condemnation, and were so much surprised by his acquittal, as to account for it by supposing, truly or falsely, the use of means never before attempted. [186] Diodor. xiii, 64. The slighting way in which Xenophon (Hellen. i, 2, 18) dismisses this capture of Pylos, as a mere retreat of some runaway Helots from Malea, as well as his employment of the name _Koryphasion_, and not of _Pylos_, prove how much he wrote after Lacedæmionian informants. [187] Diodor. xiii, 64; Plutarch, Coriolan. c. 14. Aristotle, Ἀθηναίων πολιτεία, ap. Harpokration, v. Δεκάζων, and in the Collection of Fragment. Aristotel. no. 72, ed. Didot (Fragment. Historic. Græc. vol. ii, p. 127). It was about the same time, also, that the Megarians recovered by surprise their port of Nisæa, which had been held by an Athenian garrison since B.C. 424. The Athenians made an effort to recover it, but failed; though they defeated the Megarians in an action.[188] [188] Diodor. xiii, 65. Thrasyllus, during the summer of B.C. 409, and even the joint force of Thrasyllus and Alkibiadês during the autumn of the same year, seem to have effected less than might have been expected from so large a force: indeed, it must have been at some period during this year that the Lacedæmonian Klearchus, with his fifteen Megarian ships, penetrated up the Hellespont to Byzantium, finding it guarded only by nine Athenian triremes.[189] But the operations of 408 B.C. were more important. The entire force under Alkibiadês and the other commanders was mustered for the siege of Chalkêdon and Byzantium. The Chalkêdonians, having notice of the project, deposited their movable property for safety in the hand of their neighbors the Bithynian Thracians; a remarkable evidence of the good feeling and confidence between the two, contrasting strongly with the perpetual hostility which subsisted on the other side of the Bosphorus between Byzantium and the Thracian tribes adjoining.[190] But the precaution was frustrated by Alkibiadês, who entered the territory of the Bithynians and compelled them by threats to deliver up the effects confided to them. He then proceeded to block up Chalkêdon by a wooden wall carried across from the Bosphorus to the Propontis; though the continuity of this wall was interrupted by a river, and seemingly by some rough ground on the immediate brink of the river. The blockading wall was already completed, when Pharnabazus appeared with an army for the relief of the place, and advanced as far as the Herakleion, or temple of Heraklês, belonging to the Chalkêdonians. Profiting by his approach, Hippokratês, the Lacedæmonian harmost in the town, made a vigorous sally: but the Athenians repelled all the efforts of Pharnabazus to force a passage through their lines and join him; so that, after an obstinate contest, the sallying force was driven back within the walls of the town, and Hippokratês himself killed.[191] [189] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 1, 36. [190] Polyb. iv, 44-45.