with ease that with which they were menaced from Peloponnese,
manned a hundred ships by embarking the citizens of Athens, except the
knights and Pentacosiomedimni, and the resident aliens; and putting
out to the Isthmus, displayed their power, and made descents upon
Peloponnese wherever they pleased. A disappointment so signal made the
Lacedaemonians think that the Lesbians had not spoken the truth; and
embarrassed by the non-appearance of the confederates, coupled with the
news that the thirty ships round Peloponnese were ravaging the lands
near Sparta, they went back home. Afterwards, however, they got ready
a fleet to send to Lesbos, and ordering a total of forty ships from
the different cities in the league, appointed Alcidas to command the
expedition in his capacity of high admiral. Meanwhile the Athenians in
the hundred ships, upon seeing the Lacedaemonians go home, went home
likewise.

If, at the time that this fleet was at sea, Athens had almost the
largest number of first-rate ships in commission that she ever possessed
at any one moment, she had as many or even more when the war began. At
that time one hundred guarded Attica, Euboea, and Salamis; a hundred
more were cruising round Peloponnese, besides those employed at Potidaea
and in other places; making a grand total of two hundred and fifty
vessels employed on active service in a single summer. It was this, with
Potidaea, that most exhausted her revenues--Potidaea being blockaded
by a force of heavy infantry (each drawing two drachmae a day, one for
himself and another for his servant), which amounted to three thousand
at first, and was kept at this number down to the end of the siege;
besides sixteen hundred with Phormio who went away before it was over;
and the ships being all paid at the same rate. In this way her money was
wasted at first; and this was the largest number of ships ever manned by
her.

About the same time that the Lacedaemonians were at the Isthmus, the
Mitylenians marched by land with their mercenaries against Methymna,
which they thought to gain by treachery. After assaulting the town, and
not meeting with the success that they anticipated, they withdrew to
Antissa, Pyrrha, and Eresus; and taking measures for the better security
of these towns and strengthening their walls, hastily returned home.
After their departure the Methymnians marched against Antissa, but
were defeated in a sortie by the Antissians and their mercenaries,
and r