And
In Later Times, They Used Such Efforts To Equip Vessels, In Order To Gain
The Mastery Of The Seas, That, According To Xenophon, They Entirely
Neglected Their Cavalry.
They were stimulated to this line of conduct by
Alcibiades, who advised the kings, ephori, and the nation at large, to
augment their marine, to compel the ships of all other nations to lower
their flag to theirs, and to proclaim themselves exclusive masters of the
Grecian seas.
Isocrates informs us, that, before Alcibiades came to
Lacedaemon, the Spartans, though they had a navy, expended little on it;
but afterwards they increased it almost daily. The signal defeat they
sustained at the battle of Cnidus, where Conon destroyed their whole fleet,
not only blasted their hopes of becoming masters of the seas, but,
according to Isocrates, led to their defeat at the battle of Leuctra.
Off the coast of Laconia, and about forty stadia from Cape Malea, lies the
island of Cythera; the strait between it and the mainland was deemed by the
ancients extremely dangerous in stormy weather; and indeed its narrowness,
and the rocks that lay off Cape Malea must, to such inexperianced
navigators, have been very alarming. The Phoenicians are supposed to have
had a settlement in this island: afterwards it became an object of great
consequence to the Lacedaemonians, who fortified, at great expence, and
with much labour and skill, its two harbours, Cythera and Scandea. The
convenience of these harbours to the Lacedaemonians compensated for the
sterility of the island, which was so great that when the Athenians
conquered it, they could raise from it only four Attic talents annually.
The chief employment and source of wealth to the inhabitants consisted in
collecting a species of shell-fish, from which an inferior kind of Tyrian
dye was extracted.
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