History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

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

Perdiccas with Brasidas and his army, together with his own forces, marched presently against Arrhibaeus, the son of Bromerus, king of the Lyncesteans, a people of Macedonia, confining on Perdiccas his dominion, both for a quarrel they had against him and also as desiring to subdue him.

When he came with his army, and Brasidas with him, to the place where they were to have fallen in, Brasidas told him that he desired, before he made war, to draw Arrhibaeus by parley, if he could, to a league with the Lacedaemonians.

For Arrhibaeus had also made some proffer by a herald to commit the matter to Brasidas' arbitrement. And the Chalcidean ambassadors, being present, gave him likewise advice not to thrust himself into danger in favour of Perdiccas, to the end they might have him more prompt in their own affairs.

Besides, the ministers of Perdiccas, when they were at Lacedaemon, had spoken there as if they had meant to bring [as] many of the places about him [as they could] into the Lacedaemonian league. So that Brasidas favoured Arrhibaeus for the public good of their own state.

But Perdiccas said that he brought not Brasidas thither to be a judge of his controversies, but to destroy those enemies which he should show him; and that it will be an injury, seeing he pays the half of his army, for Brasidas to parley with Arrhibaeus.

Nevertheless Brasidas, whether Perdiccas would or not, and though it made a quarrel, had conference with Arrhibaeus, by whom also he was induced to withdraw his army. But from that time forward Perdiccas, instead of half, paid but a third part of his army, as conceiving himself to have been injured.