History of the Peloponnesian War

The Potidaeans having sent ambassadors to Athens to try if they could persuade the people not to make any alteration amongst them, by other ambassadors, whom they sent along with the ambassadors of Corinth to Lacedaemon, dealt with the Lacedaemonians at the same time, if need required, to be ready to revenge their quarrel. When after long solicitation at Athens and no good done, the fleet was sent away against them no less than against Macedonia, and when the magistrates of Lacedaemon had promised them if the Athenians went to Potidaea, to invade Attica, then at last they revolted, and together with them the Chalcideans and Bottiaeans, all mutually sworn in the same conspiracy.

For Perdiccas had also persuaded the Chalcideans to abandon and pull down their maritime towns and to go up and dwell at Olynthus and that one city to make strong, and unto those that removed gave part of his own and part of the territory of Mygdonia, about the lake Bolbe, to live on so long as the war against the Athenians should continue. So when they had demolished their cities and were gone up higher into the country, they prepared themselves to the war.

The Athenian galleys, when they arrived in Thrace, found Potidaea and the other cities already revolted.

And the commanders of the fleet, conceiving it to be impossible, with their present forces, to make war both against Perdiccas and the towns revolted, set sail again for Macedonia, against which they had been at first sent out, and there staying, joined with Philip and the brothers of Derdas that had invaded the country from above.

In the meantime after Potidaea was revolted, and whilst the Athenian fleet lay on the coast of Macedonia, the Corinthians, fearing what might become of the city and making the danger their own, sent unto it, both of their own city and of other Peloponnesians which they hired, to the number of sixteen hundred men of arms and four hundred light armed.

The charge of these was given to Aristeus the son of Adimantus, for whose sake most of the volunteers of Corinth went the voyage: for he had been ever a great favourer of the Potidaeans.