Himilco takes the time to negotiate with the Campanians at Aetna, offering them to switch sides.

They had given Dionysius hostages and their best troops are still serving with the Greek army, so they choose to stay loyal to the Greek tyrant.

The victory at Catana, which enables the Carthaginians to proceed and lay siege to Syracuse in 397 BCE, has not only reduced the naval power of Syracuse, but it has also decreased the strength of the Greeks army by causing other Sicilian Greeks to desert Dionysius.

Himilco now besieges Syracuse.

Himilco responds decisively, leading an expedition which not only reclaims Motya, but also captures Messina.

Motya as a city will never be rebuilt, however.

Himilco chooses to resettle the survivors at Lilybaeum, which will become the main base of Carthage in future and will never fall to siege or assault by Greeks or Romans while in Carthaginian possession.

Himilco, who had been elected "king" in 397 BCE, chooses to sail to with a mercenary army and fleet to Panormus, whence the attack on Syracuse and her allies is to take place.

The Greek fleet under Leptines, the brother of Dionysius I of Syracuse, engages the Carthaginian fleet under Mago near the city of Catana in Sicily.

While the Greek army under Dionysius is present near the city of Catana during the battle, the Carthaginian army under Himilco is away in the interior of Sicily, making a detour around the erupting Mt.

Etna.

The Carthaginian fleet crushes the Greek fleet in the battle: over twenty thousand soldiers/rowers and one hundred ships are lost before the surviving Greek ships can make a run to safety.

Ephesus serves in 396 BCE as the headquarters of Agesilaus, who directs from Anatolia Sparta's campaign against the Persians, who in 397 BCE had begun to build a new fleet to deal with the menace of a Spartan army in Asia. (It may be a further irritant that Sparta is helping another anti-Persian rebel in Egypt; this threatens a serious economic loss to the Persian landowners who have been exploiting it at a distance.)

Agesilaus makes a three months' truce with the Persians; during this interim, he manages to shake off Lysander's control over him.

Agesilaus then raids Phrygia and …

…Lydia.

The Boeotian city of Orchomenus by the beginning of the fourth century BCE is pursuing an anti-Theban policy.

Thebes has exercised control over Boeotia in an unrecognized but progressively real way since 446 BCE.

One source of Theban strength is the takeover in 427 BCE of Plataea's vote and some of its territory; another lies in the depredations that the Thebans had been able to carry out in Attica as a result of the occupation of Decelea.

Sparta reinforces its position at Heraclea in Trachis in the early 390s and …

…maintains a garrison at Thessalian Pharsalus.

Initially, Lysander seems to have been at the back of this northward encroachment (good evidence connects him with Thrace and the Chalcidice).

Because Sparta has always expanded in this direction if given the chance, it had not pulled out of central Greece during Lysander's temporary eclipse after 403 BCE.

From the point of view of Thebes and Corinth, there is a risk of encirclement by Sparta.