Clearchus returns to Byzantium in 404 BCE…

Lampsacus, a prosperous early member of the Delian league, comes under Persian control upon the fall of Athens in 404.

Darius II dies in 404 BCE; his eldest son succeeds him as Artaxerxes II (called Mnemon by the Greeks).

Theramenes has himself dispatched to negotiate with Lysander when the Peloponnesians besiege Athens in the winter of 405-404.

He stays away for three months while Athens is being reduced to starvation.

An blockaded Athens, its grain supply cut off and its allies, except for Samos, in revolt, capitulates in April 404; Theramenes heads the embassy that negotiates the terms of capitulation to the Spartans.

Cleophon is tried and executed.

Athens surrenders its fleet, and is allowed to retain only a token twelve ships.

The Athenian empire is no more.

Submitting to the destruction of its fortifications, including the Long Walls, Athens suffers the rule of the Board of Thirty, the so-called Thirty Tyrants, an oligarchy organized and installed by Lysander to rule the conquered city.

A split develops between Theramenes, a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and Critias, another of the leaders.

Critias, the most radical of the Thirty, induces the board to put Theramenes to death by forcing him to drink hemlock.

Thrasybulus, exiled by the Thirty because of his opposition to their suppression of democracy, becomes a popular hero to the Athenians.

His seizure of the frontier stronghold of Phyle in northern Attica creates a focus for refugees, who flock to join him.

Thebes had continued to harbor hostility to Athens over mutual interest in the Plataea district.

At the end of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta rebuffs a Theban suggestion that the Spartans annihilate the Athenians.

The remnants of the Aeginans deported at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War are allowed to return from exile in 404 BCE after the defeat of Athens, but Aegina will never recover from the blow.

Lysander restores the island of Melos to its Dorian possessors, but it will never recover its prosperity.

Dionysius breaks the peace treaty in 404 BCE by attacking the Sicel city of Herbessus.

Carthage does nothing, but part of the Syracusan army joins the Syracusan rebels from Aetna, and with help from Messina and Rhegion, manage to besiege Dionysius in Syracuse.

Dionysius considers fleeing the beleaguered city, and only the bungling of the rebels and the help of some Italian mercenaries save the day for him.

Achaemenid prince Cyrus the Younger had been called to his father's deathbed in 404, when Arsaces became king as Artaxerxes II.

Cyrus, though he attended the coronation, was accused by Tissaphernes, satrap of Caria, of plotting his brother's murder.

On the intercession of Parysatis, however, Cyrus was pardoned and sent back to his satrapy.

On his return, Cyrus begins preparations to seize the Achaemenid throne.

Clearchus, who takes refuge with Cyrus the Younger in 403 after his expulsion from Byzantium, recruits the Greek mercenary army called the Ten Thousand in support of Cyrus's claim to the Persian throne.

Cyrus uses a quarrel with Tissaphernes over the Ionian cities as a pretext for gathering a large army and pretends to prepare an expedition to Pisidia, in the Taurus Mountains.

The orator Lysias delivers his most important speech, “Against Eratosthenes,” written in 403 in prosecution of the man who had caused the execution of his brother. (Lysias’s most successful speeches, however, are those he writes for clients to deliver in the Athenian law courts. His speeches, of which thirty-four survive, will become the model of the "plain style" in the eyes of later students of rhetoric.)

Under the archon Euclides, Athens officially adopts the Ionian alphabet in 403 BCE. (Each Greek state has its own alphabet, but use the Ionian alphabet for capital letters. The standardized alphabet soon spreads throughout Greece.)

A small army of democrats under Thrasybulus marches south from Phyle to depose the reactionary Thirty and restore democratic rule, and Critias is killed in fighting in the Piraeus.

Lysander, sent to support the Thirty at Athens against Thrasybulus' democratic revolt, is nearly successful, but a reversal of policy in Sparta leads by the end of 403 to a settlement that allows the restoration of democracy at Athens.