[24]
After the departure of Livius, Pausimachus trained his sailors by repeated exercises, and constructed machines of various kinds. He attached iron pans containing fire to long poles and suspended them over the sea, so as to clear his own ships and fall upon those of the enemy when they approached. While he was thus engaged Polyxenidas, the admiral of Antiochus, who was also a Rhodian, but had been banished for crime, laid a trap for him. He promised to deliver the fleet of Antiochus to him if he would agree to help him in securing readmittance to his own country. Pausimachus suspected the wily rascal and took special pains to guard against him. But after Polyxenidas had written him an autograph letter on the subject of the betrayal and in accord therewith had sailed away from Ephesus on the pretence of procuring corn for the army, Pausimachus, observing the movement and thinking that no one would put his own signature to a letter proposing a betrayal unless he was speaking the truth, felt entire confidence, relaxed his vigilance, and sent his own fleet away to procure corn. Polyxenidas, seeing that his stratagem was successful, reassembled his ships, and sent the pirate Nicander to Samos with a few men to create confusion by getting in the rear of Pausimachus on the land, and himself sailed at midnight, and about daybreak fell upon him while still asleep. Pausimachus, in this sudden and unexpected catastrophe, ordered his men to abandon their ships and defend themselves on land. When Nicander attacked him in the rear he thought that the land had been taken possession of by night not merely by those who were visible, but by a much larger number. So he made another confused rush for his ships. He was foremost in the encounter and the first to fall, fighting bravely. The rest were all captured or killed. Seven of the ships, which were provided with the fire-apparatus, escaped, as no one dared approach them for fear of conflagration. The remaining twenty Polyxenidas towed to Ephesus.
Appian. The Foreign Wars. Horace White. New York. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1899.
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