226 HISTORY OF GREECE. ceding his arrival to block it up effectually ; but to accumulate any stock for a siege, was utterly impossible. At length, about November, 405 B.C., Lysander reached the Saro-iic gulf, having sent intimation beforehand, both to Agis and to the Lacedaemonians, that he was approaching with a fleet of tw hundred triremes. The full Lacedaemonian and Peloponne- sian force (all except the Argeians), under king Pausanias, was marched into Attica to meet him, and encamped in the precinct of Academus, at the gates of Athens ; while Lysander, first com- ing to ^Egina with his overwhelming fleet of one hundred and fifty sail ; next, ravaging Salamis, blocked up completely the har- bor of Peiraeus. It was one of his first measures to collect together the remnant which he could find of the ^Eginetan and Melian populations, whom Athens had expelled and destroyed ; and to restore to them the possession of their ancient islands. 1 Though all hope had now fled, the pride, the resolution, and the despair of Athens, still enabled her citizens to bear up ; nor was it until some men actually began to die of hunger, that they sent propositions to entreat peace. Even then their propositions were not without dignity. They proposed to Agis to become allies of Sparta, retaining their walls entire and their fortified harbor of Peiraeus. Agis referred the envoys to the ephors at Sparta, to whom he at the same time transmitted a statement of their propo- sitions. But the ephors did not even deign to admit the envoys to an interview, but sent messengers to meet them at Sellasia on Ihe frontier of Laconia, desiring that they would go back and jome again prepared with something more admissible, and acquainting them at the same time that no proposition could be received which did not include the demolition of the Long Walls, for a continuous length of ten stadia. With this gloomy reply the envoys returned. Notwithstanding all the suffering in the city, the senate and people would not consent even to take such humiliating terms into consideration. A senator named Arche- Btratus, who advised that they should be accepted, was placed in suo, sect. 21, and Lysias cont. Diogeiton. Or. xxxii, sect. 22, about Cyprm and the Chersonese, as ordinary sources of supply of com to Athens 1 Xenoph. Hellen.ii, 2, 9; Dbdor. xiii, 107.
