Three great battles had been fought in little more than the space of a month (July and August)--those of Corinth, Cnidus, and Coronea: the first and third on land, the second at sea. In each of the two land-battles the Lacedæmonians had gained a victory: they remained masters of the field, and were solicited by the enemy to grant the burial-truce. But if we inquire what results these victories had produced, the answer must be that both were totally barren. Even the narrative of Xenophon, deeply coloured as it is both by his sympathies and his antipathies, indicates to us that the predominant impression carried off by every one from the field of Coronea was that of the tremendous force and obstinacy of the Theban hoplites--a foretaste of what was to come at Leuctra! If the two land-victories of Sparta were barren of results, the case was far otherwise with her naval defeat at Cnidus. That defeat was pregnant with consequences following in rapid succession, and of the most disastrous character. As with Athens at Ægospotami--the loss of her fleet, serious as that was, served only as the signal for countless following losses. Pharnabazus and Conon, with their victorious fleet, sailed from island to island, and from one continental seaport to another, in the Ægean, to expel the Lacedæmonian harmosts, and terminate the empire of Sparta. So universal was the odium which it had inspired, that the task was found easy beyond expectation. Conscious of their unpopularity, the harmosts in almost all the towns, on both sides of the Hellespont, deserted their posts and fled, on the mere news of the battle of Cnidus. Everywhere Pharnabazus and Conon found themselves received as liberators, and welcomed with presents of hospitality. They pledged themselves not to introduce any foreign force or governor, nor to fortify any separate citadel, but to guarantee to each city its own genuine autonomy. This policy was adopted by Pharnabazus at the urgent representation of Conon, who warned him that if he manifested any design of reducing the cities to subjection, he would find them all his enemies; that each of them severally would cost him a long siege; and that a combination would ultimately be formed against him. Such liberal and judicious ideas, when seen to be sincerely acted upon, produced a strong feeling of friendship and even of gratitude, so that the Lacedæmonian maritime empire was dissolved without a blow, by the almost spontaneous movements of the cities themselves. Though the victorious fleet presented itself in many different places, it was nowhere called upon to put down resistance, or to undertake a single siege. Cos, Nisyrus, Teos, Chios, Erythræ, Ephesus, Mytilene, Samos, all declared themselves independent, under the protection of the new conquerors. Pharnabazus presently disembarked at Ephesus and marched by land northward to his own satrapy, leaving a fleet of forty triremes under the command of Conon. [Sidenote: [394-393 B.C.]]