History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

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

Thrasyllus having been advertised of his departure from Miletus, he also puts to sea from Samos with five-and-fifty sail, hasting to be in the Hellespont before him.

But hearing that he was in Chios and conceiving that he would stay there, he appointed spies to lie in Lesbos and in the continent over against it, that the fleet of the enemy might not remove without his knowledge; and he himself, going to Methymna, commanded provision to be made of meal and other necessaries, intending, if they stayed there long, to go from Lesbos and invade them in Chios. Withal, because Eressos was revolted from Lesbos, he purposed to go thither with his fleet;

if he could, to take it in. For the most potent of the Methymnaean exiles had gotten into their society about fifty men of arms out of Cume and hired others out of the continent, and with their whole number in all three hundred, having for their leader Anaxarchus, a Theban, chosen in respect of their descent from the Thebans, first assaulted Methymna. But beaten in the attempt by the Athenian garrison that came against them from Mytilene and again in a skirmish without the city driven quite away, they passed by the way of the mountain to Eressos, and caused it to revolt.

Thrasyllus therefore intended to go thither with his galleys and to assault it. At his coming he found Thrasybulus there also before him with five galleys from Samos, for he had been advertised of the outlaws coming over;

but being too late to prevent them, he went to Eressos and lay before it at anchor. Hither also came two galleys of Methymna that were going home from the Hellespont; so that they were in all threescore and seven sail, out of which they made an army, intending with engines, or any other way they could, to take Eressos by assault.