HOW THE LONG WALLS WENT DOWN. 215

Yet for nine years more the war continued, with
much the same succession of varying events as
before. But during this period Sparta was learning
an important lesson. If she would defeat Athens, she
must learn how to win victories on sea as well as on
land. After every defeat of a fleet she built and
equipped another, and gradually grew stronger in
ships, and her seamen more skilful and expert, until
the old difference between Athenian and Spartan
seamen ceased to exist. Persia also came to the aid
of Sparta, supplied her with money, and enabled her
to replace her lost ships with ever new ones, while
the ship-building power of Athens declined.

In 405 z.c. the crisis came. Athens was forced to
depend solely for subsistence on her fleet. That
gone, all would be gone. In the autumn of that
year she had a fleet of one hundred and eighty
triremes in the Hellespont, in the close vicinity of a
Spartan ficet of about the same force, under an able
admiral named Lysander. A gospotami, or Goat’s
River (a name of fatal sound to all later Athenians),
was the station of the Athenian fleet. That of
Sparta lay opposite, across the strait, nearly two
miles away.

And now an interesting scene began. Every day
the Athenian fleet crossed the strait and offered
battle to the Spartans, daring them to come out
from their sheltered position. And every day, when
the Spartans had refused, it would go back to the
opposite shore, where many of the men were per-
mitted to land. Day by day this challenge was re-
peated, the Athenians growing daily more confident