Mindarus () was a

Sparta Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas rive ...

n navarch who commanded the Peloponnesian fleet in 411 and 410 BC, during the

Peloponnesian War The Second Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), often called simply the Peloponnesian War (), was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek war fought between Classical Athens, Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the Ancien ...

. Successful in shifting the theatre of war into the Hellespont, he then experienced a string of defeats; in the third and final of these, he was killed and the entire Peloponnesian fleet was captured or destroyed.

Relocation and early battles

:''Main articles: Battle of Cynossema, Battle of Abydos'' Mindarus first took command of the fleet at

Miletus Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος, Mílētos) was an influential ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in present day Turkey. Renowned in antiquity for its wealth, maritime power, and ex ...

, where the

satrap A satrap () was a governor of the provinces of the ancient Median kingdom, Median and Achaemenid Empire, Persian (Achaemenid) Empires and in several of their successors, such as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic period, Hellenistic empi ...

Tissaphernes Tissaphernes (; ; , ; 445395 BC) was a Persian commander and statesman, Satrap of Lydia and Ionia. His life is mostly known from the works of Thucydides and Xenophon. According to Ctesias, he was the son of Hidarnes III and therefore, the gre ...

had promised the Spartans they would be joined by the sizeable

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

n fleet under his command. After several months of waiting, Mindarus realized that no such fleet would be forthcoming, and made the strategic decision to relocate his fleet to the

Hellespont The Dardanelles ( ; ; ), also known as the Strait of Gallipoli (after the Gallipoli peninsula) and in classical antiquity as the Hellespont ( ; ), is a narrow, natural strait and internationally significant waterway in northwestern Turkey t ...

, where the satrap Pharnabazus had promised him greater support than he was receiving from Tissaphernes. Mindarus set out from Miletus with 73 ships; a storm forced him ashore at

Chios Chios (; , traditionally known as Scio in English) is the fifth largest Greece, Greek list of islands of Greece, island, situated in the northern Aegean Sea, and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, tenth largest island in the Medi ...

, but he remained there only a few days. Sailing with haste to avoid an Athenian fleet that had been brought up from

Samos Samos (, also ; , ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the Mycale Strait. It is also a separate reg ...

to oppose him, he succeeded in bringing his fleet between

Lesbos Lesbos or Lesvos ( ) is a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of , with approximately of coastline, making it the third largest island in Greece and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, eighth largest ...

and the mainland and into the Hellespont, where he brushed aside a small Athenian fleet and joined the few allied ships in the region in the Spartan base at Abydos. With this strategic move, Mindarus had placed his fleet in position to cut off the Athenian grain supply, and had forced the Athenian fleet to challenge him on ground of his choosing. From this point onwards, however, Mindarus' luck turned sour. Five days after his arrival at Abydos, the Athenians sailed into the narrow waters of the Hellespont to engage his numerically superior force. In the resulting battle, Peloponnesian victory appeared within grasp in the early going, as the Athenian left was cut off and the centre driven ashore on the promontory of Cynossema; superior seamanship on the part of the Athenian captains and sailors, however, turned the tide of the battle, and Mindarus' fleet fled back to Abydos with losses. Mindarus summoned reinforcements to him at Abydos, but suffered a second defeat when a small group of ships sailing to join him there was trapped by the Athenian fleet; Mindarus sailed out to rescue them, but, after a hard fought battle, the arrival of

Alcibiades Alcibiades (; 450–404 BC) was an Athenian statesman and general. The last of the Alcmaeonidae, he played a major role in the second half of the Peloponnesian War as a strategic advisor, military commander, and politician, but subsequently ...

with Athenian reinforcements turned the battle into a rout, with the Peloponnesians again suffering losses in their flight back to Abydos.

Cyzicus

Over the next several months, Mindarus, with financial support from Pharnabazus, rebuilt his fleet to 80 triremes by the spring of 410 BC. Sailing eastward to

Cyzicus Cyzicus ( ; ; ) was an ancient Greek town in Mysia in Anatolia in the current Balıkesir Province of Turkey. It was located on the shoreward side of the present Kapıdağ Peninsula (the classical Arctonnesus), a tombolo which is said to have or ...

, he besieged the city with the assistance of Pharnabazus' army and took it by storm. The Athenians pursued him, and, in the waters off Cyzicus, enticed Mindarus into a fatal trap. While Thrasybulus and

Theramenes Theramenes (; ; died 404/403 BC) was an Athenian military leader and statesman, prominent in the final decade of the Peloponnesian War. He was active during the two periods of oligarchic government at Athens, the 400 and later the Thirty Tyrants, ...

waited out of sight with a number of triremes, Alcibiades took forty ships and showed himself before Cyzicus. Mindarus took the bait, setting out with his entire fleet in pursuit. When he was sufficiently far from shore, the hidden Athenian forces emerged to cut off his line of retreat. Surrounded, Mindarus led his ships in a desperate flight towards a beach south-west of the city, the one direction open to him. Landing with Alcibiades' force hot on their heels, Mindarus' men, and Pharnabazus' troops who had come up to support them, fought to prevent the Athenians from towing their ships out to sea. Initially, the Athenians were driven back, but Thrasybulus and Theramenes, bringing up their forces and the Athenian land forces from the rear, were eventually able to drive the Persians off. Undaunted, Mindarus divided his force to face the threat now pressing from both sides, but when he fell in the fighting, Peloponnesian resistance dissolved; all the fleet's ships were either destroyed or captured. In the wake of this resounding defeat, Mindarus' name was immortalized in one of the most famous examples of

laconic A laconic phrase or laconism is a concise or terse statement, especially a blunt and elliptical rejoinder. It is named after Laconia, the region of Greece including the city of Sparta, whose ancient inhabitants had a reputation for verbal auste ...

brevity: a dispatch from the Spartan survivors was intercepted by the Athenians. It read: "''The ships are lost. Mindarus is dead. The men are starving. We wonder what is to be done''."

Xenophon Xenophon of Athens (; ; 355/354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian. At the age of 30, he was elected as one of the leaders of the retreating Ancient Greek mercenaries, Greek mercenaries, the Ten Thousand, who had been ...

, ''

Hellenica ''Hellenica'' () simply means writings on Greek (Hellenic) subjects. Several histories of the 4th-century BC Greece have borne the conventional Latin title ''Hellenica'', of which very few survive.Murray, Oswyn, "Greek Historians", in John Boardma ...

'' 1.1.23.

Notes

References

Diodorus Siculus Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily (; 1st century BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek historian from Sicily. He is known for writing the monumental Universal history (genre), universal history ''Bibliotheca historica'', in forty ...

,
Library
' * Kagan, Donald. ''The Peloponnesian War'' (Penguin Books, 2003). * *{{cite wikisource , title=Hellenica , wslink=Hellenica (Xenophon) , author=

, translator= Henry Graham Dakyns , year=1890s , origyear=original 4th century BC Ancient Spartan generals 5th-century BC Spartans 410 BC deaths Year of birth unknown Spartans of the Peloponnesian War