It is to be noted that Diodorus has a decided error in chronology as to the date of the restoration of the Athenian democracy. He places it in 401 B.C. (Diod. xiv, 33), two years later than its real date, which is 403 B.C.; thus lengthening by two years the interval between the surrender of Athens and the reëstablishment of the democracy. Plutarch also seems to have conceived that interval as much longer than it really was. [350] Plutarch, Lysand. c. 25. [351] Plutarch, Lysander, c. 2. The position of the Asiatic Greeks, along the coast of Ionia, Æolis, and the Hellespont, became very peculiar after the triumph of Sparta at Ægospotami. I have already recounted how, immediately after the great Athenian catastrophe before Syracuse, the Persian king had renewed his grasp upon those cities, from which the vigorous hand of Athens had kept him excluded for more than fifty years; how Sparta, bidding for his aid, had consented by three formal conventions to surrender them to him, while her commissioner Lichas even reproved the Milesians for their aversion to this bargain; how Athens also, in the days of her weakness, competing for the same advantage, had expressed her willingness to pay the same price for it.[352] After the battle of Ægospotami, this convention was carried into effect; though seemingly not without disputes between the satrap Pharnabazus on one side, and Lysander and Derkyllidas on the other.[353] The latter was Lacedæmonian harmost at Abydos, which town, so important as a station on the Hellespont, the Lacedæmonians seem still to have retained. But Pharnabazus and his subordinates acquired more complete command of the Hellespontine Æolis and of the Troad, than ever they had enjoyed before, both along the coast and in the interior.[354] [352] Thucyd. viii, 5, 18-37, 56-58, 84. [353] Plutarch, Lysander, c. 19, 20; Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 9. [354] Xen. Hellen. iii, 1, 13.