5.
Whilst they were on both sides doing thus, there came unto Agis about their revolt from the Athenians, first the ambassadors of the Euboeans.
Accepting the motion, he sent for Alcamenes, the son of Sthenelaidas, and for Melanthus from Lacedaemon to go commanders into Euboea.
Whom, when he was come to him with about three hundred freedmen, he was now about to send over.
But in the meantime came the Lesbians, they also desiring to revolt;
[2]
and by the means of the Boeotians Agis changed his former resolution and prepared for the revolt of Lesbos, deferring that of Euboea, and assigned them Alcamenes, the same that should have gone into Euboea, for their governor;
and the Boeotians promised them ten galleys and Agis other ten.
Now this was done without acquainting therewith the state of Lacedaemon.
[3]
For Agis, as long as he was about Deceleia with the power he had, had the law in his own hands to send what army and whither he listed and to levy men and money at his pleasure.
And at this time, the confederates of him (as I may call them) did better obey him than the confederates of the Lacedaemonians did them at home;
for having the power in his hands, he was terrible wheresoever he came.
And he was now for the Lesbians.
[4]
But the Chians and Erythraeans, they also desiring to revolt, went not to Agis, but to the Lacedaemonians in the city;
and with them went also an ambassador from Tissaphernes, lieutenant to king Darius in the low countries of Asia.
For Tissaphernes also instigated the Peloponnesians and promised to pay their fleet.
[5]
For he had lately begged of the king the tribute accruing in his own province;
for which he was in arrearage, because he could receive nothing out of any of the Greek cities by reason of the Athenians.
And therefore he thought by weakening the Athenians to receive his tribute the better, and withal to draw the Lacedaemonians into a league with the king;
and thereby, as the king had commanded, to kill or take alive Amorges, Pissuthnes' bastard son, who was in rebellion against him about Caria.
The Chians, therefore, and Tissaphernes followed this business jointly.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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