ls of the march just enjoined--the soldiers
without, bursting into spontaneous movement, with a simultaneous and
fiery impulse, made a rush back to get possession of the gate. But
Eteonikus, seeing their movement, closed it without a moment's delay,
and fastened the bar. The soldiers on reaching the gate and finding it
barred, clamored loudly to get it opened, threatened to break it down,
and even began to knock violently against it. Some ran down to the
sea-coast, and made their way into the city round the line of stones at
the base of the city wall, which protected it against the sea; while the
rearmost soldiers who had not yet marched out, seeing what was passing,
and fearful of being cut off from their comrades, assaulted the gate
from the inside, severed the fastenings with axes, and threw it wide
open to the army. All the soldiers then rushed up, and were soon again
in Byzantium.

Nothing could exceed the terror of the Lacedaemonians as well as of the
native Byzantines, when they saw the excited Cyreians again within the
walls. The town seemed already taken and on the point of being
plundered. Neither Anaxibius nor Eteonikus took the smallest means of
resistance, nor stayed to brave the approach of the soldiers, whose
wrath they were fully conscious of having deserved. Both fled to the
citadel--the former first running to the seashore, and jumping into a
fishing-boat to go thither by sea. He even thought the citadel not
tenable with its existing garrison, and sent over to Chalkedon for a
reinforcement. Still more terrified were the citizens of the town. Every
man in the market-place instantly fled; some to their houses, others to
the merchant vessels in the harbor, others to the triremes or ships of
war, which they hauled down to the water, and thus put to sea.

To the deception and harshness of the Spartan admiral, there was thus
added a want of precaution in the manner of execution, which threatened
to prove the utter ruin of Byzantium. For it was but too probable that
the Cyreian soldiers, under the keen sense of recent injury, would
satiate their revenge, and reimburse themselves for the want of
hospitality towards them, without distinguishing the Lacedaemonian
garrison from the Byzantine citizens; and that too from mere impulse,
not merely without orders, but in spite of prohibitions, from their
generals. Such was the aspect of the case, when they became again
assembled in a mass within the gates; and such w