His good fortune did not yet forsake him. Some days afterwards, the Athenian squadron of Charitimides came up by chance with the Phoenician fleet, which was sailing to the help of the Persians, and had not yet received the news of the disaster which had befallen them at Papremis. The Greeks sunk thirty of the enemy's vessels and took twenty more, and, after this success, the allies believed that they had merely to show themselves to bring about a general rising of the fellahin, and effect the expulsion of the Persians from the whole of Egypt. They sailed up the river and forced Memphis after a few days' siege; but the garrison of the White Wall refused to surrender, and the allies were obliged to lay siege to it in the ordinary manner (459):* in the issue this proved their ruin. Artaxerxes raised a fresh force in Cilicia, and while completing his preparations, attempted to bring about a diversion in Greece. The strength of Pharaoh did not so much depend on his Libyan and Egyptian hordes, as on the little body of hoplites and the crews of the Athenian squadron; and if the withdrawal of the latter could be effected, the repulse of the others would be a certainty. Persian agents were therefore employed to beg the Spartans to invade Attica; but the remembrance of Salamis and Plataea was as yet too fresh to permit of the Lacedaemonians allying themselves with the common enemy, and their virtue on this occasion was proof against the darics of the Orientals.** The Egyptian army was placed in the field early in the year 456, under the leadership of Megabyzos, the satrap of Syria: it numbered, so it was said, some 300,000 men, and it was supported by 300 Phoenician vessels commanded by Artabazos.*** * The date of 459-8 for the arrival of the Athenians is concluded from the passage of Thucydides, who gives an account of the end of the war after the cruise of Tolmides in 455, in the sixth year of its course. ** Megabyzos opened these negotiations, and his presence at Sparta during the winter of 457-6 is noticed. *** Ctesias here introduces the Persian admiral Horiscos, but Diodorus places Artabazos and Megabyzos side by side, as was the case later on in the war in Cyprus, one at the head of the fleet, the other of the army; it is probable that the historian from whom Diodorus copied, viz. Ephorus, recognised the same division of leadership in the Egyptian campaign.