d altogether, with the
navy which they possessed, they had numbers of places to retire to in
which they would find cities and lands.

Debating together and comforting themselves after this manner, they
pushed on their war measures as actively as ever; and the ten envoys
sent to Samos by the Four Hundred, learning how matters stood while they
were still at Delos, stayed quiet there. About this time a cry arose a
Peloponnesian fleet at Miletus that Astyochus and Tissaphernes
were ruining their cause. Astyochus had not been willing to fight at
sea--either before, while they were still in full vigour and the
fleet of the Athenians small, or now, when the enemy was, as they were
informed, in a state of sedition and his ships not yet united--but kept
them waiting for the Phoenician fleet from Tissaphernes, which had only
a nominal existence, at the risk of wasting away in inactivity. While
Tissaphernes not only did not bring up the fleet in question, but was
ruining their navy by payments made irregularly, and even then not made
in full. They must therefore, they insisted, delay no longer, but fight
a decisive naval engagement. The Syracusans were the most urgent of any.

The confederates and Astyochus, aware of these murmurs, had already
decided in council to fight a decisive battle; and when the news reached
them of the disturbance at Samos, they put to sea with all their ships,
one hundred and ten in number, and, ordering the Milesians to move by
land upon Mycale, set sail thither. The Athenians with the eighty-two
ships from Samos were at the moment lying at Glauce in Mycale, a
point where Samos approaches near to the continent; and, seeing the
Peloponnesian fleet sailing against them, retired into Samos, not
thinking themselves numerically strong enough to stake their all upon a
battle. Besides, they had notice from Miletus of the wish of the enemy
to engage, and were expecting to be joined from the Hellespont by
Strombichides, to whom a messenger had been already dispatched, with
the ships that had gone from Chios to Abydos. The Athenians accordingly
withdrew to Samos, and the Peloponnesians put in at Mycale, and
encamped with the land forces of the Milesians and the people of the
neighbourhood. The next day they were about to sail against Samos, when
tidings reached them of the arrival of Strombichides with the squadron
from the Hellespont, upon which they immediately sailed back to Miletus.
The Athenians, thus rein