In the ensuing spring, Thrasyllus was despatched from Athens at the head of a large new force to act in Ionia. He commanded fifty triremes, one thousand of the regular hoplites, one hundred horsemen, and five thousand seamen, with the means of arming these latter as peltasts; also transports for his troops besides the triremes.[182] Having reposed his armament for three days at Samos, he made a descent at Pygela, and next succeeded in making himself master of Kolophon, with its port Notium. He next threatened Ephesus, but that place was defended by a powerful force which Tissaphernês had summoned, under proclamation “to go and succor the goddess Artemis;” as well as by twenty-five fresh Syracusan and two Selinusian triremes recently arrived.[183] From these enemies, Thrasyllus sustained a severe defeat near Ephesus, lost three hundred men, and was compelled to sail off to Notium; from whence, after burying his dead, he proceeded northward towards the Hellespont. On their way thither, while halting for a while at Methymna in the north of Lesbos, Thrasyllus saw the twenty-five Syracusan triremes passing by on their voyage from Ephesus to Abydos. He immediately attacked them, captured four along with the entire crews, and chased the remainder back to their station at Ephesus. All the prisoners taken were sent to Athens, where they were deposited for custody in the stone-quarries of Peiræus, doubtless in retaliation for the treatment of the Athenian prisoners at Syracuse; they contrived, however, during the ensuing winter, to break a way out and escape to Dekeleia. Among the prisoners taken, was found Alkibiadês, the Athenian, cousin and fellow-exile of the Athenian general of the same name, whom Thrasyllus caused to be set at liberty, while the others were sent to Athens.[184] [182] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 1, 34; i, 2, 1. Diodorus (xiii, 64) confounds Thrasybulus with Thrasyllus. [183] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 2, 5-11. Xenophon distinguishes these twenty-five Syracusan triremes into τῶν προτέρων εἴκοσι νεῶν, and then αἱ ἕτεραι πέντε, αἱ νεωστὶ ἥκουσαι. But it appears to me that the twenty triremes, as well as the five, must have come to Asia since the battle of Kyzikus, though the five may have been somewhat later in their period of arrival. All the Syracusan ships in the fleet of Mindarus were destroyed; and it seems impossible to imagine that that admiral can have left twenty Syracusan ships at Ephesus or Milêtus in addition to those which he took with him to the Hellespont. [184] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 2, 8-15.