ATHENIANS AT MILETUS. 387 Athenians who had been before watching the place from the island of Lade. The Milesians marched forth to give them battle ; mustering eight hundred of their own hoplites, together with the Peloponnesian seamen of the five triremes brought across by Chalkideus, and a body of troops, chiefly cavalry, yet with a few mercenary hoplites, under the satrap Tissaphernes. Alkibiades, also, was present and engaged. The Argeians were so full of con- tempt for the lonians of Miletus who stood opposite to them, that they rushed forward to the charge with great neglect of rank or order ; a presumption which they expiated by an entire defeat, with the loss of three hundred men. But the Athenians on their wing were so completely victorious over the Peloponnesians and others opposed to them, that all the army of the latter, and even the Milesians themselves on returning from their pursuit of the Argeians, were forced to shelter themselves within the walls of the town. The issue of this combat excited much astonishment, inasmuch as, on each side, Ionian hoplites were victorious over Dorian. 1 For a moment, the Athenian army, masters of the field under the walls of Miletus, indulged the hope of putting that city under blockade, by a wall across the isthmus which connected it with the continent. But these hopes soon vanished when they were apprized, on the very evening of the battle, that the main Pelo- ponnesian and Sicilian fleet, fifty-five triremes in number, was actually in sight. Of these fifty-five, twenty-two were Sicilian, twenty from Syracuse and two from Selinus, sent at the press- ing instance of Hermokrates, and under his command, for the purpose of striking the final blow at Athens ; so at least it was anticipated, in the beginning of 412 B.C. The remaining thirty- three triremes being Peloponnesian, the whole fleet was placed under the temporary command of Theramenes, until he could join the admiral Astyochus. Theramenes, halting first at the island of Lerus, off the coast, towards the southward of Miletus, was there first informed of the recent victory of the Athenians, to that he thought it prudent to take station for the night in the neighboring gulf of lasus. Here he was found by Alkibiade's, who came on horseback, in all haste, from Miletus to the Milesian
Thucyd. viii.25,26.
