The discipline of the navy was not equal to the valour of the enterprise; Dionysius, commander of the Phocaeans, attempted, perhaps too rigorously, to enforce it;--jealousy and disgust broke out among the troops--and the Samian leaders, whether displeased with their allies, or tempted by the Persians, who, through the medium of the exiled tyrants of Greece, serving with them, maintained correspondence with the Ionians, secretly agreed to desert in the midst of the ensuing battle.

This compact made, the Phoenicians commenced the attack, and the Ionians, unsuspicious of treachery, met them with a contracted line.

In the beginning of the engagement, the Samians, excepting only eleven ships (whose captains were afterward rewarded by a public column in their native market-place), fulfilled their pledge, and sailed away to Samos.

The Lesbians, stationed next them, followed their example, and confusion and flight became contagious.

The Chians alone redeemed the character of the allies, aided, indeed, by Dionysius the Phocaean, who, after taking three of the enemy's ships, refused to retreat till the day was gone, and then, sailing to Phoenicia, sunk several trading vessels, enriched himself with their spoil, and eventually reaching Sicily, became renowned as a pirate, formidable to the Carthaginian and Tyrsenian families of the old Phoenician foe, but holding his Grecian countrymen sacred from his depredations.
The Persian armament now bent all its vengeance on Miletus; they besieged it both by land and by sea--every species of military machine then known was directed against its walls, and, in the sixth year after the revolt of Aristagoras, Miletus fell (B.C.