, and Torone, and Ægina, and to many other of the Greeks. And the next day a meeting was held at which it was resolved to block up all the harbours save one, and to put the walls into good condition, and set guards, and to prepare the city in all respects for a siege.”[178] These were the efforts of despair. Certain of success, since there was now no enemy to raise the siege, or to effect a diversion, the Lacedæmonians blockaded Athens by land and sea, and in a few months the spirit of the people was so subdued by famine that they surrendered on humiliating terms, shortly after the expiration of the twenty–seventh year of the war. The walls of the city were destroyed; her ships of war, with the exception of twelve, were given up; it was covenanted to follow the guidance of Lacedæmon as subordinate allies; and, under the superintendence of the Lacedæmonian army the democracy, the pride of the Athenians, was exchanged for the short–lived form of government known in Greek history by the name of the Tyranny of the Thirty. This state of subjection did not last long, but the history of the circumstances under which it was shaken off belongs not to our present subject. CHAPTER XVIII. [Illustration: Bust of Socrates.] History and character of Socrates—Account of his death—Prosecution of John Huss and Jerome of Prague—Attempt to re–establish prelacy in Scotland—Brown—Guthrie—Reformation in England—Account of Rowland Taylor.