Prelude
In the wake of Athens' defeat in the Sicilian Expedition in 413, a small Spartan fleet commanded by Chalcideus, who was advised and assisted by Alcibiades, succeeded in bringing a number of critical Ionian cities into revolt from the Athenian Empire. After the revolt of the critical city of Miletus, the Persian satrap Tissaphernes concluded an alliance against Athens with Sparta. The Spartans remained unwilling to challenge the Athenians at sea, and an Athenian fleet succeeded in recapturing several cities and besieging Chios during the later months of 412 BC. In 411 BC, however, further rebellions at Rhodes and Euboea, and the capture of Abydos and Lampsacus on the Hellespont by a Peloponnesian army that had marched there overland, forced the Athenians to disperse their forces to meet these various threats. The Spartan fleet could now move freely in the Aegean, and took advantage of its newfound superiority by lifting the blockade of Chios and bottling up the Athenians' Aegean fleet at Samos.
By withdrawing their ships from the Hellespont to Samos, the Athenians were able to reestablish their naval superiority in the Aegean, but in doing so they opened the door for Sparta to shift the theater of war. Accordingly, in late July, the Spartan commander Clearchus made an attempt to slip 40 ships past the Athenian fleet to the Hellespont. These were turned back by a storm, but shortly afterwards 10 ships under the Megarian general Helixus reached the Hellespont, where they triggered revolts in Byzantium, Chalcedon and other important cities. Several months later, the new Spartan navarch Mindarus, deciding that the promises of support made by Pharnabazus, the Persian satrap of Anatolia, were more promising than those of Tissaphernes in Ionia, slipped his entire fleet past the Athenians. He joined up with the Peloponnesian ships already operating in the Hellespont and established his base at Abydos, forcing the small Athenian fleet at Sestos to flee, with losses, to Imbros and Lemnos.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Cynossema
Famous quotes containing the word prelude:
““We’re all friends here” is a prelude to fraud. “I am sincere” is a prelude to lying.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I got a little secretarial job after college, but I thought of it as a prelude. Education, work, whatever you did before marriage, was only a prelude to your real life, which was marriage.”
—Bonnie Carr (c. early 1930s)