256 HISTORY OF GREECE. found in readiness (about forty in number) along the southern coast of Asia Minor from Kilikia to Kaunus, 1 further preparations were vigorously prosecuted in the Phoenician ports, in order to make up the fleet to three hundred sail. 2 It was by a sort of accident that news of such equipment reached Sparta, in an age of the world when diplomatic residents were as yet unknown. A Syracusan merchant named Herodas, having
- visited the Phoenician ports for trading purposes, brought back to
Sparta intelligence of the preparations which he had seen, sufficient to excite much uneasiness. The Spartans were taking counsel among themselves, and communicating with their neighboring allies, when Agesilaus, at the instance of Lysander, stood forward as a volunteer to solicit the command of a land-force for the pur- pose of attacking the Persians in Asia. He proposed to take with him only thirty full Spartan citizens or peers, as a sort of Board or Council of Officers ; two thousand Neodamodes or enfranchised Helots, whom the ephors were probably glad to send away, and who would be selected from the bravest and most formidable ; and six thousand hoplites from the land-allies, to whom the prospect of a rich service against Asiatic enemies would be tempting. Of these thirty Spartans, Lysander intended to be the leader ; and thus, reckoning on his preestablished influence over Agesilaus, to exercise the real command himself, without the name. He had no serious fear of the Persian arms, either by land or sea. He looked upon the announcement of the Phoenician fleet to be an empty threat, as it had so often proved in the mouth of Tissa- phernes during the late war ; while the Cyreian expedition had inspired him further with ardent hopes of another successful Anab- asis, or conquering invasion of Persia from the sea-coast inwards. But he had still more at heart to employ his newly-acquired ascendency in reestablishing everywhere the dekarchies, which had excited such intolerable hatred and exercised so much op- pression, that even the ephors had refused to lend positive aid in upholding them, so that they had been in several places broken up or modified. 3 If the ambition of Agesilaus was comparatively less stained by personal and factious antipathies, and more Pan-helleni 1 Diodor. xiv, 39-79. * Xen. Hellen. Hi, 4, 1 'Xcn. Helen, iii, 4, 2.
