The Athenians, now harmony was restored in the state, recovered their spirits, and begun to act with vigour.[110] They applied themselves to the re-establishment of their marine, the repairs of their fortifications, and the care of storing their magazines with the greatest diligence and economy, retrenching all such expenses as they judged useless or superfluous. The good effects of this unanimity were visible when the campaign opened, for they found themselves in a condition to make head against their numerous enemies, though strengthened by a new alliance with the Persians, and assisted with Persian money; and they even gained some considerable advantages. An event too happened, which greatly disconcerted the measures of their enemies, and raised their state once more to its former power and lustre. Alcibiades, a thorough libertine, who never stuck at the most infamous means of gratifying his passions, debauched Timæa, the wife of Agis, king of Sparta, his great friend and protector.[111] Dreading the resentment of that prince for so shameful a breach of friendship and hospitality, as well as the jealousy of the Peloponnesians, who had sent private orders to Astyochus, the Lacedemonian admiral, to cut him off, he fled to Tissaphernes, at that time governor of the provinces in the lower Asia under the Persian monarch.[112] Alcibiades, who was a consummate master in the art of address, quickly insinuated himself into his good graces, and explained to him the true interest of the Persians with respect to the Grecian republicks.[113] He showed him the bad policy of raising one state to a superiority over all the rest, which would deprive his master of all his allies, and oblige him to contend alone with the whole power of Greece. He advised him to permit every state to enjoy its own separate independent government; and demonstrated, that by keeping them thus divided, his master might set them together by the ears, and, by playing them one against another, crush them all at last without the least danger. He added too, that an alliance with the Athenians would be more advantageous to the Persian interest, and preferable to that which he had made with the Lacedæmonians. The crafty Persian was too able a politician not to relish his advice; he paid the Peloponnesians their subsidy so ill, and put off a naval engagement so long, under pretence of waiting for the Phœnician fleet, that he wasted the strength of their navy, which was far superior to the Athenian, and ruined all their measures.[114]