Sykes' History of Persia - Heritage Institute

xviii AFTER REPULSE FROM HELLAS 229
went to Egypt), in Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia, Halieis (in
the Argive Peninsula) and Aegina. Yet another naval
battle, that of Cecryphalea, was fought in the same year.
Surely such a record has seldom been equalled in the
annals of any nation.
The fleet of 200 triremes now despatched to Egypt ,,
constituted a formidable force, capable of fighting by land
as well as by sea ; and the allies met the Persian army at
Papremis in the Delta, with the result that Achaemenes
was slain and his army exterminated. At this
juncture a
second division of the Athenians fell in by chance with
the Phoenician fleet, and the latter lost
fifty ships sunk
and captured. The Athenians, who were naturally elated
by these victories, attacked Memphis, which they speedily
took ; but the Persians held its fortress, known as the
White Wall, and defied the assailants, who were forced
to undertake a regular siege.
In the following year, 456 B.C., a Persian army
numbering 300,000 men, supported by a fleet of 300
Phoenician ships, appeared on the scene under the capable
leadership of Megabyzus. The allies raised the
siege of
the White Wall and met the enemy ; but, as almost
invariably happened when they fought in the open, the
Egyptian army suffered defeat, the pretender Inarus beings
wounded and captured. The Greek contingent retreated
to the neighbouring island of Prosopitis and withstood
all assaults for a
year and a half after the beginning of
455 B.C.
The Persian army, meanwhile, had laboured to divert
a branch of the Nile, and one day the fleet was left high
and dry and was burned by the desperate Greeks, most of
whom perished in the subsequent Persian assault. The
survivors, some six thousand strong, capitulated on honourable
terms and were taken to Susa pending ratification of
I the agreement by the Great King. The Phoenicians now
I had their revenge for former defeats by sinking half of a
i tardy and quite inadequate reinforcement of fifty Greek
i triremes, which had entered one of the mouths of the
I Nile.
. ................