History of the Peloponnesian War

And at the end of the same summer[*](430 B.C.) Aristeus a Corinthian, three Lacedaemonian envoys, Aneristus, Nicolaus, and Pratodamus, also Timagoras of Tegea and Pollis of Argos, the last acting in a private capacity,[*](Because Argos was a neutral state: Thuc. 2.9.2.) set out for Asia to the King's court to see if they might persuade him to furnish money and join in the war. On their way they came first to Sitalces son of Teres in Thrace, their desire being to persuade him, if possible, to forsake the Athenian alliance and send a force to relieve Potidaea, where an Athenian army was conducting the siege; and also, in pursuance of their object, with his help to cross the Hellespont to Pharnaces[*](Then Satrap of Dascylium; Thuc. 1.129.1.) son of Pharnabazus, who was to escort them up the country to

the King. But two Athenian envoys, Learchus son of Callimachus and Ameiniades son of Philemon, who chanced to be visiting Sitalces, urged Sadocus son of Sitalces, who had been made an Athenian citizen,[*](Thuc. 2.29.5.) to deliver the men into their hands, that they might not cross over to the King and do such injury as might be to his

adopted city.[*](Possibly τὴν ἐκείνου πόλιν τὸ μέρος means a city in a measure his own.)To this Sadocus agreed, and sending some troops to accompany Learchus and Ameiniades, seized them as they journeyed through Thrace before they embarked on the boat by which they were to cross the Hellespont. They were then, in accordance with his orders, delivered to the Athenian envoys, who took them and brought them

to Athens. When they arrived, the Athenians, in fear that Aristeus might escape and do them still more harm, because he had evidently been the prime mover in all the earlier intrigues at Potidaea and along the coast of Thrace, put them all to death on that very day without a trial, though they wished to say something in their own defence, and threw their bodies into a pit, thinking it justifiable to employ for their own protection the same measures as had in the first instance been used by the Lacedaemonians when they killed and cast into pits the traders of the Athenians and their allies whom they caught on board merchantmen on the coast of the Peloponnesus. For at the beginning of the war all persons whom the Lacedaemonians captured at sea they destroyed as enemies, whether they were fighting on the side of the Athenians or not even taking part on either side.