Book 1
6.13
And when the Methymnaeans refused to surrender,—for there was an Athenian garrison in the place and those who had control of the government were partisans of Athens, —Callicratidas attacked the city and captured it by storm.
6.14
All the property which it contained the soldiers seized as booty, but all the captives Callicratidas assembled in the market-place; and when his allies urged him to sell into slavery the Methymnaeans as well as the Athenians, he said that while he was commander no Greek should be enslaved if406 B.C. he could help it.
6.15
Accordingly on the next day he let the Methymnaeans go free, but sold the members of the Athenian garrisonI.e., Callicratidas agrees with his allies in regarding the sale of the Athenians as a matter of course. What he objected to was the enslaving of the inhabitants of captured towns which had chanced to be in possession of the Athenians. and such of the captives as were slaves; then he sent word to Conon that he would put a stop to his playing the wanton with his bride, the sea. And when he caught sight of Conon putting out to sea at daybreak, he pursued him, aiming to cut off his course to Samos, so that he could not direct his flight thither.
6.16
Conon’s ships, however, made good speed as he fled, because the best oarsmen had been picked out of a great many crews and assembled in a few; in the end he sought refuge in the harbour of Mytilene, in Lesbos, and with him two more of the ten generals, Leon and Erasinides. But Callicratidas, pursuing with one hundred and seventy ships, sailed into the harbour simultaneously.
6.17
And Conon, thwarted in his plan by the enemy’s swiftness, was forced to give battle at the mouth of the harbour and lost thirty ships; their crews, however, escaped to the land; and the remainder of his ships, forty in number, he drew up on shore under the wall of the city.
