History of the Peloponnesian War

And we shall never fear the danger if we but think this: that all stratagems of war whatsoever are no more but such occasions as this, which, if a commander avoid in himself and take the advantage of them in the enemy, he shall for the most part have good success.

Thus said he, but prevailed not with Alcidas. And some others, fugitives of lonia and those Lesbians that were with him in the fleet, gave him counsel that, seeing he feared the danger of this, he should seize some city of Ionia or Cume in Aeolia, that having some town for the seat of the war, they might from thence force Ionia to revolt, whereof there was hope because the Ionians would not be unwilling to see him there; and if they could withdraw from the Athenians this their great revenue and withal put them to maintain a fleet against them, it would be a great exhausting of their treasure. They said besides that they thought they should be able to get Pissuthnes to join with them in the war.

But Alcidas rejected this advice likewise, inclining rather to this opinion that since they were come too late to Mytilene, they were best to return speedily into Peloponnesus.

Whereupon putting off from Embatus, he sailed by the shore to Myonnesus of the Teians and there slew most of the prisoners he had taken by the way.

After this he put in at Ephesus; and thither came ambassadors to him from the Samians of Anaea and told him that it was but an ill manner of setting the Grecians at liberty to kill such as had not lift up their hands against him nor were indeed enemies to the Peloponnesians but confederates to the Athenians by constraint, and that, unless he gave over that course, he would make few of the enemies his friends but many now friends to become his enemies.

Wherefore upon these words of the ambassadors he set the Chians and some others, all that he had left alive, at liberty. For when men saw their fleet, they never fled from it but came unto them as to Athenians, little imagining that the Athenians being masters of the sea, the Peloponnesians durst have put over to Ionia.