Meantime Proteas, son of Andronicus, by command of Antipater,[1] succeeded in collecting ships of war from Euboea and the Peloponnese, so that there might be some protection both for the islands and for Greece itself, if the foreigners attacked them by sea, as it was reported they intended to do. Learning that Datames with ten ships was moored near Siphnus,[2] Proteas set out by night with fifteen from Chalcis on the Euripus,[3] and approaching the island of Cythnus[4] at dawn, he spent the day there in order to get more certain information of the movements of the ten ships, resolving at the same time to fall upon the Phoenicians by night, when he would be likely to strike them with greater terror. Having discovered with certainty that Datames was moored with his ships at Siphnus, he sailed thither while it was still dark, and just at the very dawn fell upon them when they least expected it, and captured eight of the ships, men and all. But Datames, with the other two triremes, escaped by stealth at the beginning of the attack made by the ships with Proteas, and reached the rest of the Persian fleet in safety.
- ↑ The regent of Macedonia and Greece during Alexander's absence.
- ↑ One of the Cyclades, a little to the north-east of Melos. It was noted for the low morality of its inhabitants. See Aristophanes (Fragment, 558; on the authority of Suidas).
- ↑ Euripus properly means any narrow sea, where the ebb and flow of the tide is violent. The name was especially applied to the strait between Boeotia and Euboea, where the ancients asserted the sea ebbed and flowed seven times in the day (Strabo, ix. 1). Modern observers have noticed these extraordinary tides. The present name of the island, Negropont, is the Italian name formed from Egripo, the modern corruption of Euripus. Cf . Cicero, pro Muraena, xvii.:—Quod freturn, quem Euripum tot motus, tantas, tam varias habere putatis agitationes fluctuum, quantas perturbationes et quantos aestus habet ratio comitiorum. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, ix. 6:—τῶν τοιούτων γὰρ μένει τὰ βουλήματα, καὶ οὐ μεταῤῥεῖ ὥσπερ Εὔριπος.
- ↑ One of the Cyclades, about half-way between Attica and Siphnus.
