slands by the way,
and driving the Athenian garrisons on before him into Athens. Before
long he was at the mouth of the Piraeus himself with his 150 galleys, and
while he shut the Athenians in by sea, the Spartan army and its allies
blockaded them by land.

If they held out, there was no hope of help; delay would only make the
conquerors more bitter; so they offered to make terms, and very hard
these were. The Athenians were to pull down a mile on each side of the
Long Walls, give up all their ships except twelve, recall all their
banished men, and follow the fortunes of the Spartans. They were very
unwilling to accept these conditions, but their distress compelled them;
and Lysander had the Long Walls pulled down to the sound of music on the
anniversary of the day of the battle of Salamis. Then he overthrew the
old constitution of Solon, and set up a government of thirty men, who
were to keep the Athenians under the Spartan yoke, and who were so cruel
and oppressive that they were known afterwards as the thirty tyrants. So
in 404 ended the Peloponnesian war, after lasting twenty-seven years.

The Athenians were most miserable, and began to think whether Alkibiades
would deliver them, and the Spartans seem to have feared the same. He
did not think himself safe in Europe after the ruin at AEgos Potami, and
had gone to the Persian governor on the Phrygian coast, who received him
kindly, but was believed to have taken the pay of either the Spartans or
the thirty tyrants, to murder him, for one night the house where he was
sleeping was set on fire, and on waking he found it surrounded with
enemies. He wrapped his garment round his left arm, took his sword in
his hand, and broke through the flame. None of the murderers durst come
near him, but they threw darts and stones at him so thickly that at last
he fell, and they despatched him. Timandra, the last of his wives, took
up his body, wrapped it in her own mantle, and buried it in a city called
Melissa. Such was the sad end of the spoilt child of Athens. He had
left a son at Athens, whom the Thirty tried to destroy, but who escaped
their fury, although during these evil times the Thirty actually put to
death no less than fourteen hundred citizens of Athens, many of them
without any proper trial, and drove five thousand more into banishment
during the eight months that their power lasted. Then Thrasybulus and
other exiles, coming home, helped to shake off their yo