assador to Sparta, in order to prevail upon that
state to make an excursion into Attica, and so compel the Athenians to
withdraw their troops from Egypt. The liability of the Spartan
government to corrupt temptation was not unknown to a court which had
received the Spartan fugitives; and the ambassador was charged with
large treasures to bribe those whom he could not otherwise convince.
Nevertheless, the negotiation failed; the government could not be
induced to the alliance with the Persian king. There was indeed a
certain spirit of honour inherent in that haughty nation which, if not
incompatible with cunning and intrigue, held at least in profound
disdain an alliance with the barbarian, for whatsoever ends. But, in
fact, the Spartans were then entirely absorbed in the reduction of
Ithome, and the war in Arcady; and it would, further, have been the
height of impolicy in that state, if meditating any designs against
Athens, to assist in the recall of an army which it was its very
interest to maintain employed in distant and perilous expeditions.

The ambassador had the satisfaction indeed of wasting some of his
money, but to no purpose; and he returned without success to Asia.
Artaxerxes then saw the necessity of arousing himself to those active
exertions which the feebleness of an exhausted despotism rendered the
final, not the first resort. Under Megabyzus an immense army was
collected; traversing Syria and Phoenicia, it arrived in Egypt,
engaged the Egyptian forces in a pitched battle, and obtained a
complete victory. Thence marching to Memphis, it drove the Greeks
from their siege of the White Castle, till then continued, and shut
them up in Prosopitis, an island in the Nile, around which their ships
lay anchored. Megabyzus ordered the channel to be drained by dikes,
and the vessels, the main force of the Athenians, were left stranded.
Terrified by this dexterous manoeuvre, as well as by the success of
the Persians, the Egyptians renounced all further resistance; and the
Athenians were deprived at once of their vessels and their allies.
[202]

XVII. Nothing daunted, and inspired by their disdain no less than by
their valour, the Athenians were yet to the barbarian what the Norman
knights were afterward to the Greeks. They burnt their vessels that
they might be as useless to the enemy as to themselves, and, exhorting
each other not to dim the glory of their past exploits, shut up still
in the small town of