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While these things were going on, Rheomithres,1 who had been sent by the insurgents to King Tachos in Egypt, received from him five hundred talents of silver and fifty warships, and sailed to Asia to the city named Leucae.2 To this city he summoned many leaders of the insurgents. These he arrested and sent in irons to Artaxerxes, and, though he himself had been an insurgent, by the favours that he conferred through his betrayal, he made his peace with the King. [2] In Egypt King Tachos, having completed his preparations for the war, now had two hundred triremes expensively adorned, ten thousand chosen mercenaries from Greece, and besides these eighty thousand Egyptian infantry. He gave the command of the mercenaries to the Spartan Agesilaus,3 who had been dispatched by the Lacedaemonians with a thousand hoplites to fight as an ally, being a man capable of leading troops and highly regarded for his courage and for his shrewdness in the art of war. [3] The command of the naval contingent he entrusted to Chabrias4 the Athenian, who had not been sent officially by his country, but had been privately prevailed upon by the king to join the expedition. The king himself, having command of the Egyptians and being general of the whole army, gave no heed to the advice of Agesilaus to remain in Egypt and conduct the war through the agency of his generals, though the advice was sound. In fact when the armament had gone far afield and was encamped near Phoenicia, the general left in charge of Egypt revolted from the king, and having thereupon sent word to his son Nectanebos prevailed upon him to take the kingship in Egypt, and thereby kindled a great war. [4] For Nectanebos, who had been appointed by the king commander of the soldiers from Egypt and had been sent from Phoenicia to besiege the cities in Syria, after approving of his father's designs, solicited the officers with bribes and the common soldiers with promises, and so prevailed upon them to be his accomplices. [5] At last Egypt was seized by the insurgents, and Tachos, panic-stricken, made bold to go up to the King by way of Arabia and beg forgiveness for his past errors. Artaxerxes not only cleared him of the charges against him but even appointed him general in the war against Egypt.

1 Mentioned in Xen. Cyrop. 8.8.4 as leaving his wife and children and the children of his friends as hostage in the power of Tachos. Fought at Granicus and Issus (see Book 17.19.4 and 34.5).

2 On a promontory at the mouth of the Hermus River (see chap. 18.2 and 4).

3 Agesilaus could have come to Egypt only after the battle of Mantineia, accordingly in the autumn of 362 or in the following spring. The campaign was probably in the summer of 361. After the revolt against Tachos, he supported Nectanebos in his struggle against the Mendesian pretender (Plut. Agesilaus 37-38) and in the course of the winter (Xen. Ages. 2.31.1; Plut. Agesilaus 40) left Egypt (end of 361 or beginning of 360). He died on the return journey to Sparta.

4 Chabrias had been general 363/2 (IG, 2（2）. 1.111) and could have come as a private commander in the late summer of 362 at the earliest. For his former service in Egypt see chap. 29.2-4.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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