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The same winter the Athenians in Samos, having been joined by thirty-five more vessels from home under Charminus, Strombichides, and Euctemon, called in their squadron at Chios and all the rest, intending to blockade Miletus with their navy, and to send a fleet and an army against Chios; drawing lots for the respective services.
From Cos arriving in the night at Cnidus he was constrained by the representations of the Cnidians not to disembark the sailors, but to sail as he was straight against the twenty Athenian vessels, which with Charminus, one of the commanders at Samos, were on the watch for the very twenty-seven ships from Peloponnese which Astyochus was himself sailing to join; the Athenians in Samos having heard from Melos of their approach, and Charminus being on the look-out off Syme, Chalce, Rhodes, and Lycia, as he now heard that they were at Caunus.
Meanwhile they put to death one Hyperbolus, an Athenian, a pestilent fellow that had been ostracized, not from fear of his influence or position, but because he was a rascal and a disgrace to the city; being aided in this by Charminus, one of the generals, and by some of the Athenians with them, to whom they had sworn friendship, and with whom they perpetrated other acts of the kind, and now determined to attack the people.
In the morning his fleet had parted company and was most of it still straggling round the island, and the left wing only in sight of Charminus and the Athenians, who took it for the squadron which they were watching for from Caunus, and hastily put out against it with part only of their twenty vessels, and attacking immediately sank three ships and disabled others, and had the advantage in the action until the main body of the fleet unexpectedly hove in sight, when they were surrounded on every side.
Seuthês and Herakleidês, eager to hasten the departure of the soldiers, endeavored to take credit with the Lacedæmonians for assisting their views. Joyfully did the army accept this offer, though complaining loudly of the fraud practised upon them by Seuthês; which Charmînus, at the instance of Xenophon, vainly pressed the Thracian prince to redress.
They then became extremely anxious to transport the Cyreians across to Asia, which their governor Aristarchus had hitherto prohibited and to take them into permanent pay; for which purpose two Lacedæmonians, Charmînus and Polynîkus, were commissioned by Thimbron to offer to the army the same pay as he had promised, though not paid, by Seuthês; and as had been originally paid by Cyrus.
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