37.10
During
these operations in the Hellespont, Polyxenidas, the king's lieutenant and a
Rhodian refugee, received tidings of the departure from home of his
country's fleet and also of the insolent and contemptuous way in which the
commandant, Pausistratus, had spoken of him in public. This made the
contest between them a personal one, and Polyxenidas thought of nothing
else night or day but how to give the lie to the man's bombast by his deeds.
He sent a man who was well known to Pausistratus to tell him that if
Polyxenidas were allowed to do so he might be of great service to
Pausistratus and to his country. Pausistratus was much surprised and
inquired in what way this could be brought about. When he had given his
word at the other's request that he would either co-operate in the scheme or
conceal it in silence, the intermediary informed him that Polyxenidas would
betray to him the whole of the king's fleet or at all events the greater part of
it, and that the only reward he claimed for so great a service was the
restoration to his native land. The offer was too important a one for
Pausistratus either to place full confidence in or absolutely to decline. He
sailed to Panhormus, a harbour in Samos, and stayed there to examine the
proposal more closely. Messages passed to and fro between them, but
Pausistratus was not quite reassured until Polyxenidas had, in the presence of
the messenger, written down with his own hand the terms of the promise he
made, and affixed his seal to the document. Pausistratus thought that by a
definite pledge like that the traitor would be at his mercy, for as Polyxenidas
was living under an autocrat he would never dare to give what he had signed
with his own hand as evidence against him. Then the plan of the pretended
treachery was arranged. Polyxenidas said that he would not make any further
preparations whatever, he would not keep any large number of rowers with
the fleet, some of the vessels he should haul up on land, ostensibly for
repairs, others he should disperse in neighbouring ports, a few he should
keep at sea outside the port of Ephesus, so that if circumstances compelled
him to go out he could expose them to battle. When Pausistratus heard that
Polyxenidas was going to disperse his fleet in this way, he followed suit. One
division of his fleet he sent to Halicarnassus for supplies, another he
despatched to Samos . . . so that he might be ready to attack on receiving the
signal from the traitor. Polyxenidas still further misled him by hauling up a
certain number of ships and repairing the dockyards as though intending to
haul up others. When the rowers were called up from their winter quarters,
they were not sent to Ephesus but assembled secretly at Magnesia.
