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Arginusae
 was a
group of islands in the Aegean.
The naval Battle of Arginusae took place in 406 during the
Peloponnesian
Warnear the city of Canae in the Arginusae islands, east of the island of Lesbos. In the battle, an
Athenian fleet commanded by eight strategoi defeated a Spartan fleet under
Callicratidas. The
battle was precipitated by a Spartan victory which led to the Athenian fleet
under Conon being blockaded
at Mytilene; to relieve Conon, the Athenians assembled a scratch force composed
largely of newly constructed ships manned by inexperienced crews. This
inexperienced fleet was thus tactically inferior to the Spartans, but its
commanders were able to circumvent this problem by employing new and unorthodox
tactics, which allowed the Athenians to secure a dramatic and unexpected
victory. Slaves and metics who participated in the battle were granted Athenian
citizenship. The news of the victory itself was met with jubilation at Athens.
Their joy was tempered, however, by the aftermath of the battle, in which a
storm prevented the ships assigned to rescue the survivors of the 25 disabled
or sunken Athenian triremes from performing their duties, and a great number of
sailors drowned. A fury erupted at Athens when the public learned of this, and
after a bitter struggle in the assembly six of the eight generals who had
commanded the fleet were tried as a group and executed. At Sparta, meanwhile,
traditionalists who had supported Callicratidas pressed for peace with Athens,
knowing that a continuation of the war would lead to the re-ascendence of their
opponent Lysander. This
party initially prevailed, and a delegation was dispatched to Athens to make an
offer of peace; the Athenians, however, rejected this offer, and Lysander
departed to the Aegean to take command of the fleet for the remainder of the
war, which would be decided less than a year later by his total victory at
Aegospotami.
In 406, Callicratidas was appointed as the navarch of the Spartan fleet,
replacing Lysander. Callicratidas was a traditionalist Spartan, distrustful of
Persian influence and reluctant to ask for support from the Persian prince
Cyrus, who had been a strong supporter of Lysander. Thus, Callicratidas was
forced to assemble his fleet and funding by seeking contributions from Sparta's
allies among the Greek cities of the region. In this fashion, he assembled a
fleet of some 140 triremes. Conon, meanwhile, in command of the Athenian fleet
at Samos, was compelled by problems with the morale of his sailors to man only
70 of the more than 100 triremes he had in his possession. Callicratidas, once
he had assembled his fleet, sailed against
Methymna,
on Lesbos, which he laid siege to and stormed. From Methymna, Callicratidas
could potentially move to capture the rest of Lesbos, which would clear the way
for him to move his fleet to the Hellespont, where he would be able to block
the all-important Athenian grain supply line. To defend Lesbos, Conon was
forced to move his numerically inferior fleet from Samos to the Hekatonnesi
islands near Methymna. When Callicratidas attacked him, however, with a fleet
that had swollen to a size of 170 ships, Conon was forced to flee to Mytilene,
where, in the Battle of
Mytilene,
he was blockaded with his fleet after losing 30 ships in a clash at the mouth
of the harbor. Besieged by land and sea, Conon was powerless to act against the
vastly superior forces that
besieged
him, and was only barely able to slip a messenger ship out to Athens to
carry the news of his plight. The relief force When the messenger ship reached
Athens with news of Conon's situation, the assembly wasted no time in approving
extreme measures to build and man a relief force. The golden statues of Nike
were melted down to fund the construction of the ships, and slaves and metics
were enlisted to crew the fleet. To ensure a sufficiently large and loyal group
of crewmen, the Athenians even took the radical step of extending citizenship
to thousands of slaves who rowed with the fleet. Over a hundred ships were
prepared and manned through these measures, and contributions from allied ships
raised the fleet's size to 150 triremes after it reached Samos. In a highly
unorthodox arrangement, the fleet was commanded collaboratively by eight
generals; these were Aristocrates, Aristogenes, Diomedon, Erasinides, Lysias,
Pericles, Protomachus, and Thrasyllus. After leaving Samos, the Athenian fleet
sailed to the Arginusae islands, opposite Cape Malea on Lesbos, where they
camped for an evening. Callicratidas, who had sailed south to Malea with most
of his fleet upon learning of the Athenians' movements, spotted their signal
fires and planned to attack them by night, but was prevented from doing so by a
thunderstorm, and so was forced to delay his attack until morning. At dawn the
next day, Callicratidas led his fleet out to meet the Athenians. He had 140
ships to match the Athenians' 150, having left 50 to watch Conon at Mytilene.
For the first time in the war, the Spartan crews and commanders were more
experienced than their Athenian opposites, as the Athenians' best crews had
been at sea with Conon. To counter the Spartans' superior skill and
maneuverability, the Athenian commanders implemented several new and innovative
tactics. First, the Athenian fleet was divided into eight autonomous divisions,
each commanded by one of the generals; second, they arranged their fleet in a
double line instead of the traditional single line in order to prevent the
Spartans from using the maneuver known as the diekplous, in which a trireme
raced into a gap between two enemy ships and then wheeled to strike one of them
in the side; if the Spartans attempted this against a double line, a ship from
the second line could move up to attack the Spartan ship. The Athenians used an
unusual tactic with which they prevented a diekplous. As the Athenians
advanced, they extended their left flank out to sea, outflanking the Spartans.
The superior Athenian numbers, combined with the tactics they had implemented,
created a dangerous situation for the Spartans, and Callicratidas' helmsman
advised him to retire without a fight, but the navarch insisted on pushing on.
Dividing his force in two to meet the threat of encirclement, Callicratidas led
his fleet into battle. Heated fighting ensued for some time, but eventually
Callicratidas, leading the Spartan right, was killed when his ship rammed an
opposing ship, and resistance on the right collapsed. The left continued to
resist for longer, but was unable to stand up to the entire Athenian fleet and
soon joined the right wing in flight. All told, the Spartans lost some 70
ships, and the Athenians 25.
In the immediate aftermath of the battle, the Athenian commanders had to decide
which of several pressing tasks to focus their attention on. Conon was still
blockaded at Mytilene by 50 Spartan ships, and decisive action against those
ships could lead to their destruction before they had a chance to join the
remainder of Callicratidas' fleet. At the same time, however, the survivors
from the 25 Athenian ships sunk or disabled in the battle remained afloat off
the Arginusae islands. The generals decided that all eight of them would sail
with the majority of the fleet to Mytilene, where they would attempt to relieve
Conon, while the trierarchs Thrasybulus and Theramenes would remain
behind with a smaller detachment to rescue the survivors; both of these
missions, however, were thwarted by the sudden arrival of a storm which drove
the ships back into port. The Spartan fleet at Mytilene escaped, and rescuing
the drowning sailors proved impossible.
At Athens, the public relief at this unexpected victory was quickly subsumed in
a bitter rhetorical battle over who was responsible for the failure to rescue
the sailors. When the generals learned that the public was angry over the
failed rescue, they assumed that Thrasybulus and Theramenes, who had already
returned to the city, were responsible, and accordingly wrote letters to the
assembly denouncing the two trierarchs and blaming them for the disaster. The
trierarchs responded successfully to the allegations brought against them, and
public anger now turned against the generals instead. The eight generals were
deposed from their office and ordered to return to Athens to stand trial; two
of them, Aristogenes and
Protomachus, fled, but the other six returned. Upon their return, they were
imprisoned, and one of them, Erasinides, was brought to trial and convicted of
several charges involving misconduct in office; this trial may represent an
attempt by the generals' enemies to test the wind, since Erasinides, who had
proposed abandoning the survivors altogether during the deliberations after the
battle, may have been the easiest target among the six. The question of how the
generals should be tried for their failure to rescue the survivors was then
brought before the assembly. On the first day of debate, the generals were able
to win the sympathy of the crowd by placing the blame for the tragedy entirely
on the storm that had thwarted the rescue attempts. Unfortunately for them,
however, this first day of debate was followed by the festival of the Apaturia,
at which families met together; in this context, the absence of those drowned
at Arginusae was painfully evident, and when the assembly next met the
initiative passed to those who wished to treat the generals harshly. A
politician named Callixeinus proposed that,
without further debate, the assembly should vote on the guilt or innocence of
the generals.
Euryptolemus, a cousin of Alcibiades, and several others opposed the motion
on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, but they withdrew their opposition
after another politician moved that the same penalty applied to the generals be
applied to them. With the opposition from the floor now silenced, the generals'
accusers sought to bring their motion to a vote. The presiding officers of the
assembly were the prytaneis, randomly selected councilmen from whichever tribe
was assigned to oversee the assembly in a given month; at each meeting of the
assembly, one of the prytaneis was appointed epistates, or president of the
assembly. By chance, the philosopher Socrates, holding public office for the
only time in his life, was epistates on the day that the generals were tried.
Declaring that he would "do nothing that was contrary to the law",
Socrates refused to put the measure to a vote. Emboldened, Euryptolemus rose
again to speak, and persuaded the assembly to pass a motion ordering that the
generals be tried separately. Parliamentary maneuvering, however, undid this
victory, and in the end the original motion was carried; a vote was taken, and
all six generals were found guilty and executed, including Pericles the
Younger. The Athenians soon came to regret their decision in the case of the
generals, and charges were brought against the principal instigators of the
executions. These men escaped before they could be brought to trial, but
Callixeinus did return to Athens several years later; despised by his fellow
citizens, he died of starvation. At Sparta, the defeat at Arginusae added to a
long list of setbacks since the war in the Aegean had begun in 412. The fleet,
now stationed at Chios, was in poor condition, Spartans at home were
discouraged, and supporters of Callicratidas were displeased by the notion that
his rival Lysander would rise to power again if the war were to continue
(Sparta's allies in the Aegean were demanding his return). With all these
concerns in mind, the Spartan government dispatched an embassy to Athens,
offering to surrender the Spartan fort at Decelea in return for peace on the
basis of the status quo in the Aegean. This proposal, however, was rejected by
the Athenian assembly at the urging of Cleophon. The war continued, but Athens'
decision was to prove costly less than a year later when Lysander, in command
of the Spartan fleet once more, decisively defeated the Athenian fleet at
Aegospotami; within two years of the dramatic Athenian victory at Arginusae,
the city surrendered and its walls were torn down.
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The battle of the Arginusae Islands (406 BC) was the last major
Athenian victory of the Great
Peloponnesian War,
but after the battle six of the eight victorious generals were executed for
failing to rescue the crews of the twenty five Athenian warships lost during
the battle. At the start of the campaigning season in 406 BC the Athenians had
a fleet of 70 ships in Asia Minor, commanded by
Conon, while the
Peloponnesians had 140 ships under the newly appointed
Callicratidas. He
achieved a series of early successes, capturing Delphinium in the territory of
Chios and Methymne on
Lesbos. He then chased Conon into
Mytilene, sinking or
capturing thirty of the seventy Athenian ships, and began a siege of Mytilene.
When this news reached Athens a new fleet was scraped together. Our two main
sources agreed on the eventual size of the Athenian fleet, but not on its
composition. According to Xenophon 110 ships came from Athens, ten were at
Samos and thirty were provided by other allies, for a total of 150. In Diodorus
Siculus sixty ships came from Athens, ten from Samos and eighty from other
Athenian allies, again for a total of 150. The fleet came together at Samos,
and sailed up the coast towards Lesbos, pausing on the night
before the battle at the Arginusae Islands, east of Lesbos and close to the
mainland. Callicratidas decided to intercept the Athenian fleet, a sign of the
greatly increased confidence of the Peloponnesian fleet. He left fifty ships at
Mytilene, and took one hundred and twenty with him. The Athenian fleet was
drawn up in two lines. At the far left was Aristocrates with fifteen ships, and
with Pericles (son of the famous statesman) behind him. Next was Diomedon with
fifteen ships and Erasinides behind. In the centre were the ten Samian ships,
ten ships commanded by the Athenian taxiarchs, three by the navarchs and other
allies. Next was Protomachus with Lysias
behind him, both with fifteen ships. Finally on the far right
Thrasylus commanded the
front line and Aristogenes the rear. The Athenian left wing pointed out to open
sea, the right towards the shore and the Arginusae islands were in the centre
of the line. The Athenians hoped that this formation would prevent the Spartans
from breaking their line, while the islands extended their line and would make
it harder for the Spartans to outflank it. Callicratidas was effectively forced
to split his fleet in two. He commanded on the right, while the Boeotians,
commanded by Thrasondas of Thebes, held the left. Neither Xenophon or Diodorus
give us any real details of the battle, other than to agree that it was hard
fought and lasted for some time. Callicratidas was killed during the battle,
although our sources disagree on how. According to Xenophon he fell overboard
after his ship rammed an Athenian ship, and was drowned. In Diodorus he was
killed fighting onboard his ship, after becoming entangled with Pericles'
ships. Our sources also disagree on which wing of the Peloponnesian fleet was
defeated first - the right wing goes first in Diodorus and the left wing in
Xenophon. In both sources most of the Peloponnesians fled south to Chios. Our
sources give largely similar casualty figures, with the Peloponnesians loosing
70-77 ships and the Athenians twenty ships along with most of their crews. This
loss of crew would lead to the most controversial aspect of the battle. The
Athenian commanders apparently decided to split their fleet, sending some ships
to lift the siege of Mytilene and some to rescue their shipwrecked comrades,
but a storm blew up, and the fleet was forced to return to shore without
achieving either objective. This gave Eteonicus, the Peloponnesian commander at
Mytilene, time to evacuate his army and fleet. Conon was able to emerge from
the blockaded city, and joined up with the main Athenian fleet. Meanwhile news
of the battled reached Athens, where the initial celebrations of victory were
marred by the news of the heavy losses. The generals were blamed for failing to
rescue the shipwrecked men, and were dismissed. Conon,
Adeimantus and
Philocles were appointed
to replace them. Of the eight generals in command during the battle Protomachus
and Aristogenes decided not to return to Athens. Pericles, Diomedon, Lysias,
Aristocrates, Thrasylus and Erasinides returned to the city, where they were
put on trial and after a somewhat lengthy process condemned and executed. The
Athenian people soon regretted their decision, but it was too late. The
execution of six victorious generals had a double effective - it removed most
of the most able and experienced commanders, and it discouraged the survivors
from taking command in the following year. This lack of experience may have
played a part in the crushing Athenian defeat at
Aegospotami
that effectively ended the war.
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