The Fall of the Athenian Empire-(A New History of the Peloponnesian War) Donald Kagan - (1987)

394 THE" FALL OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
ships, between 3,ooo and 4,ooo prisoners, and the rest of the booty.'"
The first order of business was to send the great news back home to
Sparta. Lysander loaded his swiftest ship, a privateer under the command
of the Milesian pirate Theopompus, with the most impressive
captured arms and the most expensive booty and sent it off at once.
Speed was more important than the status of the captain, and Theopompus
arrived in Sparta to announce the victory on the third day
after his departure." Next came the question of what to do with the
prisoners, fully a tenth of the entire Athenian force at Aegospotami.
To make the decision Lysander called an assembly of all of the allies
gathered at Lampsacus. His recent actions foreshadowed harsh treatment;
he might kill all of the men, as he had done at lasus, or sell
them into slavery, as he had done at Cedreiae. Lysander's cruelty,
however, seems to have been of a cold, pragmatic kind, aimed at
producing a desired result. The massacre of his political opponents at
Miletus was meant to place his own men securely in power and to
terrify potential opponents in other cities. 62 Likewise, his acts of terror
at lasus and Cedreiae were meant to discourage other small cities in
Asia from resisting him. To kill or enslave the Athenian prisoners,
however, would have no such advantage. After the battle of Aegospotami,
Lysander's next goal was the surrender of Athens. The murder
or enslavement of thousands of Athenians captured in battle was not
likely to encourage their fellow citizens to yield. On the contrary, it
was bound to increase resistance. Lysander would soon show that he
was ready to spare many Athenian lives in order to increase hunger
in Athens and thereby hasten the city's surrender!'
We may guess that had the decision been left to Lysander, he would
have released the prisoners and sent them home. Their fate, however,
was decided by the allies, and they made their decision in an atmosphere
of anger and vengeance. After all, the war was far into its third
decade, and many allies had suffered irreparable harm and the loss of
many lives. States like Corinth, Megara, and Aegina, once proud and
prosperous places, had suffered repeated devastation of their land,
60
Xen. z.I.Jo. Neither Xenophon nor Diodorus gives a figure for the Athenian
prisoners taken. Plutarch (Ale. 37. 3) sets it at J,ooo, Pausanias (9. 32.9) at 4,000. It may
be that the true figure was something in between and that one author, or his source,
rounded the figure up and the other down. See Strauss, AJP CIV (198]), 34·
6 'Xen. 2.I.Jo; Diod. q.106.7.
62
See above, J82-J8J.
61
See below, 396.