While Lysander and Cyrus were thus restoring formidable efficacy to their side of the contest, during the summer of 407 B.C., the victorious exile Alkibiadês had accomplished the important and delicate step of reëntering his native city for the first time. According to the accommodation with Pharnabazus, concluded after the reduction of Chalkêdon, the Athenian fleet was precluded from assailing his satrapy, and was thus forced to seek subsistence elsewhere. Byzantium and Selymbria, with contributions levied in Thrace, maintained them for the winter: in the spring (407 B.C.), Alkibiadês brought them again to Samos; from whence he undertook an expedition against the coast of Karia, levying contributions to the extent of one hundred talents. Thrasybulus, with thirty triremes, went to attack Thrace, where he reduced Thasos, Abdêra, and all those towns which had revolted from Athens; Thasos being now in especial distress from famine as well as from past seditions. A valuable contribution for the support of the fleet was doubtless among the fruits of this success. Thrasyllus at the same time conducted another division of the army home to Athens, intended by Alkibiadês as precursors of his own return.[213] [213] Xenoph. Hellen. i, 4, 8-10; Diodor. xiii, 72. The chronology of Xenophon, though not so clear as we could wish, deserves unquestionable preference over that of Diodorus. Before Thrasyllus arrived, the people had already manifested their favorable disposition towards Alkibiadês by choosing him anew general of the armament, along with Thrasybulus and Konon. Alkibiadês was now tending homeward from Samos with twenty triremes, bringing with him all the contributions recently levied: he first stopped at Paros, then visited the coast of Laconia, and lastly looked into the harbor of Gytheion in Laconia, where he had learned that thirty triremes were preparing. The news which he received of his reëlection as general, strengthened by the pressing invitations and encouragements of his friends, as well as by the recall of his banished kinsmen at length determined him to sail to Athens. He reached Peiræus on a marked day, the festival of the Plyntêria, on the 25th of the month Thargêlion, about the end of May, 407 B.C. This was a day of melancholy solemnity, accounted unpropitious for any action of importance. The statue of the goddess Athênê was stripped of all its ornaments, covered up from every one’s gaze, and washed or cleansed under a mysterious ceremonial, by the holy gens, called Praxiergidæ. The goddess thus seemed to turn away her face, and refuse to behold the returning exile. Such at least was the construction of his enemies; and as the subsequent turn of events tended to bear them out, it has been preserved; while the more auspicious counter-interpretation, doubtless suggested by his friends, has been forgotten.