[6] Since the Spartan constitution prohibited any commander from holding the office of navarch more than once, he was appointed as a vice-admiral instead, with the clear understanding that this was a mere legal fiction.

[8] When Cyrus was recalled to Susa by his father Darius, he gave Lysander the revenues from all of his cities of Asia Minor.

The location was less than ideal because of the lack of a harbor and the difficulty of supplying the fleet, but proximity seems to have been the primary concern in the minds of the Athenian generals.

[12] Every day, the fleet sailed out to Lampsacus in battle formation, and waited outside the harbor; when Lysander refused to emerge, they returned home.

Diodorus Siculus relates that the Athenian general in command on the fifth day at Sestos, Philocles, sailed out with thirty ships, ordering the rest to follow him.

Xenophon, in contrast, relates that the entire Athenian fleet came out as usual on the day of the battle and Lysander remained in the harbor.

When the Athenians returned to their camp, the sailors scattered to forage for food; Lysander's fleet then sailed across from Abydos and captured most of the ships on the beach, with no sea fighting at all.

Some historians, ancient and modern, suspect that the battle was lost as the result of treachery, perhaps on the part of Adeimantus, who was the only Athenian commander the Spartans captured during the battle who was not put to death, and perhaps with the treasonous connivance of the oligarchical faction at Athens, who may have wanted their city defeated in order to overthrow the democracy.

Without a fleet to import grain from the Black Sea, and with the Spartan occupation of Deceleia cutting off land transportation, the Athenians were beginning to starve, and with people dying of hunger in the streets,[22] the city surrendered in March 404 BC.

The walls of the city were demolished, and a pro-Spartan oligarchic government was established (the so-called Thirty Tyrants' regime).