Editing Conon (section)

==Commanding the Athenian fleet==
Shortly after the [[Battle of Notium]], Conon took over command of the Athenian fleet from [[Alcibiades]], who had fled to [[Thrace]]. When the new Spartan [[navarch]] (commander-in-chief of the fleet) [[Callicratidas]] took over command from [[Lysander]], he started an aggressive campaign against the Athenians in the [[Aegean Sea|Aegean]]. After taking [[Methymna]] in Lesbos, he sent a message to Conon, declaring that he would put an end to Conon's command of the sea. Soon thereafter, Callicratidas caught Conon's fleet of seventy ships at sea and pursued him towards [[Mytilene|Mytilene Harbor]] on Lesbos, where in the ensuing battle, Conon lost thirty ships. Conon drew the remaining forty ships up onto the beach, but while [[blockade|blockading]] him from sea, Callicratidas also surrounded him on land, having transported land forces from [[Chios]] and gaining the aid of the Methymnaeans.<ref>[[Donald Kagan]], ''The Peloponnesian Wars, The Fall of the Athenian Empire'', p. 328–338.</ref>

Besieged by land and sea, Conon was unable to break out from the vastly superior forces that surrounded him and only barely slipped a messenger ship out to Athens. After some initial panic, Athens sent a sizable  force sent out to raise the siege. Callicraditas met this force at the [[Battle of Arginusae]]. His force was soundly defeated, and Callicratidas himself was killed. After his death, Lysander returned from Sparta to take command of Sparta's naval efforts in the Aegean.<ref>[[Donald Kagan]], ''The Peloponnesian Wars, The Fall of the Athenian Empire'', p. 338–353.</ref>