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Conon () (before 443 BC – )J.K. Davies, APF, Oxford 1971, 507, 508 was an Athens general at the end of the Peloponnesian War, who led the Athenian naval forces when they were defeated by a Peloponnesian fleet in the crucial Battle of Aegospotami; later he contributed significantly to the restoration of Athens' political and military power.
Besieged by land and sea, Conon was unable to break out from the vastly superior forces that surrounded him and only barely slipped a messenger ship out to Athens. After some initial panic, Athens sent a sizable force sent out to raise the siege. Callicraditas met this force at the Battle of Arginusae. His force was soundly defeated, and Callicratidas himself was killed. After his death, Lysander returned from Sparta to take command of Sparta's naval efforts in the Aegean.Donald Kagan, The Peloponnesian Wars, The Fall of the Athenian Empire, p. 338–353.
On the fifth day of the stand-off, Lysander sent out scouts to spy on the Athenians. They signalled the main army once the Athenian crews had disembarked to take their meals. Thus when Lysander attacked almost the entire Athenian navy was caught unprepared and captured without resistance, and all the men taken were put to death. It was generally believed that some kind of treachery was involved, but Conon himself was never implicated. His ship was one of nine which escaped the disaster, boldly rushing to Lampsacus where the Spartans had left their fleet's sails (as was typical before a naval battle) and so preventing any effective means of pursuit. One of the nine Athenian ships to escape, the Paralus, returned to Athens, while Conon, with the other eight ships, fled to Evagoras I of Cyprus, fearing the judgement of the Athenian people.
First Conon moved up to Caria with a small portion of the fleet, where he was for a time blocked but then rescued by Pharnabazus and Tissaphernes. He then proceeded to Rhodes, where the pro-Spartan oligarchy was replaced by a democracy, and managed to capture food supplies being sent up from Egypt. In response to this, the Spartans decided to send out their navy, but made the mistake of entrusting it to Peisander, who had no experience. The battle took place at Cnidus in 394 BC, and was an easy and overwhelming Persian success. The Aegean cities expelled the Spartan garrisons and accepted Persian rule.
After this success, Conon felt it was safe for him to return to Athens. Pharnabazus allowed him to retain part of the fleet, and supplied money for the fortification of Piraeus and the reconstruction of the long walls joining it to Athens. These actions meant that some of the main results of the Peloponnesian War were undone - Athens regained her position as a major power in Greece, and though she had still lost her empire, Sparta had been prevented from taking it over.
The next year the Spartans had opened negotiations with the Persians, and in order to secure their position in Greece offered to hand over all the cities in Anatolia to them. The Athenians sent delegates (including Conon) to announce this as unacceptable, which Tiribazus understood to mean that they still hoped to recover their empire and, outraged by this about-face, threw them in prison, Conon among them. Ancient writers give conflicting accounts of his end: some claim that he was sent into the interior of Asia and put to death; other accounts, probably more likely, record that he retired to Cyprus and died there. His son Timotheus later became another prominent general.
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