History of the Peloponnesian War

For the men of arms that besieged the city had each of them two drachmes a day, one for himself and another for his man, and were three thousand in number that were sent thither at first and remained to the end of the siege, besides sixteen hundred more that went with Phormio and came away before the town was won. And the galleys had all the same pay. In this manner was their money consumed and so many galleys employed, the most indeed that ever they had manned at once.

About the same time that the Lacedaemonians were in the isthmus, the Mytilenaeans marched by land, both they and their auxiliaries, against Methymne in hope to have had it betrayed unto them and, having assaulted the city, when it succeeded not the way they looked for, they went thence to Antissa, Pyrrha, and Eressus; and after they had settled the affairs of those places and made strong their walls returned speedily home.

When these were gone, the Methymnaeans likewise made war upon Antissa; but beaten by the Antisaeans and some auxiliaries that were with them, they made haste again to Methymne with the loss of many of their soldiers.

But the Athenians being advertised hereof and understanding that the Mytilenaeans were masters of the land and that their own soldiers there were not enough to keep them in, sent thither, about the beginning of autumn, Paches, the son of Epicurus, with a thousand men of arms of their own city,