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Conon, making clever use of the opportunity, at once pressed upon them, and prevented their establishing any order, damaging some ships and shearing off the rows of oars of others. Of the ships opposing Conon not one turned to flight, but they continued to back water while waiting for the ships which tarried behind; [2] but the Athenians who held the left wing, putting to flight their opponents, pressed upon them with increasing eagerness and pursued them for a long time. But when the Peloponnesians had brought all their ships together, Conon, fearing the superior numbers of the enemy, stopped the pursuit and sailed off to Mitylene with forty ships. [3] As for the Athenians who had set out in pursuit, all the Peloponnesian ships, swarming around them, struck terror into them, and cutting them off from return to the city compelled them to turn in flight to the land. And since the Peloponnesians pressed upon them with all their ships, the Athenians, seeing no other means of deliverance, fled for safety to the land and deserting their vessels found refuge in Mitylene. [4]

Callicratidas, by the capture of thirty ships, was aware that the naval power of the enemy had been destroyed, but he anticipated that the fighting on land remained. Consequently he sailed on to the city, and Conon, who was expecting a siege when he arrived, began upon preparations about the entrance to the harbour; for in the shallow places of the harbour he sank small boats filled with rocks and in the deep waters he anchored merchantmen armed with stones.1 [5] Now the Athenians and a great throng of the Mitylenaeans who had gathered from the fields into the city because of the war speedily completed the preparations for the siege. Callicratidas, disembarking his soldiers on the beach near the city, pitched a camp, and then he set up a trophy for the sea-battle. And on the next day, after choosing out his best ships and commanding them not to get far from his own ship, he put out to sea, being eager to sail into the harbour and break the barrier constructed by the enemy. [6] Conon put some of his soldiers on the triremes, which he placed with their prows facing the open passage, and some he assigned to the large vessels,2 while others he sent to the breakwaters of the harbour in order that the harbour might be fenced in on every side, both by land and by sea. [7] Then Conon himself with his triremes joined the battle, filling with his ships the space lying between the barriers; and the soldiers stationed on the large ships hurled the stones from the yard-arms upon the ships of the enemy, while those drawn up on the breakwaters of the harbour held off those who might have ventured to disembark on the land.

1 Carried on the yard-arms.

2 Presumably the merchantmen mentioned above.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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