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405-404 BCEPrimary source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Caught Foraging on an Open Beach, the Athenian Fleet Is Destroyed at Aegospotami

On the timeline · around 405-404 BCE · The Classical PeriodThe Classical PeriodCaught Foraging on an Open Beach, the Athenian Fleet Is Destroyed at Aegospotami440 BCE430 BCE420 BCE410 BCE400 BCE390 BCE380 BCE370 BCE

What happened

In 405 BCE the Athenian fleet took up position across the Hellespont from the Spartan fleet under Lysander at a spot called Aegospotami, guarding the narrow strait its Black Sea grain ships had to pass through. For four days Lysander refused to engage. Each day the Athenians rowed out to offer battle, were refused, and returned to an open beach with no fortified camp, and each day more of the crews wandered off to forage for food. The exiled Alcibiades, watching from a nearby fort he held, rode down to warn the Athenian generals they were anchored somewhere exposed, but according to Xenophon, the generals told him to leave since they commanded now, not him. On the fifth day, with the crews scattered on shore, Lysander attacked without warning, catching most Athenian ships with skeleton crews or no crews at all. Cut off from grain shipments through the Hellespont, besieged Athens starved through the winter until it surrendered in 404 BCE.

Why it matters

The defeat did not just cost Athens ships, it cost Athens its only way to feed itself, since the city depended on imported grain routed through exactly the strait Lysander now controlled. The peace terms went beyond disarmament: Sparta ordered Athens's Long Walls, which had connected the city to its port and let it survive under siege for decades, torn down, limited its fleet to a token number of ships, and folded Athens into Sparta's own alliance system, ending in a single stroke the naval empire Athens had built since the Persian Wars.

How we know

Xenophon's Hellenica, written as a direct continuation of Thucydides's unfinished history, gives the fullest surviving account of the battle, including Alcibiades's warning and the generals' dismissal of it. His narrative is the primary source historians rely on for the battle's specific circumstances, since Thucydides's own history breaks off before this point in the war.

Sources

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