History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

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

In the meantime, they that were in authority at Samos, and especially Thrasybulus, who after the form of government changed was still of the mind to have Alcibiades recalled, at length in an assembly persuaded the soldiers to the same. And when they had decreed for Alcibiades both his return and his security, he went to Tissaphernes and fetched Alcibiades to Samos, accounting it their only means of safety to win Tissaphernes from the Peloponnesians to themselves.

An assembly being called, Alcibiades complained of and lamented the calamity of his own exile, and speaking much of the business of the state gave them no small hopes of the future time, hyperbolically magnifying his own power with Tissaphernes to the end that both they which held the oligarchy at home might the more fear him, and so the conspiracies dissolve, and also those at Samos the more honour him and take better heart unto themselves; and withal, that the enemy might object the same to the utmost to Tissaphernes and fall from their present hopes.

Alcibiades therefore, with the greatest boast that could be, affirmed that Tissaphernes had undertaken to him that as long as he had anything left, if he might but trust the Athenians they should never want for maintenance; no, though he should be constrained to make money of his own bed; and that he would fetch the Phoenician fleet, now at Aspendus, not to the Peloponnesians but to the Athenians; and that then only he would rely upon the Athenians when Alcibiades called home should undertake for them.