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.