8.
Brasidas, as soon as he saw the Athenians remove, came down also from Cerdylium and put himself into Amphipolis.
[2]
He would not suffer them to make any sally nor to face the Athenians in order of battle, mistrusting his own forces, which he thought inferior, not in number (for they were in a manner equal) but in worth (for such Athenians as were there were pure, and the Lemnians and Imbrians which were amongst them were of the very ablest);
but prepared to set upon them by a wile.
[3]
For if he should have showed to the enemy both his number and their armour, such as for the present they were forced to use, he thought that thereby he should not so soon get the victory as by keeping them out of sight and out of their contempt till the very point.
[4]
Wherefore choosing to himself a hundred and fifty men of arms and committing the charge of the rest to Clearidas, he resolved to set suddenly upon them before they should retire, as not expecting to take them so alone another time if their succours chanced to arrive.
And when he had called his soldiers together to encourage them and to make known unto them his design, he said as followeth:
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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