History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes, Thomas. translator. London: John Bohn, 1843.

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.