阿吉纽西战役

Background

Callicratidas and Conon

In 406 BC, 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 athwart the all-important Athenian grain supply line.……

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.……

Battle

At dawn the next day, Callicratidas led his fleet out to meet the Athenians. He had 140 ships to match the Athenians' 150 and had 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. Firstly, the Athenian fleet was divided into eight autonomous divisions, each commanded by one of the generals. Secondly, they arranged their fleet in a double line, instead of the traditional single line, 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 that against a double line, a ship from the second line could move up to attack the Spartan ship.

Aftermath

In the immediate aftermath of the battle, the Athenian commanders had to decide on which of several pressing tasks to focus their attention. 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 that had been sunk or disabled in the battle remained afloat off the Arginusae islands. To address both of these concerns, 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, and the trierarchs Thrasybulus and Theramenes would remain behind with a smaller detachment to rescue the survivors. Both 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.

Trial of generals

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.……

The battle in fiction

An account of the battle appears in The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault. The narrator is an Athenian who takes part in the battle, but is shipwrecked and manages to swim to safety.