ly
next year (564) the Roman fleet resumed its operations. Gaius Livius
left the Rhodian fleet--which had appeared in good time this year,
numbering 36 sail--to observe that of the enemy in the offing of
Ephesus, and went with the greater portion of the Roman and Pergamene
vessels to the Hellespont in accordance with his instructions, to
pave the way for the passage of the land army by the capture of the
fortresses there. Sestus was already occupied and Abydus reduced to
extremities, when the news of the defeat of the Rhodian fleet recalled
him. The Rhodian admiral Pausistratus, lulled into security by the
representations of his countryman that he wished to desert from
Antiochus, had allowed himself to be surprised in the harbour of
Samos; he himself fell, and all his vessels were destroyed except five
Rhodian and two Coan ships; Samos, Phocaea, and Cyme on hearing the
news went over to Seleucus, who held the chief command by land in
those provinces for his father.

But when the Roman fleet arrived partly from Cane, partly from the
Hellespont, and was after some time joined by twenty new ships of the
Rhodians at Samos, Polyxenidas was once more compelled to shut himself
up in the harbour of Ephesus. As he declined the offered naval
battle, and as, owing to the small numbers of the Roman force, an
attack by land was not to be thought of, nothing remained for the
Roman fleet but to take up its position in like manner at Samos. A
division meanwhile proceeded to Patara on the Lycian coast, partly to
relieve the Rhodians from the very troublesome attacks that were
directed against them from that quarter, partly and chiefly to prevent
the hostile fleet, which Hannibal was expected to bring up, from
entering the Aegean Sea. When the squadron sent against Patara
achieved nothing, the new admiral Lucius Aemilius Regillus, who had
arrived with 20 war-vessels from Rome and had relieved Gaius Livius at
Samos, was so indignant that he proceeded thither with the whole
fleet; his officers with difficulty succeeded, while they were on
their voyage, in making him understand that the primary object was not
the conquest of Patara but the command of the Aegean Sea, and in
inducing him to return to Samos. On the mainland of Asia Minor
Seleucus had in the meanwhile begun the siege of Pergamus, while
Antiochus with his chief army ravaged the Pergamene territory and the
possessions of the Mytilenaeans on the mainland; they hoped to cru