Athens, which was under the influence of the farsighted Pericles,
cheerfully responded to the call, and sent two hundred triremes, manned
by at least forty thousand men, to assist the rebels, and to do as much
injury as possible to the Persians. On sailing up the Nile, the Athenian
fleet found a Persian squadron already moored in the Nile waters, but it
swept this obstacle from its path without any difficulty. Memphis was
then blockaded both by land and water; the city was taken, and only the
citadel. Leucon-Teichos, or "the White Fortress," held out. A formal
siege of the citadel was commenced, and the allies lay before it for
months, but without result. Meanwhile, Artaxerxes was not idle. Having
collected an army of 300,000 men, he gave the command of it to
Megabyzus, one of his best generals, and sent him to Egypt against the
rebels. Megabyzus marched upon Memphis, defeated the Egyptians and their
allies in a great battle under the walls of the town, relieved the
Persian garrison which held the citadel, and recovered possession of the
place. The Athenians retreated to the tract called Prosopitis, a sort of
island in the Delta, surrounded by two of the branch streams of the
Nile, which they held with their ships. Here Megabyzus besieged them
without success for eighteen months; but at last he bethought himself of
a stratagem like that whereby Cyrus is said to have captured Babylon,
and adapted it to his purpose. Having blocked the course of one of the
branch streams, and diverted its waters into a new channel, he laid bare
the river-bed, captured the triremes that were stuck fast in the soft
ooze, marched his men into the island, and overwhelmed the unhappy
Greeks by sheer force of numbers. A few only escaped, and made their way
to Cyrene. The entire fleet of two hundred vessels fell into the hands
of the conqueror; and fifty others, sent as a reinforcement, having soon
afterwards entered the river, were attacked unawares and defeated, with
the loss of more than half their number. Inarus, the Libyan monarch,
became a fugitive, but was betrayed by some of his followers,