Xenophon, a Greek soldier, wrote the Hellenica as a sequel to Thucydides’ unfinished war history. Book 2 covers 405–403 BC, mainly Athens and the Dardanelles. Book 1 left Athens with a last naval chance, then a mass trial of its own generals; the Spartan admiral Lysander was waiting.

At Aegospotami on the Dardanelles, the Athenians beach their ships to cook. Lysander takes almost the whole fleet. Conon flees to Cyprus with a handful. Athens starves behind the Long Walls when grain ships stop. The walls Pericles built come down to flute music. Lysander installs the Thirty, a small group who rule by terror. Critias, their hardest man, has Theramenes killed in the council-house; Theramenes drinks hemlock and flicks the dregs as if toasting the Beautiful and the Good. Thrasybulus, an exile, holds Phyle in the hills, then the Piraeus, the harbor. Sparta will not wipe Athens out. An amnesty is sworn. Democracy returns, thinner.