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1

When Nicocrates was archon at Athens, Caeso Valerius and Lucius Papirius became consuls at Rome.2 In this year Dareius sent money to Memnon and appointed him commanding general of the whole war. [2] He gathered a force of mercenaries, manned three hundred ships, and pursued the conflict vigorously. He secured Chios, and then coasting along to Lesbos easily mastered Antissa and Methymna and Pyrrha and Eressus. Mitylene also, large and possessed of rich stores of supplies as well as plenty of fighting men, he nevertheless captured with difficulty by assault after a siege of many days and with the loss of many of his soldiers. [3] News of the general's activity spread like wildfire and most of the Cyclades sent missions to him. As word came to Greece that Memnon was about to sail to Euboea with his fleet, the cities of that island became alarmed, while those Greeks who were friendly to Persia, notably Sparta, began to have high hopes of a change in the political situation. [4] Memnon distributed bribes freely and won many Greeks over to share the Persian hopes, but Fortune nevertheless put an end to his career. He fell ill and died, seized by a desperate malady, and with his death Dareius's fortunes also collapsed.3

1 333/2 B.C.

2 Nicocrates was archon from July 333 to June 332 B.C. Broughton (1.139) lists the consuls of 336 B.C. as L. Papirius Crassus and K. Duillius. The former has apparently already been named by Diodorus, chap. 17.1.

3 Arrian 2.1, gives a similar account, but states that Mitylene was not captured until after Memnon's death.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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